Chapter 204: Beneath the Teeth
The walls of the cavern trembled.
Isla lunged forward, blade up, just as the first of the creatures surged from the dark, spindly limbs moving like smoke wrapped in muscle, glimmering eyes in the dozens. They didn’t run, but rather flowed and poured out. Every one of them moved toward her like they had smelled her blood before she’d even fallen.
Damian’s Umbrazin cracked across the cavern, slicing through three of the figures. The energy hissed and sizzled, casting shadows that danced like demons across the cavern walls.
“Back-to-back!” Isla called out, pivoting to press against Damian’s side.
They moved as one. Her sword flashed, slashing through one of the creatures’ necks but it didn’t bleed. It simply dissolved into black vapor and let out a cry so high-pitched it wasn’t heard so much as felt, slicing through her skull like glass.
“What are these?” Isla gasped, slashing again.
“Wraithforged,” Damian snarled. “Sombrosi experiments. They were never meant to survive.”
“Yet here they are,” she muttered, ducking under another swipe.
They were surrounded. The creatures crawled along the walls, across the ceiling, upside down and inverted like nightmarish insects. The air was thick with burning ash and the copper stench of old blood.
Another bolt of Umbrazin screamed from Damian’s hand, but even that wasn’t enough. The creatures learned, dodged, anticipated. A second too slow, and one slammed into Isla’s back, driving her to her knees.
Pain lanced through her ribs. Then came the whisper again, this time in her ear: “We know your roots. We know your kin. We were made from what your kind left behind.”
The words weren't just sound. They coiled inside her like poison, unraveling memories she hadn’t thought about, her mother’s voice, her first nightmare, the moment she’d felt the Seal awaken in her blood.
Rage rose in her like fire. With a scream, she twisted, throwing off the creature and slamming her palm into the ground and this time, she didn’t hold back.
Raw, ancient and feral power burst from her. The cavern lit in gold and violet as her magic surged outward, repelling the creatures in a searing ring of force. They shrieked and scattered, but didn’t vanish.
Above, on the surface, Aryia had dropped to her knees at the edge of the broken ridge. “They’ve fallen!” she shouted, her voice tight with panic. “Isla…Damian…they’re under!”
Vincent had already begun tracing glyphs across the stone with bloodied fingers. “I can get us down, just buy me a minute.”
“No time,” Brienne said, ripping her cloak free. “We jump.”
“Alaine,” Aryia said, her tone sharp, “Cassian stays with you.”
Alaine nodded, unsheathing her second blade. “Go.”
The others leapt, Brienne first, then Raven and Aryia, straight into the dark.
As they fell, Vincent’s spell ignited above, burning a path downward, and when they hit the ground, they hit hard, but running.
Back below, Isla’s body trembled as power flickered from her fingertips. She was losing control. The pressure was rising too fast, too wild. Damian was bleeding and the creatures weren’t retreating anymore. They were waiting.
“Behind me!” he barked, dragging Isla behind a fractured column of stone.
“Don’t protect me,” she hissed. “We need to get out!”
“Isla…” His voice was strained. “They’re baiting you.”
“What?”
“The whispering, it’s not them. It’s the god.”
The realization struck her like a blow. The voice in the dark. The knowing. The blood-song. All of it was tethered to the deeper thing beneath the Teeth.
The song hadn’t summoned them. It had awakened it.
A new tremor rocked the chamber. The ground buckled beneath their feet. Cracks raced up the walls like lightning, and from the deepest fissure, something began to rise. Not a creature but rather a presence.
It wasn’t a body, it was absence, a void taking form. A nothing so dense it warped sound. Stone collapsed inward. Light bent away. Even Damian’s Umbrazin recoiled like a wounded animal.
That is when Isla heard it again, soft and gentle, like a lullaby through broken teeth:
“Come closer, little heir. Come closer and see.”
Suddenly, light flared across the cavern entrance.
Brienne burst through with Aryia at her side, blades drawn and eyes wild. Raven followed, already weaving a binding sigil midair. Vincent’s spell cracked against the ceiling, holding the crumbling chamber back just long enough.
Aryia knelt beside Isla, fingers brushing her arm. “You’re shaking…what did it say?”
Isla met her gaze, eyes wide, breath ragged. “It knows me, Aryia. It knows everything.”
Then her eyes snapped to Cassian, who stood at the edge of the broken ridge above them. He wasn’t breathing heavy. He wasn’t panicked. He was humming again. The same tune, the same song all over again.
Isla surged upright, magic blazing in her chest. “He’s the next key,” she said. “Not just a conduit. He’s the melody. The one that bridges the Cradles.”
Damian’s voice came hoarse, barely audible. “We have to go. Right now!”
Brienne nodded. “The stairs collapsed. But I see a path behind the ruins.”
They sprinted, ducking and weaving as more Wraithforged spilled from the walls. Raven and Vincent covered the retreat, sigils flashing, collapsing tunnels behind them with sharp bursts of magic.
Isla was the last to leave. She turned back one final time, toward the void rising behind the Cradle stone.
It hadn’t yet fully formed. But it would. She felt it…“, like a ticking hourglass buried in her bones and as she ran, the voice followed her like breath:
“You’ve seen the Teeth… now bleed for them.”