LOGINThe cavern sighs, not with air, but with a tangible shift in pressure. It rolls out from the glowing sigil in a deliberate wave, like the earth breathing out a long-held secret. Selene tenses beside Aurek, her fingers digging into his. The hum beneath their feet grows louder, resonating in their bones.Someone's coming.Not sneaking, not charging headfirst, but steadily drawing near.Aurek feels it before he hears it—a power tugging at his senses, a presence warping reality like gravity bends around a star. He stands tall, his back ramrod straight. The wild power within him stirs, alert and caged, every sense honed to a sharp edge.Behind us, he murmurs, his breath ghosting past her ear.Selene nods, her gaze fixed straight ahead.Footfalls echo in the cavern, slow and steady, each step deliberate. There's no clatter of armor, no scrape of metal on stone. Whoever is coming isn't trying to scare them.Which only makes it worse.A figure steps into the sigil's faint light.A woman.She'
The very first thing Selene registers isn't fear crawling up her spine. Nope, it's pure, focused attention.It hits her like a pressure building behind her eyes, almost like a hand gently—but firmly—pressing against her chest from the inside. It wasn't forceful or aggressive.It felt like… assessment.She sucks in a sharp breath. Her fingers dig into the rough, cold stone beneath her. As she frantically glances around, the cavern appears exactly as it was moments ago. The bottomless pit still gapes behind them, dark and never-ending. Aurek is still at her side, his shoulders set, his body coiled tight, ready to spring into action.But something is different. She can feel it.Something has noticed them.“Aurek,” she whispers, her voice barely carrying over the oppressive stillness of the air, “do you feel that?”He doesn’t answer immediately. A beat of silence hangs in the air.That alone sends a shiver of unease down her spine.When he finally turns his head, whatever fire had been bu
It wasn't serenity or emptiness, but a suffocating stillness.The silence hammered at my ears, a weight on my chest, a vise on my thoughts. It felt like the world itself was holding its breath, judging whether humanity deserved to continue existing. A heavy, expectant pause before some cosmic verdict.Aurek still held me, too tight.His arms were bands of steel around my ribs, his chin a solid weight against my temple. It felt like if he loosened his grip even for a second, something inside me would shatter and fly apart into a million pieces.Aurek, I breathed, my voice barely audible.He didn’t respond.His breathing, normally a comforting rhythm, was off. Too slow, too heavy. Each inhale sounded like a monumental effort, like he was dragging something immense along with it.I shifted back just enough to see his face.Thin lines of gold-black light pulsed beneath his skin, not glowing like the conduits we share—these were embedded. Etched. As if something had rewritten his very bein
The instant the words leave her mouth, a stark truth slams into me.It's not fear gnawing at my insides.It's no doubt whispering in my ear.It's certain. Cold and absolute.A certainty that cleaves through my chest, leaving a raw, gaping wound, yet somehow, I remain standing."No," I repeat, but the word rings hollow, stripped of all force. The abyss below reacts before my mind can even process it—light contorts violently, shrinking back, folding in on itself like a mortally wounded animal. The very ground beneath us shrieks in protest—the air crackles, sharp enough to slice skin.Then, Selene’s blood answers the call.I feel as if it were my own.A disturbingly harmonious pull—so wrong, yet so perfect—weaving through her veins. It's syncing her life force with the entity lurking beneath our feet. The binding has begun, and my consent is no longer relevant.She's becoming the keystone.The living prison.I take a step toward her, desperation clawing at me, but the world itself pushes
The earth groaned, not with a welcoming yawn, but a tortured scream as the pit ripped open. It wasn't a mouth, eager to swallow, but a wound, raw and bleeding into the world. Stone surrendered in agonizingly slow motion, slabs peeling away like layers of skin being flayed from the very bones of the planet. A blast of heat, thick and stinging, surged from the depths, carrying a metallic stench that spoke of blood, ancient magic, and something far fouler rotting beneath.Before I could even register it with my eyes, a feeling washed over me. A pull, deep and insistent, latched onto my very core, tugging with the force of a hidden current.My knees buckled.Aurek's hand shot out, his grip like iron as he braced us against the earth twisting beneath our feet. The power inside him flared, a wild and angry fire, but the pit didn't flinch. It didn't shrink back from his strength as it had before.Instead, it welcomed it.A light spilled upward from the abyss, not the pure white of hope nor t
The word mother hit me like a hammer.Not fast.Instead, it bored in.Slow, so slow that it makes people crazy.I took a step back from Aurek, just far enough to see his face. He couldn't look me directly in the eyes. That was enough of an answer before he even opened his mouth.My mother is dead, I stated, the words sounding strange, as if they came from someone else. She passed away when I was really young.Aurek's throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.She didn't just die, he corrected, the words barely louder than a whisper. She disappeared.The cave seemed to hold its breath.Waves of heat rose from the pit, thick and almost alive. The stone under my feet throbbed again—stronger now, closer. It felt like something deep below had turned its focus solely on us.On me.She was taken, Aurek went on. Not killed. She didn't leave by choice. They took her because of what she carried inside.I shook my head once, a sharp, violent movement.“No,” I breathed. “She was just a normal person. Ki







