It began as a vibration, less a sound and more a pressure in the marrow of Aelindra's teeth. A rhythmic, deliberate thrumming that didn't belong to the wind or the shifting plates of the mountain. It felt like knuckles rapping on a door from the other side, impatient, rhythmic, and hungry.
Aelindra stopped. Her boots, caked in obsidian dust, went still against the black rock. The air here was different than the Range they had left behind; it was stagnant, tasting of old iron and dead lightning.
Severin didn't need to be told. He raised a hand, fingers splayed, a silent command that turned the group to statues. For a long, agonizing moment, the only sound was the thin, high-pitched whistle of air through the fissures, like the mountain was wheezing.
Tap. Scrape. Tap.
"Tell me that's just the mountain settling," Caelan muttered. His voice was a jagged edge, his hand white-knuckled on the hilt of his blade.
Arveth pressed his staff into the black rock. His eyes drifted shut, his pulse visible in the vein at his temple as he leaned into the stone's silence. When he spoke, it was a ghost of a sound. "The mountain isn't settling. It's waking up. And it hasn't had guests in a very long time."
The plateau offered no mercy. There was no brush for cover, no outcrops for height. Just the flat, glass-slick expanse and the yawning cracks that looked like mouths waiting for a misstep. Aelindra felt the warmth in her palms tighten. It didn't tingle anymore; it growled. Without fear to dampen her senses, the world was a series of sharp edges and cold facts.
The tapping turned into a crunch. A seam in the rock twenty paces ahead peeled open. Layers of obsidian sloughed away with a sickening, wet sound, like skin being flayed, revealing a silhouette that made the air turn cold.
It was a jagged mockery of a man, elongated and gray, its limbs joined by pulsing veins of blackened ore. It didn't breathe. It didn't blink. It simply unfolded itself from the dark, its joints popping with the sound of breaking flint.
A pressure hammered against the inside of Aelindra's skull, a voice that wasn't a voice, but a weight.
Yield.
"Go to hell," Caelan spat. He was a blur of motion before the word finished, twin blades whistling as he lunged.
"Caelan, wait!" Severin's warning was a fraction of a second too late.
The creature didn't dodge. It moved with a jarring, frame-by-frame speed. Caelan's blades struck the creature's shoulder, sparking violently, but the steel didn't bite. It skidded across the mineral-fused skin with a shriek of tortured metal.
The construct didn't punch; it collided. It backhanded Caelan with the force of a moving cliffside. He was lifted off his feet, his body a ragdoll as he slammed into a jagged rock wall. The sound was devastating, a dull, wet thud followed by the unmistakable crack of armor and bone. He crumpled, his breath hitching in a way that sounded like glass breaking in his chest.
"Caelan!" Aelindra started forward, but the creature's head snapped toward her, its blank stone face radiating a cold, predatory focus.
It lunged, a killing machine made of ancient spite.
Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the gloom. Mira appeared like a ghost, her movements a stark contrast to the creature's clunky violence. She didn't use a blade; she used a length of silver-threaded cord, whipping it around the construct's knees with the precision of a weaver.
The creature stumbled, its heavy stone feet grinding against the plateau.
"Now!" Mira hissed, her voice a sharp whip-crack that broke the mental pressure. "It's grounded! Hit the joints!"
Marienne dove in from the right, her spear a streak of lightning. She found a gap in the stone armor, driving the tip into a pulsing ore-vein. The creature shrieked, a sound like tectonic plates grinding, and swiped at her. Marienne barely rolled away, the wind of the blow ruffling her hair.
The construct recovered with terrifying speed. It shook off Mira's cord with a surge of strength that sent the guide staggering back toward a fissure. It turned back to Aelindra, its stone fingers curling into a fist.
Then Severin stepped into the light.
He didn't rush. He walked. There was a terrifying stillness to him, a gravity that seemed to pull the light and heat of the plateau toward his center.
"Don't," he said.
The word was quiet, but it carried the weight of a throne. The air around the creature literally buckled. The construct froze, its stone limbs vibrating as it fought against the absolute authority of Severin's command magic. It was a battle of wills, the ancient earth versus the forged blood of Solis.
Black veins flared in the creature's neck. It took a step forward, fighting the invisible wall, the rock beneath its feet cracking under the strain of its own resistance.
Severin's jaw tightened. "Fine."
Fire didn't just appear; it erupted. It traced the lines of his forearms in brilliant, white-hot ribbons. There was no smoke, no crackle. Just a shimmering, hungry heat that turned the air to a haze. This wasn't the defensive flare Aelindra had seen before. This was a predator's light, the light of a prince who had been taught that the world was his to burn.
Severin moved.
He was a streak of amber and white. He struck the creature's chest, his hand sinking into the stone as if it were soft clay. The heat didn't just burn the surface; it bored inward, turning the blackened ore to molten slag. The smell was horrific, sulfur and scorched mineral.
The construct let out a final, agonizing pulse of mental pressure, a scream of Betrayal, before its core shattered. Stone turned to ash. The light in its eyes went dark, and it collapsed into a heap of useless rubble.
Silence returned, heavy and suffocating.
Aelindra was already at Caelan's side. He looked small against the black rock, his face the color of woodsmoke. His armor was melted where the creature had touched him, and a sickly, dark rot was spreading from the wound, crawling up his neck like a web of black spiders.
"Oh gods," she whispered, her hands hovering over the corruption. It felt cold, a vacuum of life that was sucking the heat out of Caelan's body.
"Aelindra," Severin was there, kneeling across from her. He was covered in soot, his eyes still bright with the fading embers of his rage. "The rot is moving. If it reaches his heart, he's gone. Heal him."
She didn't hesitate. She pressed her palms to the mess of cracked ribs and blackened veins.
The power didn't flow; it surged. It felt like white-hot needles passing through her skin into his. Usually, healing was a conversation; this was a war. The corruption fought her, a stubborn, oily presence that didn't want to let go of its meal. Aelindra gritted her teeth, pushing her will into the gap, her vision tunneling until there was nothing but the heat of her hands and the cold of his skin.
No. You do not get him.
She felt the cost immediately. A piece of a memory, the smell of fresh bread in her mother's kitchen, a specific, warm feeling she used to get when the sun hit her face, flickered like a candle and went out. It was gone. Erased. Sacrificed to mend the broken man beneath her.
Caelan's body arched. He let out a strangled cry, his eyes rolling back, and then the dark veins began to pull back. They shriveled like salted slugs, leaving behind clean, pink scar tissue. He slumped back, his breathing turning from a death-rattle to a deep, exhausted sleep.
Aelindra fell back onto her heels, her chest heaving. She felt hollowed out, a bell that had been rung too hard. Her hands were still glowing faintly, the light reflecting in the obsidian floor.
And in that emptiness, a truth surfaced.
She looked at Severin. He was watching her with an intensity that made her breath catch. In the aftermath of the violence, she realized that she wasn't just following a stranger with a secret bloodline. She was tethered to him. The way he had stood before the construct, the way he had burned for them, it had ignited something in her that no amount of lost humanity could extinguish. She felt a sharp, jagged want for his presence, a realization that terrified the small part of her that could still feel.
She looked away, her fingers trembling as she wiped grit from her face.
"You're not injured," Severin said, reaching for her. His hand stopped just short of her shoulder, a rare moment of hesitation from a man who commanded the world to stop.
"I'm fine," she lied. The word tasted like copper. It was the first time she had felt the need to hide a part of herself from him, to protect this new, fragile "want" from the scrutiny of the world.
The ground groaned.
Not a tremor. A shift. A long, slow sound of rock sliding against rock, miles beneath them.
Arveth stood at the edge of the plateau, his face pale in the rising light. "The fire," he whispered, looking at the scorched earth where the creature had fallen. "The Range felt the fire. You used the light of Solis in a place that has been hiding from it for an eternity."
He pointed down the slope. The fissures weren't just widening; they were aligning. They were forming a pattern, a series of concentric circles that centered on their position.
Far below, something massive and luminous began to rise through the cracks, a rhythmic, pulsing light that matched the heartbeat of the mountain. It wasn't another construct. It was something much older. A sentinel of the deep earth, a literal eye of the mountain opening to see who had dared to bring the sun into its dark.
"Mira, the path!" Arveth shouted.
Mira stepped to the edge of a newly formed gap, her eyes wide.
"Run!" Severin commanded, grabbing Aelindra's hand.
But as they turned to flee, the plateau didn't just shift; it shattered. A massive pillar of rock erupted between them and the others, a jagged wall of obsidian that shot upward with the speed of a falling star.
Aelindra felt Severin's grip tighten, but the ground beneath her feet was no longer horizontal. It rose, tilting at a forty-five-degree angle, separating her and Severin from Arveth, Mira, and the unconscious Caelan.
A canyon opened between them, a hundred-foot drop into a sea of pulsing, subterranean light.
Aelindra looked across the gap, seeing Mira reaching out, her mouth moving in a silent scream as the dust rose. On their side of the divide, the mountain continued to rise, carrying Aelindra and Severin higher into the thinning air, away from their guides, away from their protection.
And from the glowing depths of the new canyon, a sound rose. Not a tap. Not a scrape.
A roar.
The Range hadn't just noticed them. It was claiming them.