Chapter 291
Atasha’s POV
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“What are you doing!?” I asked, shoving Xylas’s hand away as if I could force the mountain itself to undo what it had just done. “Cassian is in there!”
The King did not flinch. He caught my wrist before I could turn back and start clawing at the rubble like a madwoman, his grip firm enough to stop me, not gentle enough to soothe me.
“Stop,” he said.
I yanked harder. Anger flooded me so fast that it made my vision narrow. “Do not tell me to stop. That is your brother.”
His jaw tightened. Blood had dried at the corner of his mouth, and his chest still rose with a strain that told me my healing had not made him whole, not the way it made most men whole. He looked past me once, toward the sealed breach, and when his gaze returned to mine it carried something colder than grief.
“Cassian is alive,” he said.
“Alive,” I repeated, voice shaking. I knew he was alive. “You saw what happened. You saw the wall collapse. You saw him disappear into that-”
“I saw enough,” he cut in, his grip tightened again when I tried to move. “If you go back there now, you will not save him. You will only add another body to whatever this place is.”
My throat burned. “You are talking like you do not care.”
His eyes flashed. “Do not confuse control with indifference.”
I stared at him, breathing hard, and when he did not let me go my anger turned sharper, ugly with panic. “Then what are you doing, Xylas. Because it looks like you are choosing to leave him.”
“I am choosing to keep you alive,” he said, and then his voice dropped, rough with something I had not heard from him often. “Because Cassian can survive things you cannot. I can survive things you cannot. Grace cannot. You cannot. So if you run back into that chamber, you die, and then Cassian dies anyway because he will tear himself apart trying to pull you back
out.”
My mouth opened, but no words came at first.
“Cassian is alive,” he repeated, and this time he glanced toward my chest as if he knew exactly where my bond sat beneath my skin. “You feel it. You would be screaming differently if you did not.”
My fingers curled against my palm, nails biting. I hated that he was right. I hated that the bond had answered me even through dust and falling stone, that it had given me certainty while my eyes had been blind.
“But they might not be,” he added.
The shift in his tone made my stomach drop.
I frowned. “What do you mean, they might not be.”
“Look around,” he said.
The command snapped through me hard enough that I finally did.
Only then did I realize I was not standing in the same cramped tunnel we had been dragged through. The rubble, the sealed breach, and the narrow mouth of that chamber were behind us now, but the space we had stumbled into was wider, open
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Chapter 291
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enough that rain air moved through it, open enough that the ceiling rose higher and the rock curved away into a natural basin like the mountain had carved out a pocket for something it wanted to keep hidden.
A clearing.
Not an outside clearing with trees and sky, but a hollow within stone that felt too intentional to be natural.
My gaze lifted.
In the center of the clearing, floating above the ground as if gravity had been instructed to ignore it, was a white stone the size of a human head. It was smooth, almost polished, and it hung there without chains or support, rotating slowly like it was suspended in a current only it could feel.
Behind it was darkness that moved.
It looked like smoke, except smoke did not swirl like that, and smoke did not swallow light the way this did. It rolled in on itself in a circular motion, thick and endless, like a tear in the world that had learned how to breathe.
My skin crawled.
The pressure was not as crushing as it had been near the breach Cassian had blocked, but it was present, pressing at the back of my throat and tightening my lungs in warning.
My eyes dropped.
My blood turned cold.
Below the floating stone, half buried in the ground as if the earth had softened and then hardened again around them, were bodies.
People.
Not strangers.
Not soldiers I could ignore as distant casualties.
My father.
Celeste.
And several others I recognized from Nightfall, men whose faces had been part of my past whether I wanted them or not.
They were embedded up to their waists and chests, some deeper than others, their limbs trapped at angles that made it look as if they had struggled before the ground took them. Their faces were pale, drawn, mouths parted as if breathing had become a choice their bodies could no longer afford. The stone beneath them was stained darker in patches, as if it had been drinking from them for a long time.
It looked like the ground was sucking them dry.
My throat tightened so hard that I swallowed air instead of breath.
I took one step forward without realizing it, and the King’s hand slammed against my arm again.
“Atasha,” he said.
My voice came out rough. “They are here.”
“Yes,” he said. “And now you understand what I meant.”
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Chapter 291
I stared at Celeste’s face. Her eyes were closed. Her hair was tangled. Her skin looked gray around the mouth.
For a moment, rage surged up so hot that it drowned everything else.
Then the ground shook.
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Not the small vibration of loose stone settling, but a deeper movement that made the floating white stone tremble in place. The dark swirl behind it pulsed, as if responding to the tremor like a throat responding to a cough.
A sound followed.
A wet, tearing sound that came from inside that black swirl.
I lifted my head slowly.
Something pushed through the darkness.
A limb first, too long, too thick at the joint, covered in hardened plates that looked like bone. Then a head that did not resemble any beast I had seen outside the walls, because it did not look like a creature that belonged to the living world. It dragged itself out as if it was being birthed from smoke, the air around it rippling as it emerged.
My eyes widened.
I did not move fast enough.
The King did.
He seized me by the shoulder and hooked his other arm around Grace’s limp body, and then he shoved us backward toward the narrow path we had come from, hauling us into cover before my mind could catch up with what my instincts were screaming.
Another beast pushed out of the smoke.
Then another.
Then two more.
They did not pause at the edge as if orienting themselves. They spilled out in a staggered rush, landing on stone with heavy impacts that made the clearing shake again. Some crawled. Some dropped and rose. One lifted its head and released a sound that scraped through the air like it was calling the others to hunt.
My hand flew to my mouth to stop the gasp that wanted to escape.
This must be the core!
And the white stone floating above it felt like a tooth, or a key, or the center of whatever mechanism kept this place alive.
Our earlier assessment had been right.
It was feeding
And right now it was feeding on my father, on Celeste, on the Nightfall people embedded in the ground like offerings
We stumbled deeper into a rocky alcove that served as cover, the King for ing us behind a curve in stone where the clearing was still visible through a narrow gap but the beasts would not see us unless they came close
I pressed my back against the wall, heart hammering so violently it made my ribs ache.
The King lowered Grace carefully, keeping her from hitting her head on the stone, then crouched beside me, eyes fixed on
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Chapter 291
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“In the next four hours,” he said, voice low. “If I am right, beasts will surge out of that place in waves. They will not stop until the core has drained enough or until something interrupts the flow.”
My jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. “Four hours,” I repeated, my face turning grim.
“Our earlier calculations were not wrong. We only did not understand the scale,” he said.
I swallowed, trying to breathe quietly, trying not to let my panic make noise.
We were hiding, but we were too close to the core. I could hear claws scraping, bodies dragging, heavy impacts as they landed and moved. I could hear a low chorus of snarls and the occasional high cry of something newly born into the world that did not belong here.
Then the cave shook again.
This time it was stronger, like a chain reaction had begun and the mountain was warning us it could not hold forever. Pebbles rolled across the ground. Dust fell in thin streams from cracks above. Somewhere in the clearing, a beast roared, and more answered, their voices overlapping until it sounded like the stone itself was vibrating with hunger.
The surge began.
I let out a slow breath, more exhausted than relieved, because even breathing felt like it cost something in this place.
And that was when the pressure returned.
It was not the distant weight from the core. It was closer, tighter, as if something had entered the small pocket of air where we were hiding. The hairs on my arms lifted. My stomach tightened. My healing stirred again, restless and useless, like it wanted to shield me but could not find what to seal.
I turned my head.
Grace was sitting up.
Her movements were too smooth for someone who had been unconscious, too controlled for someone who had been dragged across stone. Her lips curved into a smile that did not reach her cheeks.
My body froze.
Because when she lifted her gaze to mine, her eyes were no longer Grace’s.,
They were red.
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