The catacombs breathed.
Not like a living thing—nothing so kind—but with the slow, pressurised exhale of something buried too long beneath stone and regret. The air was damp, metallic, thick with the scent Kaelen had known all his life: wraithroot. Old rot. Bitter iron. The smell that clung to skin and memory, no matter how hard you scrubbed.
The roots crawled along the tunnel walls like veins pressed against pale flesh, dried and cracked at the surface, faintly warm beneath the stone. Their sap had pooled in shallow hollows along the floor, dull and dark, reflecting nothing. Kaelen's boot came down hard in one of them as he ran, nearly slipping as the slick warmth soaked into the leather.
"Elara—don't stop," he hissed, dragging his sister forward by the wrist.
Behind them, boots hammered against cobblestone. Six sets. Too even. Too patient.
They weren't chasing in panic. They were hunting.
Kaelen's lungs burned as the tunnel narrowed, his breath scraping raw against his throat. He could hear Elara struggling to keep up, her smaller steps faltering on the uneven stone. She was only seven. Too young to understand why the dark itself felt hostile tonight, why the island seemed to be holding its breath.
"How much further?" she gasped. "My feet hurt."
"If we stop, they'll hurt worse," Kaelen said, forcing steadiness into his voice. He scooped her up without slowing, her arms winding tight around his neck. She smelled like damp cloth and fear.
The catacombs forked ahead—left and right, both swallowed by shadow. No markings. No mercy.
Kaelen's mind flashedbackwardsd, unbidden.
Chains snapping tight. Silver sickles flashing in torchlight. His father's shout—cut off too soon.
The night they'd taken him had smelled like th, it'ss too.
He'd been veinweaving then, roots bursting from the ground in violent arcs as he tried to keep the cultists back. Kaelen remembered the way the silver blades had sunk into the living vines, carving through them as if the root itself recoiled from the metal. Remembered the chains wrapping around his father's arms, his throat, dragging him down as the blue light beneath his skin flared in defiance.
"Run," his father had roared. "Don't look back."
Kaelen had looked back.
He always would.
The sound of mocking laughter snapped him back to the present.
"How much further, little roots?" a voice cooed from behind them. "You can't outrun devotion."
Kaelen chose to leave.
The tunnel tightened, the ceiling lowering, the walls pressing close. The cultists' footsteps split—three continuing after them, the others peeling away. His gamble bought him seconds. Nothing more.
The passage ended abruptly.
Stone. Cold. Unyielding.
Kaelen skidded to a halt, heart slamming against the back of his ribs where it pulsed, hot and wrong. Elara whimpered.
The pouch at his waist felt impossibly heavy.
"No," Elara whispered as she saw what he was reaching for. "Brother—"
Kaelen pulled out the shriveled vittleberry. It looked dead. Ordinary. He could already taste it.
Metallic. Bitter. Like blood left too long in the mouth.
"Give me one too," she said softly.
His throat tightened. "No. This corruption isn't meant for young souls."
The cultists stepped into view, chains dragging, sickles catching faint light. One pushed blond curls back from his forehead, smiling as if he'd found something amusing.
"Well," he said. "Entertaining."
"They are abominations," another muttered. "We shouldn't speak to them."
"Relax," the first replied. "They're just children."
Kaelen bit down.
The juice flooded his mouth, sharp and burning. It slid down his throat like liquid metal, and then—
Power.
Agony followed it, immediate and overwhelming. His muscles seized as something ancient surged awake inside him. Blue light ignited beneath his skin, veins along his arms and neck flaring bright, his heart at the centre of his back pulsing hard enough to hurt. The roots along the wall responded sluggishly, glowing faint green as if roused from sleep.
Kaelen felt taller. Sharper. His vision snapped into painful clarity—the etched word PURGE carved into silver blades, the shallow breaths of the men advancing, the way their hands trembled despite their faith.
He moved the root.
It tore free from the stone with a wet, grinding sound, lashing toward the cultists. One screamed as it wrapped around his leg, yanking him down. Another swung his chain, slicing through the vine, silver biting deep.
Kaelen staggered as the power ebbed too fast. His veins darkened, the blue dimming, poison creeping in.
A flash of light bloomed beside him.
Elara.
She stood with her hands outstretched, glowing red-blue, her small face set with fierce resolve. Sap burst from the root at her feet, corrosive and hissing as it struck stone.
"Why?" Kaelen choked.
"If we don't," she said, voice trembling, "they'll take us."
The other cultists returned. Too many. The last thing Kaelen felt was the power abandoning him, his body shrinking back into itself as darkness rushed in.
Kaelen woke to chanting.
It seeped into him before consciousness did—low, rhythmic, spoken in a cadence that felt older than language. His head throbbed, body leaden, veins aching as if they had been wrung dry. When he tried to move, iron bit into his wrists.
Chains.
His vision swam as he forced his eyes open.
The chamber was vast—not wide, but deep, carved downward into the island's bones. The ceiling vanished into shadow, mist clinging close to the ground in slow, crawling currents. Three towering spires dominated the space, rising from the stone like broken fangs. They glowed faintly, not with rootlight, but with a dull, stubborn sheen that repelled the wraithroot entirely. The stone around them was bare. Clean. Wrong.
Void ore.
Kaelen felt it immediately.
The pull in his veins weakened, as though something fundamental had been dampened. The blue pulse at his back flickered, unsteady, his body suddenly heavier, slower.
He realised he was bound to the right spire.
Elara.
Panic surged as he twisted his head. She was tied to the middle one, small and terrifyingly still, her dark hair matted to her face. To the left—
His father.
Unconscious. Pale. Breathing shallowly.
Kaelen's chest tightened until it hurt.
The cult knelt in perfect symmetry before them, dozens of figures dressed in white, knees pressed to the stone, backs bent until their foreheads touched the ground. Their chanting filled the chamber, echoing off the walls in layered waves that made the air feel thick and alive.
Three figures stood at the front.
They rose together.
Each picked up a blade laid carefully before them—not sickles this time, but ritual knives, long and narrow, silver etched with sigils Kaelen did not recognise. The man in the centre stepped forward, his voice carrying easily through the chamber.
"Three souls," he said calmly, reverently, "bound too closely to the blight. Tonight, we cleanse the island. Tonight, we ease her pain."
"For the spires," he called.
"For the spires," the chamber answered, the words slamming into Kaelen like a verdict.
The cultists in black moved first.
They approached with deliberate care, as if afraid of spilling something precious. Kaelen clenched his jaw as cold metal kissed his skin—thin cuts along his forearms, precise and practised. He hissed, muscles straining uselessly against the chains as warmth spilt downward, caught carefully in waiting chalices.
Elara made a small sound beside him.
Kaelen turned his head toward her, heart pounding, forcing himself to stay quiet. He could not give them the satisfaction.
They moved behind him next.
Two shallow cuts beneath his shoulder blades, curved like crescents beneath the faint blue glow of his veins. His heart throbbed harder in response, pulsing against the void ore's dampening presence, each beat slower than the last.
The chanting grew louder.
Closer.
His vision blurred at the edges. He thought of his mother again—not her death this time, but her voice, steady and warm as she braided Elara's hair, telling them the island was alive, that it listened.
Be kind to it, she'd said. And be kinder to each other.
The knife pressed to his back.
Kaelen sucked in a breath that tasted of stone and blood and old air.
His last clear thought was not fear.
It was fury.
Then the blade drove home, and the chamber vanished into white.