All Chapters of THE ALPHA'S RUIN : Chapter 81 - Chapter 83

"He copied it," Vael said. "Three years ago. We did not realize until it was already done."The underground chamber was quiet around them. The original ritual circle sat in the center of it, steady and old, its markings worn smooth by centuries of nothing happening to them. Marina stood at its edge and listened and kept her face completely still.Vael moved to the far wall where the eastern records were stored, flat stone tablets in carved shelves, each one dense with the fine inscribed lines of a writing system Marina did not recognize. She pulled one out and held it without opening it."The original harmony holder developed many things in the years she spent underground," Vael said. "Most of them were stable. Functional. Safe enough to document and preserve." She paused. "One was not.""What was it," Silvain said."A frequency configuration. She developed it trying to reach the source, the thing below the root, and she got close enough that the configuration she built destabilized e

The footstep from the passage stopped.Marina stood in the ruins with Cian on her left and Silvain on her right and felt Obsidian at the top of the passage stairs, fifteen feet below the surface, not moving. Reading the situation before entering it. That was how he always operated.She had approximately thirty seconds before he decided to come up anyway."Move," she said to Cian."He is right there," Cian said."I know where he is. Move."Cian looked at her for one more second with the specific expression of a man whose anger had been his navigation system for eight months and was being asked to override it. Then he moved.They went north, away from the passage entrance, deeper into the ruins. Marina kept her shadow magic flat and internal. No signature for Obsidian to track. Just three people moving fast through rubble in the dark.She pulled them behind a collapsed wall and stopped."Talk fast," Cian said."The conditioning in your magic is incomplete," Marina said. "You never gave