His comforting warmth passed through their connection.What was it about?
This wasn’t the way she wanted to tell him, but Alora was too tired to try to pretend anymore.Vorak… has been haunting my dreams.
Silence answered her.
Alora sought for him through the bond and sensed him deep within the mountain as it trembled. His emotions roiled but were quickly hidden behind a shield.
Her chest tightened.
Rune,she called gently.Are you coming to bed?
There was a pause. Long enough to hurt.
Soon,he said at last.
She closed her eyes, tears welling on her lashes.
There would be no more sleep for her tonight. She washed the sweat from her skin in the hot springs, trying not to think of the silent bond. He was pulling away again.
Well, soon was not enough.
She was done waiting.
Alora rose, wrapped herself in a robe, and followed the pull of him through the silent corridors until she reached the old throne room. The walls were washed in red, glowing faintly from the Netherworld Gate’s light streaming from the adjacent room.
She walked past the rubble of Vorak’s destroyed throne and found Rune near the back where it was darkest. The glow of the torch he held illuminated his still form, staring up at the wall.
He did not turn when she entered.
“Rune?” Her slippered feet moved softly over the floor.
Alora came to stand at his side, her gaze drawn upward to the terrible creatures engraved into the stone with such detail they looked ready to crawl free.
They were a host of monstrous forms frozen in stone. Beasts with too many limbs. Wings fused to bone. Mouths stretched wide in silent screams. Some were bound in chains. Others were half-swallowed by stone, as if the mountain itself had tried and failed to erase them. Their shapes blurred together, impossible to name, each more grotesque than the last.
“Are these demons?” she whispered.
He exhaled a low breath and his shadows stilled as though even they hesitated. “These are the true forms of the Primordials. When Elyon cast them down, he damned them to appear as vile as their wickedness. They were the original Sovereigns of the Seven Hells.”
Goosebumps scattered down her spine. The mural was far more frightful and intricately wrought than the statues Sal’vathar had once presented to them.
Rune’s gaze was fixed on only one.
She knew who it was before he spoke.
“Vorak, Devourer of Worlds.”
Her father’s statue rose from the stone like a thing half-born of shadow.
Immense and towering over the others. The body appeared to be carved mid-motion, as though it were unraveling and reforming at once, limbs stretching into sweeping bands of stone that curled like smoke caught in a storm. The surface bore deep, fluid grooves, chisel marks left intentionally rough, giving the illusion that the figure was forever shifting when viewed from different angles.
Where a face should have been, there was only a hollowed plane of stone, smooth and dark, broken by a single inset gem at its center. A red crystal eye, slitted through with a black vein, gleamed faintly even in low torchlight.
Alora’s skin prickled, a chill coiling in her chest. Who could have carved something so terrible with otherworldly detail?
“Vorak made each one of them kneel. He alone ruled the Netherworld, the others becoming his Dominions,” Rune continued. “When I fell, they had all been bound within the Abyss, sparing me a battle for Hell’s throne.”
It went unsaid, but she understood. This was the reason the court never truly accepted him as their king.
