Serenna slipped into the tunnel ahead of the prince. The air shifted at once, growing colder and heavier, closing around her ribs as the passage narrowed into petrified root and darkened stone.
She reached out with her senses, but nothing stirred. No hidden vein of water or pulse of life thrummed in the earth. The stillness slid beneath her skin, lifting the fine hairs along her arms, until it felt like the stone itself was listening.
The tunnel sloped downward, dragging them farther underground. Gold streaked the walls in endless threads, thin as spider silk, gleaming against Vesryn’s orbs of light.
“Cinderax said Bramblemaws shape their dens like mazes,” Serenna whispered, her voice trespassing into the silence. “If the Starshards are buried farther below…”
“Something must have lured them down,” Vesryn finished. “And they couldn’t portal out.”
Uneasy at the thought of being hauled deeper into a snare, her shoulders tightened. She sparked a globe of illumination and left it hovering behind them.
The prince arched a brow.
Serenna forced a shrug. “Just in case we need to find our way back.”
The silence thickened as they walked, clinging as close as a shroud. By the time the tunnel forked, the weight pressed against her throat.
To the right, the path stretched smooth and dark, vanishing into shadow. To the left, broken slabs wedged into a barricade, sealing with purpose.
Serenna didn’t bother glancing at Vesryn, already knowing which direction would tempt him.
She stepped to the left and braced her palm against the wall of splintered stone. Channeling Essence, she cast out a thin stream, lacing power through the seams. It slipped along the cracks but met no resistance, no gold to unravel against. Only dead weight, heaped to bury the passage.
“How do you want to open it?” she asked quietly when the prince moved to her side. “You could shove the rocks with force.”
“Youcould shove the rocks with force,” he echoed, gaze flicking to the Starshard at her throat. “You can access that talent now.” His mouth twisted, scowl fixed on the stone instead of her. “Or perhaps I should sayagain.”
Serenna’s fingers closed around the gem. The crystal pulsed faintly, its eerie familiarity unsettling, making her chest hum. Vesryn had placed this gift of power into her hands—just as she’d once offered her force talent to Fenn at a frozen waterfall beneath the moons.
Mirroring the way Kaedryn had taught Vesryn to draw on his shard, Serenna closed her eyes and reached through the gem. Essence ignited and a single facet flared in her mind—the force talent, honed for impact. She traced its edge, unsealed its shape, and power surged through her like a disused muscle sparking back to life.
Serenna inhaled a grounding breath and lifted her palms. Blue light coiled between them before lancing forward.
The burst struck. The air shivered, dust pluming around her boots as a tremor crawled through the tunnel. A groan rumbled, cavernous, like the mountain exhaling after holding its breath too long. One slab shifted.
Bracing her stance, she pressed harder, hauling Essence through the shard. Grinding loose, the stones obeyed, hovering in heavy arcs. She wrestled them outward, dragging collapse into order until, at last, the barricade broke open.
The stones stacked where her fingers directed, fitting along the tunnel’s edge as though they’d never fallen. The final slab dropped into place with a resonant thud that carried down the passage. Silence followed, thick as the dark that tried to erase even the memory of their light.
Glancing back at the tunnel’s fork, Serenna anchored a globe of illumination while Vesryn sent his spheres whirling ahead. Their radiance faltered, barely piercing the way forward.
Each footfall rang too loud, lost inside a hush older than stone. The walls pressed close until even her breath felt intrusive.
Vesryn’s hand shot out, seizing her arm just as a glimmer flared ahead. Serenna froze, every sense straining. Even her shadow recoiled, bracing for an impact her body already feared.
Turquoise light shimmered low in the dark. Too steady to be anything but Essence, though it moved unlike any illusion she’d seen before.
The light wavered like a burning turquoise flame, collapsing and reforming, unable to hold its shape. Then it lunged, snapping forward in the space of a breath.
A figure burst from the false light, looming before them.
Serenna’s heart bolted. With a screech, she lurched to flee, but Vesryn’s hand clamped tighter, preventing her retreat.
“It isn’t real,” Vesryn hissed under his breath, his grip like iron on her arm.
Blurred around the edges, the body flickered in and out of focus—an illusion of flesh draped in remembrance of skin, suspended somewhere between past and present.
An Aelfyn female. Or the shadow of one.
