2.8 KiB
The descent had grown quieter. Even the wind above seemed far away now, as if the mountain had swallowed the world. Their torchlight flickered in long, shallow corridors—roots curled between stone slabs, and frost clung to the ceiling like a second skin.
They had carried Lord Devard down with them. His leg had been shattered by debris during the breach. Two guards had supported him down each narrowing stair, but now he lay slumped against the damp wall, pale and shaking.
“I can go no further,” he muttered, sweat slicking his brow despite the cold.
“You will,” Ryn said, crouching beside him. “You only need rest.”
He looked at her with something close to pity. “I followed your father into the rain fields at Alvenhallow. Watched him break a siege with nothing but torchlight and lies. But even he… never dared these halls.”
Ryn glanced at the carvings they'd passed—still visible down the slope behind them. “You mean the Queen Who Was.”
His lips tightened. “She bore a name not fit for the living. And a sword that drank too deep.”
“We don’t even know if she was real.”
“Oh, she was real,” Devard rasped. “Too real. That’s why they chiseled her out. That’s why they buried her in stone and silence.”
He coughed. Blood spotted his chin.
“Ryn,” Alisha said, uneasy.
Ryn reached for the waterskin again, but Devard waved it off. His eyes unfocused. His voice shifted.
“The blood returns…” he breathed, but it wasn’t quite his breath.
His back arched. Fingers curled like claws against the wall. The torchlight dimmed—no gust of wind, no draft—just a slow suffocation of the flame. Whispers bloomed, just out of hearing. The hairs on Ryn’s arms lifted.
Devard’s eyes turned white.
“Daughter of ash,” the voice said through his cracked lips. It was not his voice. “We see you.”
Alisha stepped back.
The air grew thick with dust and a scent like burning roots.
“You come by line unbroken. You come with winter’s sign.”
“Devard—” Ryn began.
“We remember,” said the voice.
And then Devard screamed.
Not a mortal cry, but the scream of something ancient forced into too-small flesh.
One of the guards drew his blade, face pale.
“Don’t—” Ryn began.
But he did.
The dagger thrust into Devard’s throat with a crunch of cartilage and a hiss of escaping breath. The body spasmed once. Then again. Then stilled.
Silence.
The torch burned steady once more.
The shadows retreated. But the feeling did not.
Ryn stood. Her hand was trembling. She didn’t know when she’d drawn her own sword.
Alisha was at her side again. “That wasn’t him at the end.”
“No,” Ryn whispered.
“It was one of them.”
Neither said more. Not then. But as they left the dead man behind in the stone’s embrace, Ryn could feel the watching had not stopped.
It had only begun.