He catches me studying lava swirls. “If world ends today, what regret claws deepest?” His voice is deceptively calm.
Regret. Mine crystallizes instantly. “Leaving you to mourn.”
Brown-gold eyes soften. “I would rather mourn than have never known.” He sets the bowl aside, fingers brushing my lower back. “My turn. I regret I can’t play you the bone flute on a hilltop meadow far from danger.”
I smile at image. “When this is finished your flute and my star charts will share a meadow.”
“Promise.”
“Promise,” I echo, hoping the slate’s treachery will never be needed.
The bowl trembles in my hands—first real surge. Kylan’s head turns toward the magma river; he listens to frequency change. “We start.”
Positions taken: I at south rune point, he at north. Holt guards east, Rowan west. Scouts ready pulleys. Kylan lifts vibra-stone and begins chant that pulls pulse-seeds into proper phase. I weave counter-notes, lattice crackling electric.
Heat intensifies; sweat steams off skin. My palm feels aflame where cracks widen. Pain whitewashes vision yet I don’t stumble. The circle swallows our chants and spits back harmonic that locks cave vibrations into pattern echoing heartbeats. Good.
First surge peaks: magma leaps, lava ceiling vents breathe hard. The circle’s emerald glow holds firm. I see Kylan grin, teeth bared like victory. Wolves howl short exultations.
But under triumph hums a deeper note, one only lattice can hear: dragon’s exhale slithering upward, snake sliding under door. It plays the same key as my hidden slate. Destiny tests loyalty: will I rip tiles to implant alternate pattern now or wait?
Resolve answers. I wait until the circle shows first strain—no earlier. My terms; not dragon’s.
The surge tapers. We stand, shaking. Rowans tears up coughing but nods he’s fine. Holt pours melt water across cracked floor edge. The circle dims to steady jade.
Second surge predicted in eighty heartbeats. I feel pulse accelerating. Kylan strides over, brushes thumb under my eye where an exhausted tear escaped. He kisses brow. “We win,” he murmurs.
I steal that warmth, lock it behind ribs. If I win, we live. If prophecy wins, he lives, realm lives. Either way he must keep breathing. Slate pulses against sleeve like a second heartbeat.
I whisper back, “For every chart in my study, for every cub in your den, we win.”
Surge two begins with shriek of rock rending somewhere deep. The circle bristles. Ash dust lifts into air along sigil lines—pattern unraveling faster than we feared. The dragon presses.
Kylan’s face tightens; he slams palms onto runes, channeling raw life force. The glow steadies but doesn’t climb. He is burning himself in tiny increments, and I feel each scorch echo through bond. Choice stands in front of me now, clear as mirrored glass:
Use slate and kill this body, spare his flame; or let him pour himself hollow until we both turn stone.
Vision’s echo—his howl over my corpse—tugging.
I grip sleeve seam above hidden slate, nails biting fabric. Matte black crack splits crystal up forearm with audible ping. He hears, glances—fear there. I force a grin. “Still breathing.”
His answer: “Together.”
Yes. Even in death, together. I plant feet, lift free hand, feed lattice’s agony into chant. Energy crashes through me—rapids over shattered dam. The circle brightens, matches surge for second, overwhelms pain. Yet deep down the decision settles like bedrock: when surge three arrives, the slate will drop, and I will let destiny carve the rest.
Until then, I pour everything I am into the song of survival, and the cave shakes not from collapse but from sheer, stubborn defiance.
24
KYLAN
Smoke from the lava river curls through the cave like incense, heavy with copper and something sweeter—perhaps sap bleeding from the black-quartz walls when they flex against Convergence strain. It is the sort of scent that settles on the tongue, encouraging deep, slow breaths, and tonight I welcome the encouragement. Carmilla and I survived three surges today; the fourth is predicted near dawn. That leaves us this slice of darkness to gather strength, to remind each other what we are fighting for.
The grotto I choose sits high on the northern side of the main chamber, accessible only by a narrow staircase chipped from basalt. Holt found it while scouting escape routes: a pocket of obsidian polished smooth by ancient hydrothermal vents, with one window of translucent stone overlooking the magma river below. From that window a red glow pulses like the slow beat of a giant heart, bathing the space in shifting amber.
I carry two canteens and a lidded clay bowl up the stair. Inside the bowl, Rowan’s latest preparation steams—a thin broth of glacier melt and powdered sky-kelp, laced with three drops of sunfox oil. The scent alone chases lingering fatigue frommy limbs. Carmilla follows, fingertips trailing a spell of hush behind her to keep our steps from echoing down to sleeping wolves.
She pauses on the final step, head lifting as she reads the room. Heat halo flickers over crystal veins in her arm, throwing tiny rainbows across the ceiling. “Private enough,” she says, voice low and rough around the edges.
