Lyra slammed into the ground. Pain shot up her spine. Dust and darkness swallowed her scream.
Bone shards tore at her palms as she hit the rubble. Dust clawed her throat, burning her lungs. She hacked out a cough, trying to push herself up.
The silence pressed down, thick and heavy.
Rot here, gutter-rat, it seemed to whisper.
Grinding her teeth, she dragged herself forward, elbows and knees scraping raw against the rubble. Anger flared. She grabbed the nearest thing, a snapped length of bone and hurled it into the dark. It clattered hard against something unseen.
A faint flicker answered, dim and sputtering. She froze, heart pounding. Crawling closer, she brushed away shards and debris until her fingers touched it: a shard of lightning glass, cracked but still alive, pulsing faint against the cold stone.
"Storm-cursed shit," she rasped, coughing up grit.
She sprawled across cracked stone, half-buried in broken ribs and splintered bones. Blood welled from her wrists where the knight's grip had torn her skin raw.
She pushed onto one elbow, grimacing.
Her hand closed around snapped ribs, cold and brittle under her fingers. Skeletons surrounded her, collapsed where they'd died. Rotted clothes clung to them like second skin. Empty eye sockets stared through the dark.
Lyra shuddered and wiped her mouth with a filthy hand.
Her chest locked tight. She sucked in the dusty air in sharp, broken gasps. The dark felt alive, thick with the stink of old death. She gripped the shard until her knuckles went white, the faint flicker of light the only thing keeping her from losing it completely.
The shard barely lit the wreckage around her, casting sick light over the dead. She forced her battered body forward. Chains scraped against the stone. Bones shifted under her boots.
She gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright, every joint screaming in protest. Her legs shook under her weight. "Rot you all," she muttered, stumbling over a twisted skeleton.
The shard pulsed, throwing jagged shadows up the broken walls.
Lyra pressed her forehead against its cold surface. It throbbed once in answer, weak and dying.
Stone above her sagged, groaning. Debris rained down, slamming into the rubble nearby.
She flinched low, heart hammering.
One breath slower and she'd be under it.
"Great," she rasped, spitting dust from her mouth.
The air hung heavy, thick with the stink of old death and stone rot. Lyra hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder. Part of her mind whispered to find a way back up, to scramble for the surface but what waited up there wasn't much better. Knights. Chains. Worse.
She stayed frozen, not sure if staying put was any smarter. The shard flickered suddenly, its dim light choking out. Fear slammed into her chest. With a growl, she smacked the side of the stone with her palm. It sparked weakly, light coughing back to life.
In the corner of the dying light, she spotted a doorway... a frame gnawed by time, storm-lines etched deep. Beyond it, a vast, shadowed chamber loomed, hinting at the chapel that once stood proud
The air beyond smelled different heavier, sour with old incense and stone dust. The faint creak of shifting beams carried through the dark.
A cold draft breathed against her cheek.
Hope flickered stupid, dangerous but she pushed herself forward anyway.
This wasn't a cellar. It wasn't some abandoned vault. What is this place? she thought, unease gnawing at her gut. No plan, and now the dark pressing in from every side.
She stepped carefully, shard held low, scanning what little the weak light revealed. Broken shelves leaned against cracked walls. Papers rotted into sludge under her boots. Fragments of rusted lanterns and smashed furniture littered the edges.
"An office?" she muttered, voice barely more than a breath. Her hand brushed a toppled desk, the wood splintered and black with age.
Faint carvings caught her eye, a broken sun, a pair of hollow wings half-scraped away but still clinging to the shattered stone. Symbols she'd seen once or twice in the other parts of the hill.
Lyra shook her head and turned back the way she came, scanning for the only doorway she had spotted when she fell. Her boots scuffed over shattered bones and scattered rubble.
She tightened her grip on the shard, wiped the sweat and grime from her brow with the back of her sleeve, and moved toward it.
A forgotten place, buried with the rest of Seresthos. Lyra hesitated, a sick thought twisting in her chest. Would she end up the same? Left to rot for centuries, just another broken body lost under the rubble? Her grip on the shard tightened. She needed to move. Standing still would only make her part of the ruin.
She tightened her grip, faint warmth bled into her numb fingers.
The Wyrmwatch wouldn't care if they found her. Whether in chains or in pieces didn't matter to them.
First rule: survive.
She staggered away, the shard clutched tight in her hand. Its light barely held—shuddering, shrinking. It flickered again, struggling like a drowning spark. She cursed under her breath, fear pressing harder against her ribs. If it died for good, she'd be blind in a world built to bury her alive.
"Damn it, you were working for centuries! Why now?" she hissed, shaking it in frustration.
Gritting her teeth against the pain in her ribs and torn hands, Lyra stooped and snatched the shard from the ground. Cracks spidered deeper across its surface, the weak glow flickering wildly. She hissed through her teeth as every movement sent fire through her battered body, cradling the broken glass tightly in her hand.
The silence thickened as Lyra dragged herself deeper into the dark.
Around her, bones shifted under her boots. She froze for a moment, skin crawling like tiny spiders were creeping up her neck. She felt watched, an old, ugly feeling, sharp enough to set her teeth on edge.
The space opened up around her, wider than the tight rubble she'd crawled through. The air felt colder here, open and empty. Her boots scuffed stone worn smooth by forgotten prayers. Broken pews and shattered icons littered the edges. This must have been a church, once, before everything rotted and caved in.
A child's skeleton curled around a rusted blade. Priests still knelt at crumbled altars, robes rotted into their spines. Some skulls fused into one another.
Lyra swallowed hard. The air stank of rot, mold, and something older like a grave left open too long.
She moved slowly. The floor gave under her in places, soft with rot. Every step carried the weight of a place meant to be forgotten, but she pushed forward, jaw clenched, ribs aching with every shallow breath.
At the edge of the shard's flickering glow, she saw a circle of robed corpses, their hands locked together in prayer.
Their jaws sagged open, frozen mid-scream, as if whatever had killed them hadn't given them the mercy of silence.
Between them, a black stone sat, cracked and damp. It looked like it had been buried and forgotten, forced back up by the slow crush of rubble and time.
As a thief, her first urge was to grab it all the dagger gleaming in the withered hand was too tempting, too easy. But all she truly wanted was to run, to get out of this grave before she became another body.
Her body throbbed with pain. Every breath hurt. Her fingers twitched toward the blade even as her mind screamed to leave it alone.
A whisper scratched at her ears for the first time. "Take it. Take it."
Her fingers twitched with fear. A cold sweat broke across her back. The whisper curled into her ear, sick and soft, making her stomach turn. She gritted her teeth, breathing hard, fighting the pull. She wanted to grab the blade, wanted it bad, but every part of her screamed it was a trap. Her hands shook, not from hunger, but from the deep, ugly fear twisting in her gut.
Gold glinted from a withered hand, the hilt of a dagger, inlaid with stormglass veins. Lyra stared, breathing hard, heart pounding in her ears. The whisper slithered again into her mind.
She flinched, stumbled back a step.
"Who's there?" she hissed into the dark, voice cracking low in her throat. Her fingers tightened around the flickering shard, sweat slick on her palms. Nothing answered but the thick, suffocating silence.
Lyra staggered forward, hand outstretched, then froze.
The corpse's fingers twitched once, a tiny, stiff jerk, like something deep inside it had tried and failed to wake up. Lyra stumbled back, heart hammering, as deeper in the dark something heavier shifted, dragging itself across stone.
She stumbled back, heart battering her ribs.
The lightning shard sputtered, its broken surface coughing out frantic, dying shadows that barely pushed back the dark.
A long, slow dragging sound.
No breath. No voice. Only movement.
Panic surged, sharp and wild.
Lyra slammed her shoulder into the nearest pile of rubble. Pain exploded down her ribs and through her arm. She staggered, gasping, nearly collapsing under the blow. Gritting her teeth, she clawed at the wreckage with numb fingers, half-crawling, half-falling forward, desperate to break free.
Rotting books burst apart under her boots.
Mildewed banners disintegrated in her fists.
Behind the ruined bookshelf...
A door. Half-buried.
She hesitated only a heartbeat.
The dragging sound grew louder.
No choice.
She hurled herself against the wreckage, pain flashing up her bruised arms. The door groaned, stone scraping stone.
The tunnel smelled of wet earth and rust. A thin, cold draft kissed her face as she stumbled deeper.
Beyond... blackness.
The shard's last light guttered.
From behind her, in the tomb's gut, something stood up.
Lyra didn't look back. She couldn't. The air behind her shifted as if something huge had just uncoiled from the stone. Every instinct she had screamed to run.
She stumbled into the tunnel, barely keeping her feet. Pain tore through her ribs and battered arms. Dragging herself deeper into the dark because there was no other choice.