Page 19

Chapter

Nineteen

The air changes the moment we cross the boundary. It’s colder, denser. It wraps around my skin like damp cloth, carrying a heavy pulse that beats just beneath the surface of my hearing.

The ruins twist as we descend into Courtsview’s heart.

What must’ve once been elegant stonework is now warped pillars spiraling at impossible angles, staircases looping into dead ends, walls bending like soft wax under unseen pressure.

Cracked fae wards flicker faintly, half-swallowed by creeping black moss that pulses as if breathing.

The deeper we move, the more wrong everything feels.

Even the silence is off—not quiet, but waiting.

Beside me, Harek walks stiffly, blade in hand, every step measured. His eyes dart constantly in the shadows, but his attention keeps flicking toward me too. I can feel his tension without a word spoken between us.

Ahead, Lys moves with unsettling ease. He barely glances at the grotesque architecture as it shifts around us, as if the city itself is adjusting to our presence.

My sword hums softly against my hip, the faint warmth pulsing in time with my heartbeat. It’s not warning me to run, but not quite reassuring me either.

On my other side, Einar mutters low under his breath, as if speaking too loudly might wake something. “Even in its prime, the core was never meant for mortal minds.”

“Feels like we’re walking through someone’s broken memory,” I whisper back.

Lys smiles faintly at that but doesn’t turn. “That’s not far from the truth.”

Harek mutters something too low to be heard.

As we step beneath a fallen arch, a faint whisper skates past my ear. It’s soft and familiar.

“Eira…”

I freeze, heart lurching. My mother’s voice. I’d know it anywhere.

But when I glance sharply to the side, there’s nothing there. Only the ruins. Her words must be coming from my mind again, just like it did back in my room at Einar’s place.

The further we move, the less solid everything feels. At first, the sensation is subtle with shadows flickering where there’s no wind, echoes bouncing in wrong directions. But then the wards begin to work harder, like they’ve sensed our presence fully now.

A figure steps into view ahead. Familiar, unmistakable.

My mother. She stands in the center of the broken hallway—hair loose, eyes soft—exactly as I remember her in rare quiet moments. But her mouth moves without sound, and her hands stretch toward me.

The familiar lump in my throat returns as tears prickle my eyes. I stumble forward instinctively.

“Eira!” Harek’s voice snaps me back, sharp and grounding.

The illusion wavers. My mother flickers, then vanishes into a coil of smoke, drifting upward and dissolving.

I reach for her, even though I know she wasn’t real.

“They’ll prey on what you feel most,” Lys says. “What you long for most.”

Harek exhales tightly. “How do you know that?”

Lys only smiles, unsettlingly at ease. “Because I’ve walked these paths before.”

Another pulse hums through the stone beneath our feet. It’s a low, rolling vibration like a heartbeat in the earth. The moss pulses in response.

Next comes another ward. Whispers thread through the air. Many voices this time.

“You’ll fail them.”

“You’ll kill him.”

“You’ll break like the rest.”

They circle me like vultures.

Einar curses under his breath, rubbing his temple. His face flickers briefly—not physically, but like I’m seeing two versions of him at once. The hunter and a corpse.

I gasp, fear gripping me.

“Steady.” Lys’s voice cuts through the illusions like a cold tether. “Stay present.”

I grit my teeth, locking my gaze on the glowing rune on my sword hilt.

The whispers dull. The wards shift again.

Behind me, one of the rebel scouts drops to his knees, hands clutching his head, lost in whatever vision the city feeds him. Another stumbles, breathing in ragged gasps. One of the scholars bursts into tears.

“They won’t all make it,” Harek says quietly.

“No,” Lys agrees, still calm. “They won’t.”

The reality of our mission slams into me. “We need to turn back. Only my father and I should continue on.”

Lys stares at me. “We’re in too deep now. It’ll be worse if we back out.”

“We aren’t backing out. No, we’re saving them.”

He moves forward again, unbothered, and we’re forced to follow deeper into the rotted city. I hurry to catch up, and the others follow.

We descend into a spiral chamber, half-buried beneath the twisted remains of a collapsed tower. The wards thin as we near the center, as if we’ve passed through the worst of their defenses—or as if something deeper is now content to simply let us enter.

The chamber looks older than the rest of Courtsview, its walls etched with circular symbols.

Layered hunter crests are spliced together in ways I’ve never seen.

The markings pulse faintly with old, fading magic.

At the far end sits a massive door, laced with embedded bloodstone veins.

The hunter’s crest glows faintly along its surface, the mirrored version.

Lys steps forward, voice soft but sure. “Here.”

Harek tenses beside me, his eyes full of doubt. “How do you know this?”

Lys lays a hand against the center of the door. “Because I’ve spent years studying what everyone else tried to forget.”

A hum answers his touch. The stone door shudders then begins to slide open, groaning as it reveals the chamber beyond.

The air inside is chilled, older. An archive stretches in a wide circle with rows of scroll racks, glass cases holding fragmented relics, long-decayed tomes wrapped in protective magic that flickers and struggles against time.

We step inside carefully, the weight of countless lives pressing down on us from unseen corners.

“This is…” I search for the right words.

“The beginning,” Lys finishes for me.

Harek scowls.

Einar’s brows furrow as he scans the runes above each shelf. “Much of this is incomplete.”

“Enough survives.” Lys looks around. “We have what we need to understand what was done.”

Part of me wants to smack him for his never ending riddles, another part of me is curiously fascinated.

We spread out. I drift toward a table littered with partially preserved scrolls sealed beneath cracked crystal panes. My fingers hover above one, and the faded title catches my eye. Ritual of Twin Bloodlines .

The words beneath it are barely legible, so I lean closer, my heart pounding. Two bloodlines bound by oath that share strength and consequence. It’s a sacrifice of lineage to bind power into unity.

My pulse quickens.

Shared power—not inherited.

Harek appears at my side, reading over my shoulder. “You think this was how it was supposed to be?”

“I think maybe it could still be.” Hope stirs within me like a fragile flame.

But behind me, Einar’s voice cuts in, sharp with suspicion. “Look closer.” He points to the seals on the scroll cases. “Some of these markings have been altered, possibly corrupted.”

I blink, suddenly seeing what he means—the warding seals aren’t whole. They’ve been twisted, their original intent spliced, like someone curated which truths were allowed to survive.

“The archive’s real,” Einar mutters. “But someone controlled what was left behind.”

Lys watches us, his expression unreadable.

Beneath my flickering hope, unease grows like a second heartbeat.

If someone carefully shaped what we’ve found… who are we really playing into?

I don’t have time to linger on that thought. The air grows colder by the minute, the oppressive weight of the city pressing tighter around us, as if even Courtsview itself resents our presence here.

I move carefully through the remaining scrolls, scan their faded ink. Ancient symbols barely cling to their fragile surfaces. The more I read, the stronger the idea blooms of shared power. Not a curse of sacrifice, but a ritual of balance, partnership, and unity.

What it was meant to be.

The hope flutters like a fragile, reckless thing inside my chest. Maybe there is a way. Maybe I don’t have to kill my father and lose everything.

Behind me, Harek keeps his distance, watching, guarding. Doubting. I feel his tension as clearly as I feel the weight of my sword.

Einar’s gaze is sharper, more analytical, flicking between the altered seals and the layered wards still active across parts of the chamber. “Someone hid the full truth.”

“Or rewrote it,” Harek adds, voice tight.

Lys remains still, standing near the entrance as if he’s part of the archive rather than one of us. His eyes gleam softly, reflecting the faint pulsing light of the corrupted runes. “They feared what might happen if anyone tried again. They wanted the curse contained through blood. Through death.”

“But that’s not how it began,” I argue. “There was a different way.”

“Intent means little once power is broken.” His gaze sharpens slightly. “Unless, of course, you’re willing to finish what they started.”

The words hang heavy in the chamber.

I swallow hard, feeling the weight of his meaning settle like lead behind my ribs.

Not now. Not here.

“We have what we came for,” Einar says, voice cutting through the silence. “If we linger, someone will notice.”

He’s right. The walls hum beneath our feet, like a slumbering predator beginning to stir.

I gather the scroll fragments carefully, sliding them into my satchel.

Harek hovers close but says nothing. His silence feels thicker than any argument.

We turn to leave. As we step into the fractured hallway, my sword pulses steady and warm. Not a warning. Perhaps an agreement.

The spiral chamber closes behind us with a deep grinding rumble, sealing the archive once more beneath layers of ancient stone.

For a few relieving moments, the air feels lighter. But it doesn’t last. The further we move from the core, the more pressure builds. Subtle at first, like hands brushing at my shoulders. Then stronger, like a weight that settles in the middle of my back blades and coils beneath my ribs.

The ruins themselves hum, not unlike my sword, but it feels like something older. It could be breathing, watching.

I glance back, the skin on my back tingling.

The stone archways blur faintly at the edges, the twisting architecture shifting in the corner of my vision even when I try to hold it still.

Lys steps beside me, speaking so low only I can hear. “It knows you now.”

I stiffen. “What does that mean?”

He tilts his head, smiling like someone savoring a private joke. “The city isn’t dead, Eira. It never was.”

As if in answer, the ground beneath us vibrates with an unsettling pulse, as if a second heartbeat echoes under our feet.

Harek shifts protectively closer to me.

Einar mutters a curse. “We need to get out of here.”

The others quicken their pace, but I glance one last time into the distorted corridors. In the darkness between the broken pillars, for a single breath, I see faint twin eyes gleaming back. It isn’t fae, but something else entirely.

The question is, what?