Fifteen years ago…
Rathael kept one hand braced against the stone as they ascended the twisting hallway, the other hooked around his son's ankle. Kar sat astride his shoulders, the fingers of his small, warm hands tangled in his father's hair.
"Don't touch anything," Rath murmured up to the boy for the third time, "you're not supposed to be in here."
"I won't," Kar whispered back loudly. He then leaned forward, excitedly. "Which Uncles are here tonight?"
"Baric, and Darnael." Rath told him, careful to keep his voice low and even.
Other Guardians wouldn't approve of him bringing the boy up here, not so young. But Kar would devote his life to this chamber soon enough. Better he saw it now. Besides, it's not like the other Guardians of the Enclave shared in this burden. It was something only Rathael and his kin could truly understand.
They reached the outer entrance to the chamber, grand, curved double doors permanently blown open. The door's lower halves were encased in glowing white crystal. It wasn't just any crystal. This was Encryst. It was threaded with fine channels that caught what little light there was and returned it in a pale, internal glow.
The Encryst flowed out of the chamber and across the ground of the hallway in undulating sheets.
Kar sucked in a shallow, echoing, breath. "It's so pretty."
Rath stepped through, careful where he placed his feet. The chamber opened around them like an immense cathedral carved into the peak of this mountain. Rough-hewn columns—braced and wrapped by crystal flows—supported the fragmented ceiling above. At the heart of it all sat a central pool. From this distance, the Encryst covering its surface looked like ice.
The Source Pool—as it was known—was the root of what once gave life to their world, and now threatened it.
Set into the back wall of the chamber stood the five Causeways. They were massive stone archways, the elaborate lines carved into their surfaces still visible on the upper portions not encased by Encryst.
Four of those ancient portals stood dormant. The central one, however, glimmered faintly behind a thick, glacial wall that spanned from the floor up to the ceiling.
Along the floor, trapped beneath more Encryst flows, were the hundreds of figures—some human, others monstrous—that had battled before the threshold of that central Causeway long ago.
Kar went still on Rath's shoulders, his grip tightening. "Daddy," he breathed, the word softer than the dim light that suffused the chamber. "Are those… people?"
Rath's throat closed for a moment. From the first time his grandfather had brought him up here as a boy, those figures had made him uneasy, given him nightmares. Even now, he hated looking at their ceaseless shock and terror. He understood the history and necessity of their sacrifice, but it still felt wrong.
"Yes," he said. "They were."
"Are they dead?"
"I don't know." It was the only honest answer.
Kar stared, wide-eyed, at a woman with her head bowed, hair floating around her face in a frozen halo. She looked as if she'd been praying. Or begging.
"How did they—"
"That's enough for now, Karalinde Asenia." Rath said, his tone stern. "Eyes forward."
Kar's chin bumped Rath's head as he nodded. "Okay."
They crossed the chamber floor and headed towards the pool. His older brother Darnael stood near its edge, kneeling over an expansive fracture in the crystal floor there. He looked up as Rath approached, the light painting the hard planes of his face.
"You're late," he said.
Rath offered a rueful half-smile. "I brought help."
The man's gaze snapped to Kar. His jaw worked. His expression softened. Then he sighed through his nose. "You shouldn't have."
"It's time he saw things for himself." Rath said.
Kar waved, timid now that the immensity of this place had settled upon his tiny shoulders. "Hi, Uncle Dar."
His uncle didn't return the wave at first. He looked back to the cracks spidering across the crystal floor, then to the encased figures around them, before settling back on the pool. He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Just because grandad did it a certain way doesn't make it the best way," he said.
"Some traditions are worth keeping, though."
His brother rubbed a hand down his face. "Fine. But he stays out of the way. Doesn't go near the edge. And if anyone asks—"
"They won't." Rath said. He hoped not, anyway. "Where's Baric? I thought he was supposed to be on shift with you?"
"I sent him to get help."
"That bad, huh?" Rath asked, cringing inwardly. Bringing Kar here tonight had been poor timing.
Rath lowered his son from his shoulders, setting him carefully down behind him. The boy's boots squeaked faintly on the slick crystal.
"Stay there, and be still." He said. "Don't move."
Kar nodded so hard it was almost comical. "I will be so still."
Rath turned back to the pool's edge. The power beneath the Encryst—Valoría—rolled in slow, luminous currents. Most days Rath found comfort in it.
He followed his brother's gaze to the ugliest, and darkest feature within this chamber. The black Tendril.
It rose from the pool's center like some abyssal horror. A dagger pressed to the heart of their world, a never ceasing threat. Thick as a man's torso, ridged and twisted, it stabbed into the Source pool, pinning it in place. The Tendril was only the tip of a much greater root which snaked the length of the chamber, growing thicker and thicker the closer one followed it back to its origins beyond the glaciered off Causeway. The chamber's pale light slid off it and its root and was absorbed, not reflected.
That matte darkness made Rath's skin crawl. Thankfully, it wasn't exposed, but had been ensconced—imprisoned—in solid Encryst just as the Source pool had been.
Kar's voice came small from behind Rath. "Is that a tree?"
His uncle barked a short, humorless laugh. "No, that is not a tree, little one."
Rathael crouched next to his son, wrapping an arm around his slight shoulders, "It's… a wound," he said, choosing words that might land in a child's mind without breaking it. "Like a big splinter that's not supposed to be there."
"Can you pull it out?"
Rath swallowed. "We've tried."
Kar stared at the Tendril, then at the closest of the encased figures by the pool; a man, lying on his back with a wound in his chest.
"Are all these people…" Kar hesitated, "frozen because of that?"
"Yes," Rath said quietly. "It was an accident, but that thing had to be stopped, no matter what."
Kar's eyes shone, reflecting the Source. "Why didn't they run?"
"Sometimes," Rath said, "running isn't an option."
His brother cleared his throat, impatient. "You can teach later. I need your attention on this now."
He pointed to the crack he'd been working—a few spans long but deep. It ran toward the pool like a thin black vein.
Rath walked across the crystal flow toward his brother. It was slicker here, and the air tasted faintly metallic.
"This is new," Darnael said.
Rath's gaze tracked the crack. The line wasn't random. It was angled toward the Source and the dark Tendril, as if this was just a consequence of what originated there.
"Shift-walkers should've caught it," Rath murmured.
"They did," his brother said, voice tight. "It wasn't here at dawn."
Rath's stomach turned. Cracks didn't just appear like this. Not on their own. Not this quickly.
"Kar," Rath called without looking back. "You staying put?"
"Yes!" The answer came instantly.
Rath knelt beside his brother. "Let's patch this up."
They'd done this a thousand times before. Find the fracture. Focus. Coax the Encryst to remember. Rath pressed two fingers along the crack. He could feel the wrongness under it, a dark, festering hunger. A ravenous will to consume that echoed distantly from beyond.
"Ready?" his brother asked.
Rath drew a slow breath and centered himself. Focusing wasn't just a matter of will; it was alignment. The act of tuning all the jumbled noises inside of you into a single, cohesive note. Their unique, dual heritage gave he and the other members of the Asenia family multiple abilities. But the only one that mattered right now was that granted to them by their Seradin affinity to Potentía. All the Encryst in this chamber was made from it.
He attuned himself to the Encryst beneath their feet, and felt it answer, cool and bright, like a gently flowing stream. He pushed into that stream, drowning out all distractions.
The crystal shivered, then softened under his touch—not melting, not truly changing states, but listening. He shaped the fracture closed, coaxing both sides together until the crack began to narrow.
His brother worked in tandem, sealing it from the other end. Gradually, the fissure dwindled to a hairline, then to nothing.
Rath sighed in relief. Behind him, he heard a small scuff. Then another. He and Darnael both looked over.
Kar had edged up beside the pool and leaned too far over it. The surface wasn't flat—as it appeared to be from a distance—but rather sloped inwards toward the pool's center, where the frozen Tendril threatened.
"Karalinde," Rath said sharply. "Back up."
Kar startled, heel slipping on the slick crystal. For a heartbeat he windmilled, arms flailing. Then his foot slid out from under him, and he flopped onto the surface of the pool. He slid down the slight incline as if he'd been thrown onto ice.
Rath cursed, then lunged after his son, boots skidding.
The boy's small body headed straight for the Tendril, his arms scrabbling uselessly at the glassy surface. Rathael couldn't see Kar's face, but he heard him scream.
"Daddy!" The cry echoed thinly in the vast chamber.
Kar's hands slapped furiously on the surface and his momentum mercifully slowed. For an instant, it looked as if he had stopped altogether. Then the crystal beneath him—impossibly—spiderwebbed. A bright line flashed, then split, and the surface gave way with a sound like a bell being shattered.
Kar collapsed into light. The Source pool swallowing him up to the waist, then his chest, until even his head had disappeared.
Rath dropped to his belly and shoved himself forward across the crystal surface, his heart slamming rapidly within his chest. He reached the hole Kar had made and thrust his arms in desperately. His hand closed around Kar's wrist—so small—and he yanked him toward the surface.
The boy came up with a gasp, soaked not in water but in shimmering radiance that streamed off him in ribbons. It clung to his skin, bright and dark effervescence mingling, as if two warring entities were battling for dominion over Rathael's son.
Kar sobbed, chest heaving. His eyes flickered in his head, and then his little body went limp.
Rath dragged him backward, inch by inch, muscles burning. The broken edge of the Encryst biting into his forearms. "Hold on," Rath grunted, more to himself than Kar. "Hold on, hold on—"
A shadow loomed in the corner of his vision. That black tendril. Too close. Separated from them by mere inches of Encryst which should be almost indestructible, yet had just given way beneath the weight of a small child.
Rath felt it then; a presence slowly turning its attentions upon him.
Darnael's boots pounded, sliding to a stop beside them. "Give him to me!" his brother barked.
Rath shoved Kar into his uncle's arms, where the boy hung unmoving; dead weight. "He's breathing Rath!" Darnael shouted, "I'll get him to safety, you seal that breach!"
Light leaked from the fracture Kar had made. Not a gentle glow but a bright fountain of it. It was the Valoría, bleeding up through the break, curling into the air like smoke. Beneath that pale emission, darker filaments writhed. Sinistía, Rath realized, stomach dropping.
"Oh Source," Rath breathed.
It had all happened so fast. He examined the break. Cracks in the Encryst around the fracture already branching outward toward the pool's edges.
Rath braced himself, and dug deep. Pulling on the Seradin ability in his blood; pushing aside Valoría's pulse. That pressure from the Source bulging against the breach. It so desperately wanted to be free, to surge upward, to escape this prison imposed upon it.
He mentally grasped hold of the shattered remnants of Encryst in front of him and willed it to remember. Not just to close, but to seal. To knit itself back together again so that it could be whole once more.
The white crystal trembled under his hands. Slowly, its edges softened, then drew together, finally fusing back into place piece by piece. Rath's teeth clenched together so tightly his jaw ached.
Three forces strained against each other here: Valoría below, Sinistía gnawing at the wound, and Potentía sealing it all in.
A century ago, their collision had nearly ended everything.
His arms shook, and Rath redoubled his effort, pouring himself into the seal until he felt hollowed out and drained. The fused section held, then turned white again. Its outer layer becoming smooth to the touch once more.
Rath sagged for a heartbeat. Then his eyes caught the cracks still present near the Tendril. Thin fractures radiated out from where the black root pierced the pool, lines so fine they were almost invisible… except the light inside them was wrong. A dimmer, bruised glow, as if something were feeding on the light within.
Rath crawled closer, palms sliding on slick crystal. The nearer he got, the more his skin prickled. He felt cold and pressure pushing against him, and then something tugged subtly at his thoughts, beckoning him.
He'd felt it before, a faint and distant call, like a far-off whisper from another room. But now it murmured directly in his ear. His will to Focus wavered, the requisite concentration slipping.
He reached the tendril, and every pulse of his heart invited shadows at the edge of his vision. He couldn't waver now, though, every crack had to be closed.
The shape of the Tendril seemed to thicken in his sight, as if it were leaning toward him. He'd never been this close before. The wrongness of it screamed at him. Along with that, the chamber's hum deepened, shifting into something almost like… a voice.
Rath blinked hard, then shook his head, trying to clear it. He pressed his hands to the first of the cracks and Focused, pulling them closed. It resisted him, like something was actively pulling at the edges of the wound Rath was trying to mend. He imposed his will upon it. The last crack narrowed, then closed almost entirely. Just before he could complete his work, a thought that didn't belong to him splashed into his mind like oil into a fire.
They shouldn't be here.
Rath's breath hitched. He sat back on his heels, heart hammering, sweat dripping. He heard voices approaching, and footsteps.
Who else had entered the chamber? How long had he spent sealing these cracks? He looked up. Darnael stood nearby, Kar no longer in his arms. Two other men were with him. Baric and a cousin of theirs, faces pale in the Source's light.
Relief flared in Rath's chest, then faded. Something about them… was off. Their eyes didn't reflect the light the way they should.
"Is it done?" his brother called. "Were you able to seal it?"
Rath stared, confusion giving way to something manic. He turned his head, searching for Kar. Where was he?
"Where's my son?"
"He's safe," Darnael said quickly. "Outside the chamber."
Outside. The word should have soothed Rath, but it didn't. The oily intrusion returned, stronger, threaded with a cold certainty.
They're imposters.
Rath's skin felt suddenly clammy.
They've stolen the faces of your kin, and taken Karalinde.
His mouth went dry. He tried to tell himself that was absurd, but his gaze locked onto the faces of those he should know and doubt blossomed within him. The scar on Darnael's jaw, had it always been that shape?
"Let me see him," he growled.
"Rath," his brother said, too calm. Too measured. "He's fine. You need to finish—"
He's trying to distract you.
Rath flinched. The men beside the pool stepped forward.
"Calm down," the one who looked like Darnael said, reaching to grab Rath's arm. The moment fingers brushed against his sleeve, Rath's fatigue vanished and a Focusing snapped into place of its own accord. Fire erupted from his hand, an ability granted to him not by his Seradin affinity. This was a Focusing made with Valoría, of Dara. A jet of flame engulfed the would-be imposter.
The scream that followed filled the chamber. It was raw, human. Rath stumbled backward in horror, but the oily voice surged in once more.
They will never give you back your son.
The other two men shouted, lifting their hands to release Focusings of their own.
Rath reacted without thought.
Flames lanced forth yet again, striking his would-be cousin in the chest. The man went down, writhing, the smell of burning cloth, hair, and flesh broiling in the air.
The stolen voice of his other brother, Baric, was shouting, "Rath! Stop! It's me!"
He backed away, shaking. His world warped at the edges. That tendril seemed to loom ever larger, as if it was pulsing in time to the chaos.
A woman's scream cut through it all. "Rathael!"
He turned, releasing a lance of fire without meaning to. A woman was running toward him across the crystal, skirts hitched up, hair loose, face white with terror. It was Serena. His wife.
Too late. The Focusing pierced her through the abdomen.
She jerked mid-step, eyes going impossibly wide, mouth opening soundlessly before she collapsed in a heap.