Page 50 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Verik

T he silence after the alarms is worse than the shrieking.

I can feel it through my connection to the academy’s architecture.

It’s sealing us in. Heavy blast doors sliding into place above, cutting off every route back to the surface.

The vibrations travel through stone and mortar, each closure like a nail being hammered into our collective coffin.

The grimoire is using whatever fucked up power it has to make sure we reach it.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“Keep moving,” I say, my hellfire orb casting shadows on walls that are becoming less familiar with every step.

The stonework here predates what we’ve seen so far.

Probably even older than the academy’s official founding.

These passages don’t exist on any blueprint because they were never meant to be found.

The stairs beneath our feet feel different now.

Each step downward takes us further from the world above and deeper into something that feels increasingly alive.

I run my palm along the wall as we descend, trying to read the architecture’s intent, but it’s like trying to understand a language that predates words.

Lysithea stumbles beside me, and I catch her arm. The contact sends a jolt down to my very soul. If I didn’t already know she was my fate, my queen, the one who will sit by my side in my realm as we survey the rebels in ashes, I would now.

The grimoire’s call grows stronger, more insistent.

“The corruption’s completely gone,” Lysithea murmurs. “Expelling so much energy bought me time.”

“No, the urgency to get to us, to get to the grimoire is what bought you time. You’re being rewarded,” Dathan says. “I know how this fucker thinks. Don’t get cosy. It could go the opposite way faster than lightning if it doesn’t like our next move.”

His words are grim, but accurate. We are servants, and the Tenebris Vinculum is our god.

The walls around us shimmer, and I realise the academy is guiding us. Steering us toward something specific. The thought should be comforting, but instead it makes my hellfire flicker with unease. It knows our intent and isn’t doing what it always does. It shows it has no fealty except to power.

Evren stops dead, his death magic swirling up in a whirlwind of ice.

“What is it?” I ask quietly.

He turns to look at us. The look on his face is all we need. There’s something hunting us.

So much for sitting pretty with the academy helping us. Whatever guards these tunnels is not happy we are here.

I press my palm against the wall, trying to map what’s coming.

The stone here responds differently to my power.

It’s ancient and stubborn, with its own agenda.

I can feel movement through the network of tunnels, but it’s not the predictable pattern of DarkHallow.

These things move with purpose, intelligence, coordinating their approach like pack hunters.

“How many?” I ask Evren, though his grim expression already gives me the answer I don’t want to hear.

He holds up both hands, then makes the gesture again. Twenty or more, and they’re getting closer.

I try to reshape the passage behind us, to create obstacles that might slow pursuit.

My hellfire flows into the stonework, but instead of the usual compliance I expect, the architecture pushes back.

Not with simple resistance, but with something that feels disturbingly like consideration.

As if it’s weighing whether my modifications align with its own plans.

The passage widens slightly where I’ve asked it to, but not in the way I intended. Instead of creating a bottleneck, it’s made the space more defendable with better angles for us to fight from if cornered. The walls seem to be helping, but on their own terms.

“The academy’s picking sides,” I mutter. “It wants us to reach the grimoire, but it’s going to make us fight for the privilege.”

Dathan’s power spikes through the brand. “Fight what, exactly?”

The answer comes as a sound echoing from the tunnels behind us, something altogether more primal than your average monster.

Hunting calls bounce off the walls, answered by others from different directions.

The acoustics down here are strange, making it impossible to pinpoint exactly where the sounds originate, but I can feel the vibrations through my connection to the architecture.

They’re hunting us, they’re communicating, they’re coordinating. Whatever DarkHallow has down here, has intelligence enough to work as a team.

The passage ahead splits into three tunnels, each disappearing into darkness that seems to actively resist light.

I extend my senses through my hellfire, trying to map what lies beyond, but the organic nature of the construction makes it difficult.

These aren’t passages built by conventional means.

They’ve grown, evolved, shaped by need rather than planning.

Only one tunnel pulls at the grimoire’s connection. It’s a narrow opening that slopes sharply downward. The air emerging from it tastes of copper and something else, something that makes my hellfire recoil instinctively.

The ice cold of death.

“That one,” Dathan says, pointing to the same tunnel I can feel calling. “But it feels wrong.”

There’s something about that passage that sets every survival instinct I have on edge. The darkness is hungry, waiting for something to stumble into its embrace.

Behind us, metal scrapes against stone, accompanied by sounds that definitely don’t come from anything pleasant. Whatever’s hunting us has found our trail.

“We don’t have a choice,” I say, stepping toward the narrow tunnel despite every instinct screaming at me to go anywhere else. “Whatever’s down there, it’s where the grimoire wants us to go.”

Lysithea moves beside me, her shadow abilities already probing the darkness ahead.

It’s only then that I notice the snake. If it was there all along, it was hiding in the shadows.

Now, it is golden, glowing in the pitch-black, an ally I’m starting to feel we desperately need.

“I can feel something vast down there. Ancient. It’s been waiting for a very long time. ”

We enter the passage, and everything changes.

The walls are warm and slightly yielding under my touch. My hellfire reflects off surfaces that shift, and when I try to read the architecture through my power, I get impressions that make no sense. This has been shaped by centuries of slow adaptation and patient intelligence.

I try to narrow the passage behind us, to slow pursuit, but the material pushes back, no longer helping, but actively hindering.

“The walls are alive,” Lysithea whispers.

The passage responds to our presence, widening just enough to accommodate us but maintaining its defensive characteristics. Every surface feels deliberate, purposeful.

The hunting calls behind us grow closer, and now I can make out individual voices in the chorus. At least a dozen different creatures, each with its own distinct sound. They’ve found the entrance to our tunnel and are following.

“They’re herding us,” I say quietly, feeling the pattern. The passages we’ve taken, the choices we’ve made, they’ve all been guided. They’re driving us deeper, toward something specific. The grimoire, or something else entirely?

Evren’s eyes meet mine in the hellfire’s glow, and I see my own understanding reflected there. This isn’t pursuit, it’s manipulation.

The passage slopes more steeply now, the ground becoming so smooth, I have to use my hellfire to melt handholds for the others.

The material responds better to fire than to my architectural influence, flowing like heated glass rather than stone.

But each time I shape it, I feel something watching, judging whether my modifications serve the greater purpose of this place.

The grimoire’s call is becoming painful in its intensity, like a fishhook dragged through my chest with every heartbeat.

The tunnel descends further, and I notice changes around us. What started as simple living architecture is becoming more complex. Veins of something that might be crystal run through the yielding surfaces, shining with a faint silver light that grows stronger as we go deeper.

“There,” Dathan points ahead to where the tunnel opens into a larger space. The light spills from the opening like water, cold and somehow ancient. The quality of it makes my hellfire seem crude by comparison.

As we emerge from the tunnel, I understand why the grimoire’s call has been so desperate.

We’re standing on a ledge overlooking a vast underground chamber, so large my hellfire can’t illuminate the far walls.

The space stretches away into darkness that feels infinite, broken only by the network of silver-glowing veins that run through every surface like the circulatory system of some impossible organism.

Hanging in the centre of the space, suspended by chains of that same crystalline material, is the Tenebris Vinculum.

The grimoire glows with desperate light, its ancient binding straining against the chains that hold it. Even from this distance, I can feel its power calling to us, but there’s something else mixed with the summons now. A warning. Fear. It knows what lies between us and it.

Because we’re not alone in this chamber.

The silver light reveals creatures moving through the space below. Their forms are elongated, adapted for life in this environment, and when they turn toward our ledge, I see eyes that glow with the same silver light as the crystals.

They’re not hostile—not yet—but they’re definitely aware of our presence.

And they’re waiting for something.

At the base of the chamber, directly beneath the suspended grimoire, something massive stirs in the shadows.

I can’t make out its shape, but the movement sends ripples through the crystalline network, causing the silver light to pulse brighter.

Whatever it is has been here far longer than DarkHallow Academy has existed, longer than the cities above, perhaps longer than civilisation in this realm.

Whatever price we have to pay to reach the grimoire, we’re ready to pay it.

Behind us, the hunting calls grow closer, echoing from the tunnel we just left. But they’ve changed into something that sounds almost like triumph. As if delivering us here was always the goal.

The tunnel entrance seals itself, the walls flowing together like healing flesh. Within moments, the opening is gone, leaving no trace that it ever existed.

There’s no way back now. Only forward, into whatever ancient power has been sleeping beneath DarkHallow.

The grimoire struggles, its call now mixed with what I can only interpret as anger. Time to finish what we started—assuming we survive whatever test this place has in store for us.