A collective gasp swept through the court as Rune lifted her higher, shadows coiling around their feet. They danced with the souls, suspended in the air. All around them, they drifted down from the open ceiling, glowing like lanterns, swirling with the music.
The melody deepened, mournful and beautiful, and stirring longing in Alora’s chest. They ached to find peace. Her throat burned, and before she realized it, she was singing.
Softly at first, then clearer, her voice echoed through the hall like light piercing fog. The specters turned toward her, drawn to the sound. Their sorrow folded into peace as they drifted upward, dissolving into a river of stars that streamed away into the sky.
A frosted archway shimmered high among the clouds, vast and pale as winter light. Beside it stood a distant figure robed in white, no more than a silhouette against the sky. The gateway glowed as souls vanished within it, and then both arch and figure dissolved like snow.
When the last note of Alora’s song faded, the chamber went still.
Rune stared at her, shock flickering behind his crimson eyes. “You have guided them into accepting the call of Death’s Gate.”
Death’s Gate? Then the figure she saw was…
Before Alora could ask, screams ruptured below.
Demons scrambled backward from the center of the hall, panic breaking like a wave. She looked down and froze. Across the marble floor, crimson spider lilies burst from the ground,blooming like stars of fire. Their petals glittered bright, writhing as if alive.
The air thickened, trembling with magic.
They quickly drifted down, landing in the chaos.
“Rune…” she whispered as a spider lily bloomed at her feet.
“Don’t touch it,” he warned sharply, shadows stirring like a storm behind him. “These flowers are not of this realm.”
But Alora was hardly listening. Her instincts overrode sense, her hand reaching out to it.
“Alora—”
Her fingers brushed the petal.
A flash of light sparked outward, sending a shockwave through the hall, knocking demons over. Then the lilies blackened with a sigh, collapsing to ash.
Every gaze turned toward her.
Alora’s heart pounded wildly, confusion tangling in her mind. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
Something crinkled within her fist. When she opened her hand, a single folded scrap of paper rested in her palm with a torn at the edge.
The missing page from her mother’s journal.
She looked to the doors, immediately spotting Segrith standing in the threshold. The Dominion of Sloth smiled faintly, embers trailing from her robes as she drifted back into the shadows.
“Wait!” Alora called, running after her.
“Alora!” Rune reached for her, but Alora’s power flared bright, bursting from her hand and shattering his hold.
Then she bolted through the onyx doors.
CHAPTER 32
Alora
Alora fled the dining hall, the echo of panic still rippling behind her. The air grew colder the farther she ran, until the torches thinned and shadows swallowed the corridor. Her heels struck the stone as she rounded a corner—and the hall vanished.
She stepped into a vast chamber.
The air was thick, thrumming faintly, as if fire burned beneath the ground itself. The ceiling above opened to a deep scarlet sky as though painted in flame. Ash fell like slow rain, landing on her cheek.
