14. Chapter 14 - Matt
Nobody spoke for several seconds after Theron’s final words.
The whispers rose and fell in uneven waves, sometimes faint enough to sound like moving water, sometimes sharp enough that Matt could almost mistake them for real voices forming actual words. The sound crawled unpleasantly along the edges of his nerves.
This was no longer just a prison failing. The mountain was responding to the corruption spreading through it.
Vale stepped toward the open stairwell first, her rifle still raised. “How many tombs?”
Theron’s gaze remained fixed on the darkness below. “I do not know.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“No,” Theron agreed. “It isn’t.”
Matt’s attention returned to Aric’s body near the shattered pillar. Two Valker agents had already covered him with a tarp, concealing the thing the mountain had made of him. Theron had not looked back at him.
Matt was beginning to realize that Theron’s control came with a cost. Every time the mountain forced him to remember someone he’d lost, he buried it before the grief could surface. The cracks were showing anyway. Matt wasn’t sure he wanted Theron carrying that weight alone anymore.
Baptiste crouched near the open passage, examining the carved symbols surrounding the seam in the wall. “These markings weren’t made recently,” he said. “The stone around them is ancient.”
Vale moved beside him. “Can you read them?”
Baptiste glanced toward Theron.
Theron finally tore his attention away from the darkness below and stepped closer. For a moment he simply stared at the carvings without speaking. Recognition tightened Theron’s expression.
“It’s an old dialect,” Theron said. “Older than most civilizations still remembered.”
“Can you read it or not?” one of the agents asked.
Theron ignored the impatience in the question. His fingers traced one of the symbols carved nearest the seam. “It describes a rite.”
Matt disliked that sentence.
“Define rite,” he said carefully.
Theron’s eyes flicked briefly toward him. “Not the comforting kind.”
“Fantastic.”
Vale folded her arms. “What kind of rite?”
Theron studied the wall a moment longer before answering.
“A sealing ritual.”
The chamber quieted as tension moved through the gathered wolves. Even the younger agents understood what the words meant.
“A prison?” Vale asked.
Theron nodded once. “The First King could not be killed conventionally.”
“That’s usually how immortal monsters work,” Matt muttered.
Theron continued as though he had not interrupted. “The wolves who served under him eventually realized destroying his body would not matter if his spirit remained bound to the mountain itself. So they created the tomb network.”
A crease formed between Matt's brows. “You’re telling me this entire mountain is basically one giant supernatural containment unit?”
“Yes.”
“That somehow makes me feel worse.”
“It should.”
Theron’s voice remained calm, but Matt caught the exhaustion beneath it.
Baptiste rose to his feet. “If the tombs are opening now, then whatever imprisoned him is failing.”
“No,” Theron said.
Every eye turned toward him.
Matt noticed the way his shoulders tightened before he spoke again.
“It isn’t failing,” Theron said. “It’s being undone deliberately.”
A cold silence followed.
Vale’s expression hardened. “By whom?”
Theron did not answer right away.
Matt had a feeling he was going to hate whatever came next.
Finally, Theron turned toward the darkness below the stairs. “By the First King, through those already corrupted enough to answer him.”
The whispers deep in the passage rose again, louder this time, no longer random but rhythmic, like voices answering one another.
Matt rubbed his jaw. “Okay. I’m going to ask what is probably an incredibly stupid question.”
Vale sighed. “That has never stopped you before.”
“Fair.” Matt pointed toward the stairs. “If he’s still trapped down there, how exactly is he opening tombs?”
Theron’s gaze lowered.
“The First King’s body is trapped,” he said. “That does not mean his influence is.”
Matt felt the hyena stir uneasily beneath his skin again.
“The mountain carries his influence,” Theron continued. “Through dreams. Through blood. Through wolves already weakened enough to hear him.”
Attention shifted throughout the chamber toward the covered body near the pillar.
Aric.
“So the wolves coming out of those tombs are what? Corrupted?”
Theron’s expression darkened. “Some were corrupted before they died. Others were buried after infection had already begun. The sealing rites were meant to contain all of them alongside the King himself.”
Matt stared toward the open stairwell. “How many wolves are buried down there?”
Theron answered without hesitation. “Thousands across the tomb network. And this is only one chamber within it.”
Silence held for a beat before one of the younger Valker agents muttered a curse. Matt honestly felt that was a reasonable response.
Vale faced Theron again. “Then we don’t have time to move carefully anymore.”
“No,” Theron agreed. “We don’t.”
Tension settled across the group. Fear hung beneath the smell of sweat, gun oil, and stone dust, but none of the wolves backed away from the stairwell. Whatever else they felt, training kept them moving.
Vale straightened. “Then we end this now.”
Theron’s eyes narrowed. “You say that as though it’s simple.”
“It doesn’t need to be simple.” Vale’s voice hardened. “It needs to work.”
Matt stepped closer before the conversation could spiral into another ancient-alpha dominance contest. “Okay. Let’s focus on the practical details before the mountain releases an undead werewolf army.”
Baptiste nodded once toward Theron. “Tell us what has to happen.”
Theron looked back toward the carvings.
“The First King’s body lies beneath the central throne chamber at the lowest point of the mountain. The tomb network surrounding him acts as both prison and shield.”
Concern crossed his face. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you cannot destroy him while the mountain remains intact,” Theron said. “And you cannot destroy the mountain while he remains bound to it.”
Matt blinked. “That feels aggressively inconvenient.”
“It was designed that way.”
Vale crossed her arms. “So what breaks the connection?”
Theron hesitated. Matt noticed. “So that’s the bad part,” he said.
Theron ignored him. “The original sealing ritual relied on blood from the First King’s line.”
Baptiste went still.
Vale’s eyes narrowed. “Yours.”
Theron nodded once.
Cold dread dropped through Matt. “No.”
Every head turned toward him. He did not care.
“No,” Matt repeated, stepping closer to Theron. “Absolutely not.”
Theron’s expression barely shifted. “Matt…”
“No. You don’t get to casually drop blood sacrifice into the conversation like we’re discussing weather conditions.”
“It is not a sacrifice.”
“That sounds exactly like something said right before a sacrifice.”
Several agents shifted uneasily. Matt was relieved someone else finally appreciated how insane the conversation had become.
Theron’s gaze remained steady on him. “My blood is required to reopen the heart seal beneath the mountain.”
Matt folded his arms. “And what happens after that?”
Theron hesitated, and Matt’s body went rigid. “What happens after that, Theron?”
The hesitation answered before the words did. “The seal destabilizes,” Theron admitted. “The mountain begins collapsing inward.”
Matt stared at him. “And where are you during this collapse?”
“Matt.”
“Where are you?”
Theron’s jaw tightened. “At the center.”
Matt let out one short laugh that sounded nothing like amusement. Otherwise, he might have driven his fist through the nearest stone wall just to put the rage somewhere.
Vale stepped in before the argument could escalate. “If he doesn’t do it, the King gets free.”
Matt looked toward her sharply. “I understand the stakes.”
“Do you?”
The question cut deeper than Vale likely intended.
Theron stood there calm enough to discuss his own probable death as though it were a logistical inconvenience. And suddenly Matt understood something terrifying: Theron had already accepted dying here, probably long before any of them entered the mountain.
The realization left Matt cold. The hyena reacted instantly, rage flaring hot beneath Matt’s skin as a single instinct rose hard and absolute inside him.
Not him. Not after finding him.
Theron must have seen something change in Matt’s face because his expression softened almost imperceptibly. “Matt,” he said softly.
Matt shook his head once. “No.” The word came rough.
Theron stepped closer, lowering his voice enough that only Matt could hear the next part. “There may not be another way.”
Matt met his eyes, and everyone else in the chamber fell away. There was only Theron and the impossible certainty growing more dangerous every minute Matt spent near him.
“You don’t get to ask me to survive you,” Matt said through clenched teeth.
Theron’s control fractured for a heartbeat. Then the whispers below the stairwell rose sharply, breaking the moment apart.
A scream echoed from somewhere deep beneath the mountain, distorted enough that Matt could not tell whether it belonged to a wolf or something wearing the remains of one.
Vale turned toward the stairs. “Movement.”
More sounds followed. Claws scraped across stone below them in uneven waves, too many impacts striking the stairs to belong to a single creature.
Baptiste’s expression darkened as he stared into the passage. “They’ve reached the stairs.”
Theron straightened.
The fracture vanished, replaced by the hard focus Matt remembered from the tunnels.
“We move now,” he said.
Matt gripped the handle of his knife tighter.
The mountain shifted beneath them with a deep, grinding strain.
Far below, more tombs continued to open.
***