Aria
The corridor to Master Theron's quarters stretched before me like a throat waiting to swallow secrets. Each footstep echoed against stone despite my attempts at silence, the sound seeming to multiply in the pre-dawn darkness. The guards who should have been patrolling these halls were conspicuously absent, pulled to other duties, perhaps, or deliberately removed. The thought sent ice through my veins.
Ellie walked beside me, her presence both comfort and complication. Since I'd told her the truth about the Order's lies, she'd become my shadow, desperate to help but unsure how. Her loyalty was absolute, but I worried what that loyalty might cost her.
"You're certain he left something here?" she whispered, though the corridor was empty.
"In his final message, he said he was dying. Poisoned." My enhanced senses caught the lingering scent of moonbell extract even days after his death, sweet and cloying, like rotting flowers. "But he also said there was more. Something even he hadn't opened."
We reached his door, the wood unmarked by any sign of violence. They'd made his murder look peaceful, natural. Just an old man whose heart finally gave out after decades of service. The lock had been replaced, a new mechanism that should have required Natalia's master key.
Should have.
The golden veins in my hand pulsed as I pressed my palm against the lock. Dragon fire, controlled to a degree that would have been impossible weeks ago, melted the internal mechanisms without damaging the external casing. The door swung open silently.
Master Theron's quarters were exactly as he'd left them. Books stacked on every surface, scrolls unfurling across his desk, the smell of old parchment and older secrets thick in the air. They hadn't even cleaned or even searched the room, another sign of their arrogance, their certainty that no one would question his death.
"Where would he hide something?" Ellie asked, already moving toward the obvious places, behind books, under the bed, inside the wardrobe.
But I knew Theron better than that. He'd been paranoid even before he started showing me forbidden truths. I moved to his desk, running my fingers along the underside until I found it, a small indentation that shouldn't exist in solid wood.
"Blood," I murmured, understanding. "Of course."
I pricked my finger on the sharp edge deliberately left in the wood's grain, letting a single drop of blood fall into the indentation. The desk shuddered, and a hidden drawer slid open with the whisper of well-oiled mechanisms.
Inside lay a key unlike any I'd seen, black iron twisted into an almost impossible pattern. Beneath it, a note in Theron's shaking hand:
"Below the Sanctorum. Older than the Gate itself. The truth they killed to hide."
"Below the Sanctorum?" Ellie's voice pitched higher with disbelief. "There's nothing below?—"
"There's always something below," I said, pocketing the key. The metal was cold against my skin, cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. "The question is what they built on top of."
The journey to the Sanctorum should have been impossible at this hour. The space was too well-guarded, too sacred, too closely monitored. But the Keepers were dealing with another Order of Khaos attack on the eastern border, convenient timing that felt anything but coincidental. The skeleton crew left behind barely noticed two grey-robed figures moving with purpose through the shadows.
The Sanctorum itself was empty, the Gate pulsing with its own sick light. The crack had widened since yesterday, golden light weeping through like infected blood. Through our connection, I felt the princes' awareness spike.
What are you doing?Kaelen's voice, concerned rather than commanding.
Finding the truth,I responded, moving to the base of the Gate.
The floor here was ancient stone, worn smooth by countless Keepers' blood over the centuries. But Theron's key seemed to know where it belonged. It pulled my hand toward a section of floor that looked identical to every other, until I looked closer and saw it, a keyhole disguised as a natural crack in the stone.
The moment the key turned, the floor began to move.
Not opening. Descending. A section of the Sanctorum floor became a spiral staircase, turning downward into darkness that predated the Gate, predated the Citadel, possibly predated human memory.
"We shouldn't—" Ellie started.
"Stay here if you want," I said, already descending. "Watch for guards."
But she followed, loyal even though she was scared.
The stairs went down far longer than should have been possible, carved from stone so old it had begun to fuse back together. The walls bore markings, not the ordered script of the the Keepers but something older, wilder, like someone had tried to capture screaming in stone.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, we reached the bottom.
A single chamber waited, circular and small, lit by a source I couldn't identify, the walls themselves seemed to glow with pale, sick light. At its center sat a pedestal, and on that pedestal...
