Chapter 166
Jiselle
The scroll was still clutched in Nate’s hand when we reached the others.
I didn’t need to say anything–Bastain saw our faces and knew.
He stood slowly, eyes sharpening behind a half–unrolled map of the eastern ridgelines. “What happened?”
Nate handed him the scroll. No words. Just movement. Bastain unsealed it with a careful hand and unfolded the parchment.
The moment he saw the sigils, he stopped breathing.
His fingers traced the edges–slow, reverent. One emblem glowed faintly in the firelight: the Gatekeepers‘ empty circle, once a symbol of balance. The other was sharper, meaner, carved like a wound–the Academy’s High Council seal, iron–branded over the first.
But what mattered wasn’t the symbols.
It was the fact that they weren’t side by side.
They were fused.
Burned together like some unholy crest.
Max shifted beside me, the torchlight catching on the fading
Scar
above his collarbone. “That’s not a warning,” he said, voice grim. “It’s a claim.”
Bastain nodded slowly. “This isn’t a call to negotiate. The Academy… it’s already fallen.”
A strange hollowness opened in my chest.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Like some part of me had always known it would end this way.
Eva stepped forward, brushing her fingertips across the parchment. Her breath caught. “They’ve rethreaded the leyline.”
Everyone turned to her.
“What does that mean?” Ethan asked.
Eva’s eyes stayed locked on the scroll, but her voice was steady. “The leyline hasn’t broken. It’s been bent–rerouted to pulse through the Academy’s foundations. They’ve made it the center.”
Max cursed softly. “And we’re still standing out here like it’s not already begun.”
Nate’s jaw flexed, but his voice was calm. “So we go”
“No,” I said. Not loudly. Just enough to make the world pause.
They turned to me.
I met every eye. One by one.
“We don’t march down the main pass. We’ll be spotted, flanked, slaughtered before we breach the outer wards, If they’ve taken the leyline, they’ve taken the lookout points.”
1/4
Bastain raised an eyebrow. “You have another way?”
“Yes.” 1 exhaled. “The Ashroot tunnels.”
Silence.
Eva blinked. “You mean the evacuation routes beneath the cliffs?”
“They weren’t just evacuation tunnels,” I said. “They were Sovereign–built. Designed as hidden arteries for when power had to move undetected. The Academy never officially closed them.”
“You think they’re still passable?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s our only chance.”
Bastain rolled the map tighter. “Then we go. At dawn.”
“No.” My voice didn’t shake. “We go now.”
Another beat of silence. Then a nod. No arguments.
But later–when the camp began to mobilize, when packs were shouldered and weapons distributed, when Bastain began speaking to his inner circle in hushed tones–I slipped away.
The moon was low, dragging violet threads across the treeline. I found the same stone I’d always gone to when I needed clarity. I sat. I breathed.
I waited.
And Nate found me.
He didn’t say anything. Just dropped to the ground beside me, our shoulders brushing.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. The wind shifted. The stars wheeled. My thoughts refused to quiet.
Finally, I said, “I thought I’d feel stronger. Knowing who I am. What I carry. But all I feel is borrowed.”
Nate didn’t look away from the trees. “Then make it yours.”
I turned toward him.
He didn’t flinch. “Burn the script,” he said. “Write the ending.”
I closed my eyes.
The ache in my chest didn’t lessen. But it steadied.
“I’m afraid,” I said. “That if I claim it… I won’t come back.”
He reached over, took
my
hand.
“You already came back,” he whispered. “Every time. So if you don’t… I’ll come find you. No matter what world it takes.”
My eyes burned, but I didn’t cry. Not yet.
We sat like that until Bastain returned, nodding once to signal it was time.
We moved fast.
The outer border passed behind us in silence.
214
Chapter 166
Nate, Eva, Bastain, Ethan, Max, and I—we were the point team. Others would follow later, guided through the cliffs if we broke through first.
The Ashroot tunnels were nestled behind a wall of false stone, camouflaged with decades of moss and a lattice of silver bark trees that never bloomed. I placed my hand on the symbol carved into the base of the arch. Flame pooled under my palm, then sank into the stone.
The wall split.
The tunnel opened.
And the air shifted.
Not stale.
Alive.
Like something had been waiting.
We stepped into the dark.
Our flames lit the path. The tunnels curved and dipped, ancient roots woven through the ceilings like ribs. The walls bore carvings–faded marks, names long erased. I passed one that felt familiar. I didn’t stop.
“Jiselle,” Eva whispered behind me. “Something’s wrong.”
I turned. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes had gone distant. Glazed. Her hands trembled
at
her sides.
“I feel it again,” she said. “The Gate. Not the pulse. The presence.”
Bastain moved closer, reaching into his cloak. He pulled a relic from the Sentinel order–a thin disc of obsidian etched with a single eye at the center.
He pressed it to Eva’s palm.
She flinched.
Then froze.
Then gasped.
The vision hit her like lightning.
She stumbled backward, eyes rolling white. Max caught her just before she fell, cradling her head.
“Not flame,” she whispered. “Steel. A blade she knows. A brother’s scream. A fall too fast-”
“What does that mean?” Nate demanded.
But Eva wasn’t speaking to us anymore.
Her lips moved, fragmented.
“I saw it. The Academy burning. From the inside out. Not siege. Not attack. Detonation. The stones are screaming-”
Her eyes snapped open.
“There’s someone else”
We all froze.
3/4
Chapter 166
“Not Kael,” she whispered. “Someone standing at the altar. Sovereign robes. Masked, Waiting,”
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
She clutched Bastain’s arm. “But it wasn’t Kael. And the Gate… it’s obeying them.”
A chill settled into my bones.
Not fear.
Confirmation.
Because deep in my ribs, the rune pulsed again–three times, like a countdown.
I looked at Bastain. “Can we get to the south hall entrance through these tunnels?”
He nodded, jaw tight.
“Then we don’t stop,” I said. “We run.”
And we did.
The pulse of the leyline thrummed beneath our feet, and I felt the Gate watching again.
But this time… it wasn’t waiting.
It was listening.
And what it heard was footsteps.
Ours.
Coming home.
8138
AD
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
