Around her, the battle raged with renewed desperation.Roran and the Wardens had regrouped, channeling their storm magic into concentrated strikes against the massive entity.Lightning forked from the roiling clouds above, temporarily disrupting portions of its form, but the darkness simply flowed back together, seemingly undiminished.
The smaller void-entities continued their advance, flowing around their massive counterpart like water around a rock.Defenders fought with the wild energy of those who know their cause is lost but refuse to surrender to despair.Hybrid blades flashed with electric blue light, each strike a defiant spark against the encroaching night.
But they were losing.Thalia knew it with bone-deep certainty.The weapons were effective, yes, but insufficient against the sheer scale of what confronted them.The massive entity alone could destroy Frostforge's walls given enough time, and behind it waited the Deep Tide itself—the black waters that had devoured entire coastlines, that would continue their inexorable advance until nothing remained.
Kaine's words echoed in her mind.The true threat from the sea.The phrase triggered something—a connection she'd been struggling to make since they first discovered the ancient records.The founders had built defenses against this specific enemy, had incorporated magic into Frostforge's very foundations.Magic that required sacrifice to activate.
The Founders' Price.The chamber beneath the Howling Forge where Maven had tried to spill Thalia's blood, claiming it was necessary to save them all.At the time, Thalia had thought it nothing but betrayal and madness.But what if...?
Thalia rose to her feet, her gaze fixed on the massive void-entity as it tore another chunk from Frostforge's battlements.All around her, defenders fought and died against impossible odds—a battle where victory meant survival, and defeat seemed all but certain.
Her fingers closed around the hybrid blade, feeling the familiar currents respond to her touch.Current-sensing.The ability to perceive and manipulate energy flows within metals, within plants, within earth itself.The ability the Wardens had been searching for when they raided mainland settlements—the ability that might power Frostforge's last defense.
"Thalia!"Kaine's shout cut through the chaos, his voice strained with effort.“I need your help!”
She whirled to see him locked in desperate combat with a void-entity that had nearly encircled him.His hybrid blade flashed as he hacked at the tendrils reaching for his legs, his massive frame moving with diminishing grace as exhaustion took its toll.Blue-white energy sparked where his weapon connected with darkness, but for every tendril he struck, two more emerged.
“My help,” she said faintly, still dazed from Daniel’s death, lost in her own realization.“I….”
She shook herself.This was a losing battle—but she could still turn this tide.
“Fall back if you need to,” she called out to Kaine over the rumbling of the storm above their heads and the cries of the fighters.“Don’t die!Don’t let anyone else die!”
“Thalia—what are you—”
Before Kaine could finish his sentence, Thalia turned and sprinted toward the keep’s portcullis.She dodged between combatants, her hybrid blade singing its currents through her senses.Kaine’s shouts of protest echoed in her ears, but she didn’t turn back, didn’t falter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thalia raced through Frostforge's corridors, her lungs burning with each desperate breath.The sounds of battle faded behind her—the clash of hybrid blades against void-entities, the crackle of storm magic, the cries of the wounded and dying.None of it mattered now.If her suspicion was correct, if the Founders had built more than just a fortress against their enemies, then the only hope for anyone's survival lay deep beneath the mountain's heart, in a chamber she'd once been dragged to as a sacrifice.
Daniel's face flickered through her mind—there one moment, gone the next, consumed by perfect darkness.How many others had already suffered the same fate outside the walls?How many more would follow if she failed?
Her boots echoed against stone as she descended a spiraling staircase that few knew existed.The main passages would be clogged with wounded being carried to the infirmary, with soldiers rushing to reinforce failing defenses.This hidden route, discovered during her clandestine meetings with the Wardens, would take her beneath the Howling Forge, into depths where even the most veteran smiths rarely ventured.
The air grew warmer as she descended, carrying the mineral scent of deep earth and the faint tang of ancient magic.Torches burned in iron sconces at increasingly distant intervals, their light swallowed by shadows that seemed almost tangible.Thalia's hand remained wrapped around her hybrid blade's hilt, the weapon's vibration a comforting rhythm against her palm.
A distant rumble shook dust from the ceiling—another section of Frostforge's defenses crumbling beneath the massive void-entity's assault.Thalia quickened her pace, taking the worn stone steps two at a time.If her theory was wrong, if the chamber held no solution, then she was abandoning her comrades in their moment of greatest need.The thought lodged in her chest like a splinter of ice-steel.
The staircase ended abruptly at a narrow passage hewn directly from the mountain's bedrock.No decorative stonework here, no hints of human artistry—just ancient granite, cool and indifferent to the crisis unfolding above.Thalia traced her fingers along the wall as she walked, her current-sensing ability detecting faint traces of energy that had seeped into the stone over centuries.The pathways grew stronger as she progressed, confirming that she moved in the right direction.
After what seemed an eternity of walking through near-darkness, the passage widened into a small antechamber.Three archways stood before her, each marked with runes that glowed faintly blue against the dark stone.Thalia paused, straining to remember which path Maven had dragged her through all those months ago—a memory she'd tried desperately to suppress, to bury beneath layers of more urgent concerns.
The central archway.It had to be.The runes there burned brighter than the others, pulsing with a rhythm that matched the hybrid blade at her hip.
Thalia stepped forward, passing beneath the archway into a perfectly circular chamber carved from living rock.The sounds of battle—the screams, the crashes, the thunder of Roran's storm magic—vanished completely, as if they existed in another world entirely.The silence pressed against her ears with physical weight, making her breath sound unnaturally loud.
The chamber's walls rose in a smooth curve to form a domed ceiling thirty feet above.Every surface was covered in intricate patterns—not decorative, but functional.Runes and sigils flowed into one another, forming unbroken circuits that spiraled from floor to ceiling.At the center of the room, a circular depression had been carved into the stone floor, its edges marked with symbols that seemed to shift subtly when viewed from the corner of one's eye.
And there, precisely where Thalia remembered, was the stain—a splash of rusty brown that marred the otherwise pristine stonework.Maven's failed attempt to invoke the Founders' Price using Thalia's blood.At the time, Thalia had thought it merely the insane act of a desperate woman seeking power.Now, with the Deep Ones breaching Frostforge's defenses, she wondered if Maven had understood more than anyone realized.
Storm energy suddenly crackled along her hybrid blade, startling her with its intensity.The weapon responded to the chamber, to the ancient magics embedded in its walls, the two forces recognizing one another across centuries of dormancy.
Thalia's hands trembled as she lifted the blade, watching blue-white electricity dance along its length.The chamber's energies and the storm magic infused within the glacenite were in conversation, resonating at frequencies she could sense but not fully comprehend.The blade had become harder to control, as if her distraction had weakened her grip on the opposing forces contained within the metal.
"Enough," she whispered, her voice swallowed by the chamber's unnatural acoustics.This place hadn't been built for fighting.It had been built for something else entirely.
With sudden decisiveness, Thalia tossed the hybrid blade aside.It clattered against the stone floor, its storm energy momentarily flaring before settling into an erratic pulse.She would need both hands for what came next.Both hands, and perhaps more than just her blood.
