4.4 KiB
The gate yawned open like a wound torn through the mountainside—jagged, black, and rimmed in frost that steamed against the air as if exhaling from some buried furnace. No light emerged. No sound. Only cold, and something far deeper.
The moment the stone door unsealed, something awoke.
Not movement—there were no footsteps or shifting forms. But shadows stirred along the threshold like spilled ink recoiling from light. They slithered across the carved stone floor, arching upward in tall, finger-like shapes. They didn’t grasp—they reached, in slow, deliberate hunger. As if scenting heat. As if they remembered flesh.
The fear came not as a pang but as a slow tightening in the chest, an instinct older than words. A warning etched into marrow. Even those who had never known battle found their hands drifting toward weapons, then freezing—because what waited inside the Keep was not something that could be struck down.
Sari pressed a trembling hand to her chest, her carved talisman rattling against her ribs. Her breath came shallow, and her lips moved in a whisper—not a prayer, but a plea to the wind spirits she pleaded with so often. A slight gust of wind arose around her, protective and instinctively drawing her a few steps back.
“They’re bound,” she murmured, “but not asleep. And not at peace.”
Eris, so steady before, flinched back as a ripple of shadow brushed her boot. Her spear tip lowered out of reflex. The clay markings on her face stood out stark in the pale light, but her expression was bloodless. “They know her. The princess. They want her.”
Halven swallowed and stepped forward, forcing himself to the edge of the stone. His lantern flickered and died in his grip, the flame snuffed not by wind but by presence.
“This place was sealed not to be forgotten,” he said quietly, “but to be feared. They do not want us here!”
He pointed to the faint scarring around the erased sigil. “They carved it away. Scraped clean the Queen’s mark. As if afraid it might… wake something.”
Telaryn stood at the threshold, her back to them, eyes locked on the blackness ahead. The blood from her hand already dried, but the mark still gleamed red in the gloom. Behind her, the shadows quivered in anticipation. They did not attack. They waited.
Alisha stepped forward and grabbed her wrist.
“Please,” she said, voice hoarse. “Don’t go in there. You don’t feel it? Something’s waiting. Something that remembers pain.”
“I feel it,” Telaryn said, her voice like a thread drawn taut. “But I can’t go back.”
Alisha’s breath caught. “Then let me come with you.”
Telaryn looked down at her. “You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Alisha whispered. “But I will.”
She slid her fingers into Telaryn’s, and for a heartbeat, the shadows stilled. Then, as if acknowledging the pact, they drew back, retreating into the dark like smoke dispersing—but the air remained thick with weight, with knowing.
They crossed the threshold together.
The moment their feet left the outer stone, the door began to move. Not with a rush, but with the finality of a tomb.
Halven stepped forward. “Wait—Telaryn! Alisha!”
Ryn turned once, looked back at them. No words. Just a glance heavy with things she would not say.
The shadows, like coiled roots, crept up the inner walls, watching, whispering without tongues. Cold air poured from the depths, sharper than ice—an absence of warmth rather than its opposite. The gate sealed behind the women with a groan of rock-on-rock.
No scream. No crack. Only the long silence of things long buried.
The sigil dimmed, its blood-light fading into black. Then the wind stilled entirely. The mountain breathed no more.
Halven stood frozen. His hand still raised. Beside him, Eris whispered something in the Veyari tongue and traced a ward over her heart. Sari knelt in the snow, eyes closed, face bloodlessly pale, lips moving as if in negotiation—but no spirit answered her now.
Weylan had not spoken at all. He simply stared at the door, fists clenched, jaw trembling—not in fear, but helplessness. Despair had overcome his heart
They did not speak. For what was there to say?
They were four now, left beneath a dark sky gone numb and grey, standing before a sealed gate that led to nowhere known—and Telaryn, their princess, had stepped beyond it. Into dread. Into legacy. Into something ancient.