I drag in a breath, slow and shaky, steadying the frantic rhythm pounding inside my ribs. My palms are damp, trembling as I wipe them down the legs of my trousers. This place feels alive. Aware. Watching me with a gaze I cannot see but feel in the marrow of my bones.
And so—armed with nothing but fear, stubbornness, and the knowledge that turning back is no longer an option—I take my first step into the mountain’s hidden path.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It feels as though the mountain shudders with every step I take downward—an almost imperceptible tremor, as if it’s warning me that I’m crossing a threshold not meant for mortal feet. My boots strike the obsidian steps with a hollow thud that echoes far too loudly in the enclosed space. The sound stretches into the depths ahead, swallowed and returned by the dark in a way that makes it feel like the staircase goes on forever.
The torchlights waver against the walls, casting long, uneasy shadows that ripple over carved patterns. Symbols, some of them eerily similar to the ones I saw in Ziek’s village. Recognition prickles at my skin.
So that’s how the mountain hides itself.
Illusion, deception, wards older than memory. Woven into the stone itself.
The flames waver again, brushing warmth against the cold air, and the symbols seem to shift beneath the flickering light, as if they pulse, or breathe, or watch.
And still, the stairs descend, pulling me deeper into the truth the mountain meant to keep buried.
By the time I reach the end of the staircase, my legs throb with a dull, relentless ache. The thought of climbing all the way back up makes something inside me wilt, and I don’t envy that future version of myself in the slightest.
The chamber at the bottom is cramped and breath-stealing, the ceiling so low I know that if I so much as jumped, or even rose onto my toes, it would brush the top of my head. The torches here burn weaker, their flames shrinking into trembling blue tips that barely light the air around them. The cold deepens, coiling around my ankles and wrists until my breath emerges in thin wisps of white smoke.
I take the final step onto the flat stone floor, and my heart jerks as a low rumble vibrates through the chamber.
The wall ahead stirs—stone grinding against stone—peeling back layer by layer like a massive door awakening after centuries of sleep. Dust shakes free in soft clouds. The air shifts, warmer and strangely sweet.
Then the glow appears.
Brilliant. Iridescent. Too bright for such a colourless place.
It spills through the widening crack in the stone, washing over me, painting the walls with shifting hues—blue, gold, violet—colours that don’t belong in the dark. Colours that feel alive.
I stand frozen as the light reaches me, touches me, and pulls the breath straight from my chest. My lungs feel heavy with hesitation, a weight pressing against my ribs, but my feet carry me forward anyway—one step, then another—until the light becomes everything. It swallows the shadows. It swallows me.
Inside the chamber, my eyes adjust slowly. My boots splash as I move, and I look down to find myself standing in a shallow pool. It’s barely an inch deep—just enough to lick the soles of my boots—yet it glows like starlight caught in liquid form. Silver. Amethyst. Indigo. The colours ripple across the surface like shifting constellations.
Then something stirs the water.
A small wave, delicate as a whisper, rolls outward. The pool shimmers, and at its centre an altar begins to rise, stone pushingup through the radiant liquid as though the mountain is exhaling it into existence. Atop it sits the gem.
The breath catches in my throat.
I can only stare—wide-eyed, jaw slack—as its brilliance fills the room. I never truly believed I would see it. The legend. The gem that should not exist. I half expected the stories to crumble into dust the moment I got close.
But here it stands before me, glowing like filtered moonlight, as though carved from the moon itself. Its reflection dances across the shimmering pool, amplifying the weak torchlight until the whole chamber feels alive with resonance.
Only when my heartbeat slows enough for sound to return do I notice the darkness lingering behind the beauty.
Frozen faces.
Figures scattered throughout the pool, half-submerged, half-standing—petrified statues with expressions locked in shock. Some mid-step. Some reaching. Some turning to run. Their limbs twisted in the final moments of panic, as though the truth of their fate had struck them a second too late.
Unworthy of the Gifts. Unworthy of the gem.
I swallow hard.
These people made it through the Hollow, through the trials, through the mountain’s shifting labyrinth. They were judged worthy to attempt this final test, but not worthy to survive it. The thought sobers me instantly, driving a cold spike straight through my spine.
I’ve come this far, pushed past every limit I thought I had, and yet… my soul could stay buried here forever, trapped among these silent failures.
