"You think it chose you?" Cerys hissed. "Without me, that flame will consume you, child."
Her voice cracked at the edges, not afraid, but straining against control.
She didn't hesitate. Didn't breathe. She ran like the stone beneath her would vanish if she didn't.
It wasn't Cerys's command that pushed her to flee. It was that flicker of opening, of defiance. Scriv had taken the hit. She saw him break the rules he'd once died keeping, just to give her a chance. And something inside her, the part shaped by fire and something older, moved. Not for vengeance. Not for victory. Just survival. Just to make his effort mean something. She bolted down the corridor, heart hammering like a wardrum.
As her legs moved, the fire inside her surged and as it stirred, her limbs changed. Her fingers sharpened, shoulders drew back. Her stride lengthened.
Claws, faint and curved, shimmered at the tips of her fingers.
But as she turned corners, fled farther into the dark, those traces began to fade. The transformation receded, pulled inward, as if the Wyrmheart did not wish to be seen or spent.
Vaults cracked. Ash poured from the walls. The dead stirred—slow and staggered. They whispered. Names. Oaths. One skeletal hand snatched her ankle. She screamed, stumbled—another grasped her arm, then another. It felt like drowning, pulled from all sides by the dead. Panic surged. Fire burst from her palms, a crackling arc that flared across the tombs. She didn't wait to see if it worked. She ran.
She slipped, collided with walls. Her vision blurred with dust and pressure. She could hear her own pulse again—throbbing inside her ears like a countdown. Her side throbbed. Her ribs ground with every breath. But she kept going, teeth clenched, driven more by fear than resolve.
A knight in melted plate stirred as she passed. It whispered:
"Hold the Spire. Hold the line."
She didn't strike it. There was a stillness in the knight's whisper that cut through her panic. A memory half-formed stirred in her chest. She ran, more afraid of the fire than the things behind her.
But the vault shook.
Skeleton's head snapped up. He hissed through clenched teeth, grabbed Lyra by the wrist, and yanked her back.
"Move," he snapped. "Now."
A ripple of power cut through the corridor. Shadows writhed. Skeleton's eye sockets snapped up.
"There," he growled, already moving. "He's manifesting now, left of the pillar."
A moment later, an undead priest stepped through a split in the air, his skeletal form wrapped in bone-stitched robes, the hiss of runes clinging to him like ash. A vertebrae-chain coiled in his grasp, twitching like a leash dragged from the dark.
Scriv was already moving. He snatched a rusted halberd from a crumbled weapon rack nearby, muttering more to himself than to her, "Always the same damned spot. Predictable bastard."
The air cracked as priest manifested fully, skeletal form glowing with unholy sigils. "Fugitives, I Veynir will not allow." He intoned, voice cracking like old stonework. "You were never meant to leave this vault alive."
With a grunt, Skeleton surged forward, too fast for someone half-assembled and drove the halberd into undead midsection just as the priest raised his hand.
The halberd struck deep into Veynir's side, bone cracking with a sound like dry ice shattering. He reeled—but before Skeleton could move again, Veynir's hand lashed out. Fingers like iron hooks slammed into Scriv's ribs, flinging him sideways into a wall. The impact crumpled him in a tangle of bones.
"Scriv order to run!" Scriv shouted, grabbing Lyra by the arm and dragging her through a broken arch.
They ran.
Behind them, Veynir howled, arcane light pulsing around his frame as he gave chase. "This rebellion is not prophecy," he hissed. "It is disorder. And I will excise it like rot."
Scriv shouted, "Do something!" His voice cracked with desperation.
"I don't... I don't know what to do!" Lyra cried. Her feet skidded, slipping on cracked stone.
"Then stop thinking!" Scriv barked. "It's not a riddle, just move!"
She stopped cold.
Scriv was crumpled behind her. Veynir was gaining. The heat curled under her ribs, pressing outward like it wanted to break free.
She turned back, not in fear, but because she couldn't let it happen again. Not like this. Not while he lay broken.
Lyra stepped forward. Just once. Just enough to put herself between them.
"I said stop," she muttered. The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Her body moved before her mind caught up. The fire raced down her arms. It scorched her skin. One hand blistered, red and raw before the fire ever left her fingers.
The flame leapt without her.
Fear caught in her throat. Her thoughts scattered. The fire wasn't listening, it was pushing, too fast, too wild.
Heat surged up her arms like it wanted to tear its way out. Veynir was almost on top of her now, reaching with one skeletal hand, fingers already closing around her arm. The pain was instant, pressure like iron clamps crushing bone.
"No—no, no—" she whispered, and for a heartbeat she saw Scriv, right beside her, and realized she couldn't stop it.
It ripped through the air, severing his grip and hurling him backward in a spiral of scorched bone and robes. It wasn't strength. It was panic. It didn't care who was too close.
A shockwave rippled through the corridor, blasting both her and Scriv off their feet. They slammed into opposite walls, then tumbled through a crumbling side corridor in a storm of firelight and rubble.
The dust settled.
Veynir's path was scorched, but he still advanced, singed but intact, smoke clung to him, trailing from cracked bone like rot that refused to die. His sigils burned hotter now, pulsing with each step. He did not run. He walked, with ritual precision.
His hand flexed, conjuring a second pulse of necrotic light. "Your soul is unsealed. And I will suture it with ash."
But Lyra and Scriv were gone, the wall between them fractured.
Behind the rubble, something hissed.
Veynir's voice rasped through the rubble, closer than it should have been. "You can run, little flame. But we are not finished."
A rasp tore from her throat as she pushed herself off the cracked floor. The stone was still warm, blackened at the edges. She turned her head. Scriv lay nearby, bones twisted, barely holding shape. He was moving. Barely. She'd done that. That wasn't power, it was damage. The fire had answered panic. Not her. She didn't ask if he was okay. She couldn't. Not when her hands still tingled with fire, and her mouth still tasted like smoke and blood.
It didn't answer her. It answered itself. She didn't know how long she had before it stopped asking her permission.
"I said improvise, not self-destruct," he muttered. His tone was dry, but beneath it was something raw... Fear that she wouldn't stop next time. She coughed, chest tight and aching. The silence didn't feel like safety.
A hand grabbed her wrist.
"Third rung's cracked," said Scriv. "Watch your step."
Lyra turned. He was scorched, patched together with soulcloth. One arm wasn't his. But he moved.
"Cerys scattered me, not erased me. Took a bit of reassembly. It hurts, putting yourself back together. I've had worse mornings."
He led her through a narrow shaft. Wind howled above.
"Why do you help me?" she asked.
Scriv clicked his jaw in irritation, a sound somewhere between a scoff and a creak. He wiped dust from his foreheadless brow as if the gesture meant anything anymore.
"Because I'm tired," he said, jaw tight. "Tired of lying to myself..."
Scriv was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed and tapped the stone with the tip of his broom-handle, out of habit more than purpose.
"You fell. No ward flared. Just a hole and a headache."
He jabbed a finger toward the shaft. "That's your way out. Not right, but it's open."
"High Priest long ago broke the wrong rules. The ones we built on."
He pushed a cracked door open with more force than necessary.
"This wasn't part of my job," he muttered. "I mop blood, not guide disasters through tunnels." He jabbed a finger toward the shaft.
"Who are you?"
"Scryvallan Rennec," he said. "Quillwright. Vault scribe. Whatever title they didn't burn."
Lyra blinked. "That name's on the village gate."
"Still standing?" he said. "Small miracle."
He shoved her toward the light.
"They're coming. Can't hold them. That tunnel's open. Crawl through it and don't look back."
She hauled herself upward, boots slipping on loose stone. The shaft was steep, a ribcage of broken stone and twisted handholds, barely wide enough to squeeze through. Dust funneled downward like breath exhaled from a corpse. But she climbed too fast. The ground trembled, then shifted. Her foot slid. Her body tilted. She tried to grab hold but stone broke away. She turned her head, reaching back toward Scriv...
Scriv still standing at its edge, one arm outstretched, watching her fall.
Veynir's hand wrapped around Scriv's skull. Then a crunch.
Bone snapped.
Her breath caught. Her fingers slipped. All the sound drained but the one that broke him. She didn't scream. Couldn't. The world tilted, and she fell.
The crunch echoed with her as she fell, louder than her breath.