Page 128 of Thunder's Reckoning

The vial caught the light again, a glint sharp enough to slice through my composure. My pulse spiked. I forced my body to stillness, though my legs trembled beneath the robe. He couldn’t see the terror. Not yet.

Gabrial lifted his voice to the congregation, the words heavy, rhythmic, rehearsed. “Before the Flame, she will kneel. Before the Flame, she will confess. Before the Flame, she will be restored.”

No cheer rose to meet him. No applause. Just the fire crackling, the sound echoing through the hall like a beast breathing in the dark. But I felt the shift. The women’s shoulders straightened, smug, as if my kneeling would prove what they always whispered, that I wasn’t untouchable, that I could fall like anyone else. The men leaned forward, eager, hungry for the spectacle of purification. And the children’s prayers grew louder, their voices loud against the stone until it felt like I was being buried under a tide of devotion that wasn’t mine.

Then he turned back to me, his hand rising slow, fingers curled toward the ground.

The command.

Kneel.

I didn’t move.

For one heartbeat, the veil between past and present tore open, and I was that girl again, kneeling, bleeding, screaming into silence while he smiled, calling it salvation.

My eyes flicked back to the vial, and I knew, whatever it held, it was new. It was his next weapon. A test. A punishment. A possession. Something he meant to put in me, on me, through me, until there was no part of me left untouched by his hand.

And no one was coming.

Not yet.

So I dropped.

Slow. Deliberate. My knees hit the stone with a sound too loud in the silence. Not submission. Not obedience. Survival. The only power I had left was endurance.

The veil hid my face, but behind it, I clenched my teeth hard enough to ache. I would wait. I would endure. And when thesound came, the crash of a door, the thunder of boots, the war I knew was coming, I would rise.

Until then, I would kneel.

But I wouldn’t break.

Not again.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

THE TUNNEL REEKEDof wet stone and oil-soaked dirt,the kind of smell that clung to skin and lungs until it felt like you were draggin’ ghosts with every breath. The walls pressed close, drippin’ with damp, and every step stirred old nightmares I’d thought I’d buried deep enough to never claw their way back up.

Ash moved at the front, his flashlight dark, one hand trailin’ the wall as though he could read the story etched into the stone by memory alone. He didn’t falter. Didn’t pause. The man carried this path like it had been carved into his blood. Chain shadowed him, quiet and constant, rifle close but ready. Ibrought up the rear, pistol loose in my grip, blade strapped tight against my thigh, safety already off. My jaw ached from clenchin’ it too hard, and every footfall pounded against my ribs like a warning drum I couldn’t ignore.

We’d split at the fork. Mystic, Bolt, and Gearhead had peeled off toward the dorms, their orders clear: get the kids, get my momma, get anyone innocent who still had the sense to want out. Our trail was narrower, hotter, cuttin’ straight through the gut of the beast. The Flame Hall. The place they built for worship and fear, the heart of the fire we’d come to rip down.

Ash slowed as we neared the end of the passage. Above us, a steel grate opened into a storage room stacked with neat rows of folded robes, basins polished to a shine, incense bowls piled high like offerings for a god who’d never given a damn. Ash glanced back, lifted two fingers.

Chain gave a single nod, and before another breath passed, I pushed the grate up and hauled myself through. My boots hit stone without a sound. Chain followed, then Ash, all of us movin’ like smoke, quiet, coiled, knives for teeth.

The hallway beyond was narrow and dim, the air stale with wax and sweat. The first guard caught a glimpse of Ash, just long enough for the panic to show in his eyes, his mouth shaping the start of a warnin’ as he raised his gun. He never finished it. Chain’s blade slid fast and sure across his throat, his hand mufflin’ the sound as he lowered the man’s body to the tile. The wet rasp of breath leaving lungs, the soft thud of flesh meeting stone — that was all. And then silence again.

I stepped over him without a glance. Couldn’t afford one. Not now.

That was when the sound reached me.

Chantin’.

Low at first, muffled through the walls, then rising, layered voices climbin’ into something sick and steady.

“She returns…”

“Wayward flame…”