For a breath, I wondered whether the vines were doing more than retreating. What if they were leading us? What if they wanted to show me something?
We descended, the vines parting cleanly, almost reverently, letting us through.
The staircase wound down into an empty dungeon, where the air was stale and heavy with damp. Kael led me past rows of rusted cells, vines and possibly rats whispering in the shadows. We walked deeper until we reached the wall at the end of the hall.
I looked at Kael, puzzled, but he moved with certainty. He gripped an old rusted torch and pulled. Something inside the wall clicked.
“We built this during the plague,” he said, voice low. “After theexperiments began. The passage to the pit was carved behind this wall so the subjects would not be… disturbed by the smell.”
The wall opened with the grinding roar of shifting stone.
Kael lifted the torch, lighting it with magic, and we stepped into a narrow corridor lit only by its flame. It stretched endlessly forward, plunging into darkness. When Kael held the torch higher, we saw them, black vines covering every inch of the walls, tar dripping to the ground, the whole place like the nest of a thousand snakes endlessly slithering and colliding.
My magic rang. The power within me beat harder, echoing the pulse of the vines themselves. Something called to me from the depths of the tunnel, not with malice but with a strange, aching pull. What if the blight had not been hunting us… but summoning me? What if I had been resisting something meant for me all along?
And if so, why?
We walked down the tunnel, the vines beneath our boots squelching and hissing as we stepped on them. Kael’s hand settled at the small of my back, keeping me close, keeping watch. The vines could strike at any moment if they wished so. He wanted to make certain he was close enough to shield me. Warm butterflies fluttered in my stomach despite us standing in the blight’s lair.
Then the tunnel opened into a vast cavern. I could see all of it even with nothing but the torch in Kael’s hand. We stood on a ledge above a great pit filled with echoing groans. Real ones. Invading my thoughts like a dirge. The stench struck me at once, a sour reek of rot and boiled flesh that made my eyes sting. The scent of death steeped too long in darkness. Wet squelches rose from far below as black vines, larger than any we had faced, slithered through ash and limbs. I could see everything. Severed heads stared upward at us. At me.
I felt it then—the pain, the harrowing sorrow. It was too much to bear, pressing on my chest as if the mountain itself had settled upon me.
Something shifted beside me, a coil, a slither. A vine reached forme. Its movement was slow, almost gentle. Kael stepped in front of me, seized the vine in his hand, and sent a shockwave through it.
I cried out as the shock tore through me instead. My knees buckled, and I fell, the pain spreading like a thousand needles piercing my veins all at once.
Kael dropped beside me, gripping my arms. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I strained, breath thick in my throat. “I just feel everything.”
Echoes clawed at me, closer than ever. They were the ones scratching now. So many lives had ended here. So many tormented souls who had deserved none of this.
I stared at the pit, the black vines staring back, waiting.
For what?
My vision blurred. It felt as though my own power was strangling me from within.
Another vine reached upward. Kael unsheathed his sword in one swift motion and cut it clean.
And I felt myself split open. A silent crack inside me became a scream.
I folded forward, forehead striking the soil, hands clenching at my ribs as if I could hold myself together. My scream tore through the cavern.
“What is happening, Evangelina?” Kael roared, voice shaking the stone.
Tears streamed down my face. I trembled, whimpered as the pain ebbed only to be replaced by the echoes pressing harder, scratching harder.
What had I seen in my visions? The vines in the clearing had shown me the keep. I had seen the wizards, their forms shrouded in shadows, pain thick around them. I had seen the root of the blight. The vines, the air, the very earth called to me, groaning with forgotten names aching to be heard.
What if the blight had not been attacking at all?
What if it had been trying to show me something all along?
What if the souls here had called to me so I could answer them… so I could finally acknowledge them?
I rose back to my feet, my legs trembling. I approached the pit and stared deep into it. They wanted me to see them. I understood now. They wanted to be remembered, not discarded.
