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The door opened to a tunnel, and beyond that a staircase lined with …

Garrik stiffened as he scanned.

Cleanly cut, severed heads lay within the stones. As if they were stones themselves, each face remained wide-eyed, fully whitened orbs, all with the same expression that tracked him as he walked. The faces. Each a payment for a deal in this very crypt.

Would his be laden in the stone too? Or would his soul be promised to serve after death?

At the end of the tunnel, a staircase descended into a crypt as long as Aiden’s ship. The floor was broken in random pathways across shale-colored stones that were decrepit and broken. Between the vast spans of missing stones, glowing green water waited. Its depths flowed so deep, he could see the shattered stones of an underworld of decay. Bones of faeries and creatures so vile, flesh decaying from the bones, screaming faces of agony, and swimming creatures filled the pools.

Jagged stone columns and pillars jutted from the darkness down deep as if they were holding up the crypt, preventing it from falling and succumbing to the waters. Only when his eyes focused on the pillars did he realize it was not entirely stone he was looking upon.

More faces.

Preserved like they were still living. Still breathing.

And the eyes …

Each one were turned up to the surface. To where he stood. And each one glowed red.

Garrik tore his eyes away from them. The longer he stared, the more it felt they were reading deep into his soul.

Above, those same faces lined the walls of the crypt. Barely a stone held them hostage as they, too, looked directly at him. Hanging from the crypt’s ceiling, death and decay were all the same. Torn and molding tapestries fell.

But they were not the only objects swinging from the dripping ceiling. Bodies hung by rusted and dripping chains, their faces plastered with the same agonized screams as those underneath. Except their eyes. Each one of them glowed something fierce. There was not one ounce of light, save for the glowing pools and glimmering red eyes.

The room danced with rays of light as if the entire room was underwater. And those waters refracted sunlight in waves around him. Yet … he breathed air.

Garrik sucked in a breath to be sure, before pushing the mind games aside.

At the far end, straight ahead and across the broken floor and pools of glowing green water, a figure stood on a crumbling dais. Robed in deteriorating charcoal rags, its darkened cloak sat over its head as prism-filled eyes speared his glowing silvers.

Kerimkhar.

He lifted his head and smiled with black rotting teeth and peeling gray skin. An unappealing sight to how the legends once described him and his brother. Two of the most handsome beings to ever walk Elysian. Now his greed and cruelty stained his true physical form just as horrendously as his heart.

Garrik’s Smokeshadows cascaded from his shoulders and covered him in a cape of swirling smoke as he shoved power and defiance into his spine and stepped off the staircase.

Ten thousand voices echoed from around the hall as every mouth—above water and below—opened within the crypt. Garrik’s senses blasted from every direction.

Then, Kerimkhar and his faces spoke, “Savage Prince. Heir of Darkness, Beast Made for Magnelis.” The voices hissed at the High King’s name. Young and old, ill and whole, male and female, spoke at once, “We’ve been waiting a long time for you.”