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18

Jon

S unlight scarcely penetrated the thick canopy of vines draping the mouth of the cave, casting wavering shadows along the walls.

As Cliff and I stepped inside, the air grew cool and damp, the scent of the stone surrounding us. An arched door loomed at the back of the cave, carved directly into the stone wall. There was no handle, and a testing push revealed no give. Intricate carvings bristled beneath my fingertips, and I stepped back to take in the entire door.

Symbols were carved along the arch and in intricate, swirling patterns. Ancient Fae . I recognized the character shapes from the spellbooks Sylvia frequently pored over—and from the traitor mark branded across her left cheek. The heart of the door depicted a crescent moon with tears streaming down its grimacing face in lines far too delicate for any human craftsman to carve. Encircling the weeping moon were numerous shooting stars. Their tails dragged across the stone sky with eerie threads dripping from each like fallout plummeting toward the ground beneath our feet.

Cliff shined a penlight over the symbols, expression focused as he brushed a palm over some of the thinnest lines. With his artistic eye, I knew he had to be even more awed than I was. The craftsmanship was bewitching and difficult to look away from—but there was something fucking creepy about the moon’s face and the way the stars seemed to be draining into the earth.

The focused line of Cliff’s light was joined by a wash of cerulean as Sylvia whispered the spell that ignited the ethereal glow beneath her skin. She circled around me.

“This must be nearly a thousand summers old,” Sylvia breathed, her delicate fingers outstretched to brush the stone. The reverence in her voice seized the small space, echoing around us.

“What’s it say?” Cliff asked. As she flew along the path of the arched doorway, he angled his light to provide her additional illumination to read by.

“Some of it’s too eroded to read.” Sylvia flew methodically, prioritizing the areas with the most intact etchings. “Passage… exchange… sacred requirement…” She glanced back at us with a frown. “I think it’s asking for some kind of payment.”

I locked eyes with Cliff, weary resignation stretching between us. Witches and warlocks commonly used security measures like this. I pulled the small bronze knife from my belt, the blade glinting dully in the strange wash of light.

“I think we know what kind of payment it wants,” I said.

Sylvia’s eyes widened, withering with a mixture of concern and disgust as she glanced between us. She flew out of my way with a muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

With a quick, practiced motion, I made a small incision on my palm. Blood welled up, dark and glistening, and I pressed it to the rough stone door.

For a moment, nothing happened. The three of us held our breaths, only the unnatural and enchanting birdsong of the clearing outside filtering into the heavy silence.My blood leaked in a thin line from beneath my hand, still pressed to the central carving. A faint, almost imperceptible reaction ignited—the etching flickered briefly, a dim green light pulsing through them before fading again.

After waiting another minute, I pulled my hand back and wiped it on the hem of my shirt.

“It’s not enough,” Cliff said, rolling up his left sleeve.

He gestured for the knife from me, ignoring Sylvia’s flinch as he made a careful cut along his forearm. Blood payments were a fragile art. The incision had to be superficial enough not to kill you but deep enough to draw the amount required—deep enough to be fucking painful.

Cliff grit his teeth, hissing as the blade sliced cleanly through his skin. Blood welled to the surface and spilled, pooling on the ground in morbid droplets. He turned his arm over, letting more trickle onto the base of the doorway.

Sylvia hovered over his shoulder to watch the gaping wound with a healer’s scrutiny. I could see her hands flexing, ready to prepare a healing spell—

The blood shivered on the ground— moving of its own accord. It trailed in precise lines upward along the stone door, filling in the delicate carvings of stardust. It continued, pulled by unseen magic into the weeping moon until every line was flushed with crimson. The ancient Fae bordering the archway glowed chartreuse, the light intensifying until the entire cave hummed with energy.

With a deep, resonant groan, a door cracked in half along invisible, jigsaw seams and swung inward to reveal a dark passage. The air was colder on the other side, a faint breeze ruffling hair off my face.

“See?” Cliff drawled grimly. “Piece of cake.”

That seemed to snap Sylvia’s tether. “Give me your arm,” she said urgently. She wheeled closer to him and ignited her healing spell. A burst of blue light flooded her hands as she pressed them to his skin on either side of the wound. Within a minute, her magic had knit the wound closed without even a scar.

“Thank you,” Cliff muttered, flexing his hand as the last of the pain faded.

“Once again, I loathe to think of what you boys ever did without me.”

Cliff shrugged. “Stitches aren’t so bad once you get used to them.”

Although her answering shudder of disgust was exaggerated, I could see the broader tension lining her posture—it was hard to ignore when she was one of the only sources of light. I couldn’t blame her. If there were fairies waiting past the door, there was no telling what sort of welcome we could expect.

But as we followed Sylvia through the opening, darkness was the only thing that lay ahead.

Stone creaked behind us. Cliff swung the light around in time for us to see our only visible exit closing up. Sylvia gasped and made a beeline for the shifting stone, but the opening was completely sealed when she reached it.

There was nothing on the cavern wall. No indication that there had been anything at all.

Her curse echoed off the stone, followed by an incantation. A small volley of icicles shattered against the wall and splintered on the ground uselessly.

“Hey—easy.” Cliff felt along the sealed stone, but he could only confirm what I suspected: “There’s no getting back through this.”

As he pulled away to search the cavern, I nodded for Sylvia to follow. “Deep breath,” I murmured to her. “The only way is forward.”

She gave a stiff, wordless nod.

With our penlights and Sylvia’s illumination, we quickly discovered that the curved chamber didn’t run very deep. Sylvia’s flight was erratic as she searched our stone surroundings up and down, but evidently, there were no openings big enough to squeeze through.

The cavern ended in another door that looked exactly like the one we’d come through, etched with a weeping moon and shooting stars.

“This is a different constellation,” Sylvia murmured, tracing the stars’ paths with her fingertip. “The other was the Eternal Chalice. This… this is the Sylph’s Path.”

“The runes look the same,” I said. No need for her to translate what the engraving demanded. “Guess that makes it my turn.”

Distress lined her features as I readied the knife over my arm. I offered her a reassuring smile before carefully plunging the blade across. Grimacing, I allowed my blood to spill, stomach churning as the door eagerly soaked up the offering.

Sure enough, the Ancient Fae glowed in acceptance, and the door pulled itself apart to allow us entry.

Sylvia was already halfway through her healing chant by the time she reached my arm, as though she couldn’t bear the idea of me being in pain for a moment longer than necessary. In her haste, the faintest pink line stayed behind on my arm, but I gently pulled away when she tried to make a second pass.

“Save your energy,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

As we stepped through, the door behind us sealed once again. Another waited for us at the end of the new chamber, another constellation on display.

“Fuck!” Cliff took the knife from me immediately, eyes beginning to grow wide with alarm. “Three. That has to be it, right? Three’s, like, the most significant number in every piece of lore.” He turned to Sylvia like she might have an answer to this cryptic cycle of sacrifice.

“I—” She shook her head, lips pressed hard together as she regarded the new door like she might learn something new if she stared hard enough. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything so cruel—to claim the moon and stars want blood…” She darted closer to him when he raised the blade to his arm. “Wait! Maybe we should take a more careful look around. There could be something we missed.”

“Where?” Cliff gestured around him with the knife. “There’s nothing else, Sylv. All we can do is get through these damn doors. You feel that? There’s no air flow in the place.”

Rather than watch him grit his teeth from another brush with the blade, I searched along the walls leading up to the door. He was right—it was no use looking for anything else.

When Sylvia healed him, there was a hitch in her words.

The door sealed behind us after we passed through.

And the next one awaited us.

Dread pounded through me as I took the knife again. Even the relief of Sylvia’s healing couldn’t make me forget the amount of blood I was freely spilling out.

This time, I experimented by hanging back while Cliff and Sylvia passed the new threshold. When it started to close, I hurried to catch up. This place wasn’t fooling around—didn’t give a shit if we stayed together or not.

“Did we get a good look at how big this place was from the outside?” I asked when we paused at the next door.

No one had an answer.

Cliff sliced his arm with barely a sound, and we kept moving forward.

Two chambers later, we found the first human corpse. The scent hit us before the sight. It was curled against the wall beside the next door. Bits of flesh clung to it and spread onto the stone, stained with bright purples, yellows, and greens that were not natural to rot. Equally vibrant mushrooms sprouted through openings in its skull and ribs—the only living thing in this sealed-up hellscape that could decompose the dead.

In the next chamber, there were three dead. Two in the next, huddled against each other, rainbow decay intertwining .

Sylvia’s voice and flight wavered more with each healing incantation. The glow that normally penetrated the light fabric of her clothing was blocked by red stains. Between the magic exhaustion and thinning air, she couldn’t hope to replenish our blood fast enough, even if she was closing up the wounds to stop further loss.

“This could be… it,” she croaked when my blood opened the twelfth door. “The constellations have been different every time.” She paused to chant, to close the self-inflicted wound. “They’ve only used the major constellations—and there are twelve of those.”

She made a distressed noise when she saw the scar she left behind on my skin. Her arms were smeared up to the elbow in crimson. I shushed her soothingly. No point in pristine healing when I would likely just have to open it back up again.

Unless she was right, and we were finally at the end of this sadistic game.

As the door sealed behind us in the next chamber, the utter lack of corpses was the first thing I noticed. A tentative rush of hope filled me—maybe this really was the exit.

But sure enough, my searching light swept over yet another door at the end of the cavern.

In my lightheaded delirium, I prayed that this one would simply swing open.

“ Wait .” The crack in Sylvia’s voice made Cliff and I pause in our stumble to reach the door. She had both hands clamped over her mouth, little sobs escaping through her fingers.

She pointed a shaking hand at the door. “That’s the Eternal Chalice.” As her hover drew closer to the ground, I spotted droplets of blood near the base of the door.

Fresh.

We were back at the start .

“Fuck this shit!” Cliff might have punched the wall if he had the energy. He leaned against the stone instead, running his hands over the scars on his forearms. “The fuck does it want!”

I couldn’t begin to decipher the purpose in any of it. Even the most vicious monsters had a purpose for what they did. But this—this was nothing more than torture. Corpses left to rot for what ?

Sylvia had slunk all the way to the ground, sitting on her knees and staring up at the door while her glow flickered.

I could picture the next few days as if they were already happening. She’d pass out from magic exhaustion. Her light would go out. Our penlight batteries couldn’t last forever. Eventually, we’d be in perfect darkness. Until someone else came along and found a kaleidoscope of mushrooms climbing out of our corpses.

A chill washed over my skin, carried by a breeze. It was fucking cold. Maybe we’d die of that first.

But then, I realized— a breeze .

“You feel that?” I uttered, turning my head and blinking hard.

Halfway along the wall across from us, there was an opening that hadn’t been there before. A stony threshold crowded with vines, leaves, mushrooms, and light. I swore I could hear a trickle of water. I might have thought I was hallucinating, but Cliff and Sylvia had locked onto it, too.

Stone began to grind together.

The exit was sealing, vegetation pulling itself back into the other side.

We bolted, desperate to reach it in time. Sylvia darted overhead, clearing the threshold just before Cliff and I barely managed to emerge on the other side, stone scraping my shoulder on the way out.

We stumbled forward, and my breath caught in my throat. A vast cavern stretched out before us—far larger than it appeared outside. Craggy ceilings glittered with bioluminescence, towering like a cathedral.

Cliff and I stood on a long strip of earth that jutted above crystal-clear water that churned around us, the surface glowing with the same teal bioluminescence with every ripple. Golden fae lights hovered at fixed points, illuminating small structures built deep along the cave walls like crawling ivy.

The hum of wingbeats flying between these formations filled the air. Fairies . Too many to count—not including the two dozen armored fairies that encircled us with spells glowing menacingly at their fingertips.

I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Cliff, both of us rendered speechless. Hovering between us, Sylvia’s cerulean glow faded, casting her in shadow as she clapped a hand over her mouth. Rainbows of color danced over her conflicted expression, refracted by the water.

With a heavy, resonant thud, the stone door sealed shut behind us. The sound hit me like a death toll. I whipped around, cold dread seizing me as I watched the last sliver of the other passage disappear from sight. I could see no other exit—certainly not for humans.

My attention snapped back to the front, where a small battalion of fairies were in formation. Their eyes were sharp, postures coiled and tense.

Cliff and I instinctively pulled our weapons, though I wasn’t sure how much good our battered iron hunting knives would do if these fairies coordinated their attack. At the very least, they recognized the metal’s poisonous aura; most of them flinched, their flights stammering. Sylvia cringed too, her gaze still fixed forward, never looking back at us.

“Only a precaution,” she explained, voice wispy with fatigue.

One fairy in particular glided toward us, drawing my focus. He wore the same armor as the others—a deep, lustrous teal, intricately patterned with scales that seemed to glimmer in the light with every movement. Practical trousers were paired with ankle-high boots caked with mud. His bare arms were deeply tanned and inked with runes, with more favoring the left shoulder.

His presence commanded the attention of the other fairies, who seemed to wait on him for a signal. His gaze rested on Sylvia a moment longer than it did Cliff or me, his expression unreadable.

“On your knees,” he commanded, his voice steady and authoritative.

Sylvia balled her fists, summoning a burst of icy air between us—but that was as far as the spellwork blossomed. The threads of frost flickered out, her shoulders sagging. The three of us exchanged resigned looks. We were in no shape to fight, dizzy from blood loss and magic exhaustion.

Muscling down my instincts, I slowly lowered onto my knees beside Cliff. We set our blades down, hands held up in a reluctant sign of surrender. The moment our knees hit, black vines burst through the stone floor like snakes, curling around our ankles with an unyielding grip. A testing pull confirmed it—we were rooted in place.

The commanding fairy met my enraged stare with a toothy smile.

“Welcome to Veloria, hunters.”