Chapter 26
The hidden door seals behind us with a muted click of a tomb locking shut. Sixty floors down. The thought alone makes my legs weaken, but staying in the penthouse, with that thing tearing through the wards, isn’t an option.
My fingers tremble as I conjure a sphere of pale blue light. Dust shimmers in its glow, catching in the cramped air and choking the narrow passage to the service stairwell in claustrophobic stillness. My blood ruby pulses at my throat, reacting to the magic thrashing beneath my skin.
“Stay close to me,” Rowe murmurs, his hand brushing the small of my back. “And kill the light. We don’t want to be seen.”
“But Raze is still out there,” I whisper, panic clawing into my ribs. “We can’t just—”
“He’s trained for this, Aria. He knows how to fight.” Rowe’s tone is calm, unyielding. “Right now, getting you out is what matters.”
The light dies at his words. For three heartbeats, there’s only silence, and then the low thrum of emergency lights bleeding crimson along the walls.
Then comes the sound. A wet, chittering scrape, a click of bone on iron, the sort of noise that rewires instinct and tells the body it’s already too late.
Rowe pulls me closer, his body angling protectively in front of mine.
“Aria,” he starts, but the words collapse under a thunderous slam against the sealed door.
The impact shudders through the passage, concrete dust raining from above as another strike lands, metal groaning and hinges screaming while ancient, warded wood begins to splinter under a pressure far beyond what it should endure.
I’m not built for this. I’m a researcher, not a soldier.
Whatever that thing is, it just tore through spellwork designed by Alexander himself—defensive magic meant to keep out armies.
I barely scraped through basic combat training at the Academy, too focused on my books and experiments to master more than a few defensive spells.
Rowe knows creatures—how they track, how they hunt—and the way his muscles coil tells me this is worse than anything he’s faced in the beast pens.
“We need to move,” he murmurs, his hand tightening on my elbow as he guides me toward the hatch.
Behind us, the second door buckles.
The stairwell yawns downward in an endless spiral of steel and shadow. Fifty-nine floors. It may as well be forever. The railing bites cold into my palm as we descend, Rowe never leaving my side, one arm steady at my waist.
We clear three levels before it happens.
The growl hits like a seismic wave, low and guttural, alive with ancient malice, reverberating through the stairwell and through me, shaking loose a primal instinct buried in my chest—the knowledge that this is no beast’s cry, but something older, something that remembers when we were prey.
When fire and stone walls offered no protection.
My heel catches on the landing at the fifty-fifth floor, the grate snapping beneath me with a sharp crack that ricochets up the spiral. Above us, the clicking stops, and the silence that follows presses close.
Then the noise begins. Wet, rasping pulls of air seep from the walls, each breath tasting the fear bleeding from our skin, savoring the scent of two warm, cornered things.
“Don’t move,” Rowe whispers, already kneeling beside me. His fingers work fast, freeing my trapped foot. “These have to come off. You’ll run faster without them.” He removes the other heel and helps me balance. His grip is infuriatingly calm, even as death coils above us.
The lights falter, and reality flickers with them as something wrong pours down the stairwell walls—not shadow, but conscious, a darkness that thinks. It moves like liquid memory, and then we see them.
Eyes.
Toxic green, not in pairs but in clusters, dozens of them, tracking us in silence, unblinking, observing with the patience of apex predators born in the dark and tempered by millennia of blood.
“That’s not possible,” Rowe breathes, his grip tightening around mine. “Those eyes, they’re like a Deathshade Widow’s, but the way it moves . . .”
“What is it?” I whisper, magic surging violently through my veins. My ruby throbs against my throat, responding to the terror clawing beneath my skin. I force the rising power down. The last thing we need is for me to lose control and trigger a magical outburst now.
“Something worse,” Rowe says grimly, already pulling me down the next flight of stairs. “We can’t stay here analyzing it. Move.”
Fifty floors left.
Forty-nine.
Forty-eight.
Each number unspools like a countdown to execution.
My bare feet strike cold concrete, the rhythm echoing with the finality of a funeral march.
Rowe doesn’t let go, his hand locked around my wrist, guiding me down through the red-lit spiral.
The creature’s pursuit has shifted, becoming something calculated and cruel.
Its movements echo off the walls differently now, testing our pace, learning our patterns.
The clicking of legs against metal slows to match our desperate steps, a mocking symphony of our terror.
On floor forty-five, a new sound joins the nightmare above. A drag of breath, wet and cavernous, wrong in its very rhythm.
The lights flicker again, and in the instant of blackout the air fills with ash and decay, as if something has crawled from hell’s own crematorium. Rowe pulls me closer, his body tensing as if he could shield me from it.
“Don’t breathe deep,” he commands. A thick gray mist seeps through the stairwell walls, creeping in with the precision of a trap tightening.
Without hesitation, Rowe tears a strip from his shirt, his movements quick and efficient. “Here,” he murmurs, gently securing the fabric over my mouth and nose before doing the same for himself. “Though I’m not sure how much good it’ll do. This kind of toxin could seep through skin.”
He shrugs off his leather jacket, slinging it over my shoulders before I can stop him.
“Rowe, you can’t—”
“Don’t fight me on this,” he growls, the sound protective rather than angry. “Not now.”
The caustic fog reaches us at floor forty, and I taste metal and venom on my tongue even through the makeshift mask.
The air burns going in, acidic and sharp enough to shred from the inside.
My legs are already trembling. I’m not built for this kind of escape, unlike Rowe, who spends his days on the move.
“Stay with me, Aria,” Rowe urges, his grip tightening around my hand as I falter. “Just focus on my voice. One step at a time.”
By the time we reach the thirtieth floor, my breath is coming in short, painful gasps. “Rowe,” I choke out, my voice dissolving into something more rattle than words. “I can’t—” The sentence triggers a violent spasm that echoes up the stairwell and I taste blood in my mouth.
“Yes, you can.” He hauls me tighter to his side. “Please, Aria. Just a bit further.”
The creature answers with a sound that is neither growl nor screech. It’s pleasure, a predatory satisfaction vibrating through the concrete into my bones. Above us, the clicking quickens.
Twenty-five floors.
I stumble again. This time when Rowe catches me, his eyes widen at the clamminess of my skin. “No, no, no.” His grip becomes iron. “Stay with me.”
The toxic mist thickens with each step, stealing the air, seeping into our lungs, soaking through our skin.
By floor twenty, the stench is unbearable. My vision fractures, dark spots dancing at the edges, while the creature slows, no longer needing to chase. Each rasping breath drags more of its venomous fog into our lungs, breaking us down step by step, turning our own bodies against us.
On the fifteenth floor, my knees finally give out. Before I can hit the landing, Rowe sweeps me into his arms in one fluid motion. “I’ve got you,” he promises, breath ragged. “Just stay conscious. Stay with me.”
I press my face into his neck, the thunder of his pulse hammering against my cheek.
Ten floors.
Nine.
Eight.
Each number brands itself into my brain, searing past the haze as Rowe’s breathing grows heavier, but his grip never wavers. “Almost there,” he pants, feet pounding against concrete. “Just hold on.”
Five floors left.
The creature’s answering shriek vibrates through the stairwell, making my teeth rattle and my vision swim.
Three floors.
Two.
One.
We hit the final landing hard, but Rowe keeps his footing even on metal slick with ash and condensed venom. “Hold on tight,” he grits out as something massive slams into the railing behind us. Then he slams the door open, shoulder-first, bursting outside with me still cradled in his arms.
The street is chaos. Darkmoor enforcers in obsidian armor drive evacuees forward with unerring coordination, Plasma Arcs gleaming in their hands, charged with condensed magic, and tuned to incapacitate or kill at a setting’s shift.
At their head, a squad leader barks into his spellbinder, the device at his wrist spilling tactical data in cold blue holograms.
More enforcers spill from the hovering transports, their movements unnervingly synchronized, every step drilled into precision.
Some bear Shockwave Launchers strapped to their shoulders, weapons tuned for breaking crowds or larger threats.
Others carve patterns through the air with practiced hands, layering wards that fuse into containment barriers along the building’s edge.
Rowe doesn’t stop.
His arms tighten around me as he shouts above the rising chaos. “She needs help! Now!”
Medical teams from Vale Grace Hospital rush forward, their pristine white uniforms bearing the emerald serpent insignia of the city’s most prestigious healing institute.
These aren’t field medics. They’re trauma-specialized arcanists trained in reversing magical catastrophes, treating essence poisoning, and pulling the dying back from the brink.
“I’m fine,” I murmur against Rowe’s chest, but my words slur slightly. “You can put me down.”