The blast devoured the dark. Heat surged like a living thing, a heartbeat made of flame. The serpents screamed—not hissed, screamed—a sound sharp enough to splinter stone. Their bodies ruptured into veins of black smoke that crawled up the walls like dying thoughts.
The cavern convulsed.
The walls cracked.
Even the chains binding me rattled as if the prison itself had felt the wound.
From somewhere behind the stone, Severen howled. The sound wasn’t rage—it was pain, ancient and endless.
“You fool!” his voice thundered, deep enough to shake the heart of the world. “You chooseweakness!”
“I choose humanity,” I rasped—though even as the words left me, I knew what they meant. Humanity was pain. It was frailty. It was everything Severen would one day tear from me.
The words didn’t sound like mine. They sounded older—spoken once, long ago, by someone who had defied the same darkness and burned for it.
Then, through the smoke, through the ruin, a glow appeared.
Not firelight.
Daylight.
Pale and cold, spilling through a jagged gap in the stone.
It wasn’t warm. It didn’t feel like salvation.
It felt like judgment.
“This way—we’re almost there,” I whispered, forcing the words through a throat blistered by smoke. My neck strained against the chain, iron grinding the skin raw as I guided Salvatore forward.
We stumbled together—grinding headfirst on our knees and belly, dragging ourselves through tunnels that breathed like the lungs of the underworld. Every movement coaxed a thin rasp of metal against stone into the dark.
Behind us, the shadows screamed.
And then—he was there.
Severen.
At the threshold.
Framed in light that was not light. His shape burned black, a fire that swallowed brightness instead of giving it. His form rippled, smoke shaped into the outline of a man.
The air around him vibrated, humming with danger. It felt alive—charged with hunger, the way air thickened before a storm.
All we had to do was pass him.
One step.
One heartbeat.
Freedom.
“Run,” I rasped. “Run!”
We ran—or tried to. Two shattered men moving on. Chains clattered, iron biting our ankles. Feet scraped the stone, echoing like brittle drums. The glow ahead widened, white and merciless.
Severen loomed larger.
And then?—
