I look up at Rhianelle and my breath catches.
She stands wreathed in silver light. Her hair floats around her face as though underwater. Power radiates from her in waves. She looks like a goddess.
Materializing around her are figures in tattered red dresses, fabric torn and stained with age. They wear animal masks, crude things carved from wood and bone.
The curse bearers.
Twisted souls bound to the Rhunhraefn, witches who served as unwilling instruments of evil for centuries.
They writhe and hiss, all of them caught in the same web of suffering that held me.
Rhianelle raises her hand. "You who were bound, be free. The curse is broken."
Her voice carries the weight of absolution. "Go and find your peace."
Most of them flee immediately. They become wisps of shadow before dissolving into starlight. The wind takes them gently. A few curse bearers whisper their thanks to Rhianelle and hold her hand. Others simply disappear with no expression at all, too broken to understand that freedom has finally come.
But not all go willingly.
Some linger, stubbornly clinging to their chains. The one wearing the boar mask claws at her wrist.
Rhianelle takes a step back and the air changes. Each flake of snow ceases falling and hangs frozen in mid-air. It's as if the world itself has paused.
Ribbons of black writhe up from the earth. They sparkle with forbidden runes and the ground beneath us pulses with ancient power.
I know this power. I lived beneath something like it for centuries. This is not mere spells or curses.
This is dominion.
The authority of something that existed before gods walked the earth.
It's here for the disobedient.
"Rhianelle?" My voice cracks.
But it's not her.
Something else looks back at me through her eyes. A presence vast and ancient, wearing her flesh like a borrowedcoat. Behind her, visible only through my Strigon sight, stands a skeletal figure wreathed in shadows. His bones are pale as moonlight, his eye sockets empty save for twin points of cold fire. Tattered robes hang from his frame, embroidered with ancient runes and symbols.
"Be still." The being speaks and the earth trembles.
"I am Guardian of the Threshold," he says through her mouth. "Keeper of the Hollow."
He is one of the Un, the forgotten gods that Rhianelle serves. The one who stands watch at the gates of damnation.
His terrible gaze fixes on the remaining curse bearers. "You were mistaken to ignore the little one's mercy."
He raises Rhianelle's hand and opens a wound in the earth.
The ground cracks and splits into a wide fissure. From it rises something that should not exist in the mortal plane.
The Gates of Hel.
They're crafted from iron and bone twisted together. Thorns longer than swords protrude from every surface. Screaming faces press against the bars from the inside, mouths open in eternal torment.
Beyond the narrow gaps, I glimpse the Hollow.
It's an abyss of suffering so absolute it turns my stomach. Rivers of flame cut through landscapes of char and ruin. Trees made of bone reach toward a sky of ash and smoke.
