Chapter 33 Anchors
By the time the cliffs came into view, my legs felt like they belonged to someone I’d borrowed them from and forgotten to return in good condition.
The trees thinned into scrub, then into rocky teeth jutting up from the earth. The air grew colder, sharper. Somewhere ahead, water dripped in a steady rhythm, like the mountain had a pulse of its own.
“The tunnels are close,” Drake said quietly. The boy was in his arms now, bundled against his chest, his small fingers curled in the torn fabric of Drake’s shirt. The mark under the bandage pulsed faintly, answering something further below. “Seris used this route the last time she broke a Syndicate blockade.”
“Did you help?” I asked.
“I was chained to a wall,” he said. “But I approved of the chaos.”
“Of course you did.”
We climbed the last stretch in silence. The path narrowed into a ledge carved along the cliffside, half-natural, half hand-cut. Symbols had been chiseled into the stone—not Syndicate sigils, but older, harsher shapes. Some were filled with soot. Others bled faint silver light, like moonlight had gotten lost and taken up residence.
“Recognition wards,” Drake murmured. “To tell friend from foe.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I am extremely done with being shot at by both.”
I took another step. Something clicked under my boot.
“Do not move,” a low voice snapped.
I froze.
Another voice, familiar and edged like a serrated blade, came from the shadows near the rock face. “Stand down. She’s ours.”
Seris stepped out of the stone.
Not literally, but it looked like it—one second there was just rock, the next she was there, cloak dusted in grit, hair pulled back, eyes sharp and exhausted. Two rebels flanked her, weapons aimed steady at Drake’s chest.
She took us in with one sweeping glance. The boy. The ash. The way the bond mark on my wrist glowed under my sleeve. The faint scorch pattern along Drake’s jaw.
“Alive,” she said. It didn’t sound like relief so much as furious surprise. “You stubborn idiots.”
“Love the warm welcome,” I said. “We brought you a present.”
Her gaze flicked to the child, and for the first time, something like real horror slipped through her mask. “You shouldn’t have brought him here.”
“He didn’t exactly come with a return policy,” I snapped. “He woke with a mark and a dragon’s name in his mouth. The Stone touched him. Where else were we supposed to go?”
Seris swore quietly in a language that made the runes on the walls twitch. Then she jerked her head at the ledge behind her. “Inside. All of you. Before the mountain decides to finish what you started.”
🔥🔥🔥
The tunnel swallowed us whole.
It was cooler inside, the air damp and mineral-rich. Runes cut into the walls pulsed faintly as we passed, reacting to Drake, to me, to the boy. Gold. Silver. A strange, pale white that hadn’t been there before.
Seris noticed. “The colors changed since you left Kaelor,” she said. “That’s new. And not in a way I like.”
“We collapsed a gate,” I said. “Woke an echo of the first flame. Fought Syndicate collectors and something that called him by a name I don’t think he wanted repeated in public.”
Drake shot me a look. “Christine.”
“What?” I said. “You did. Varanth ring any bells for you, Seris?”
She stopped dead. The rebels behind her nearly ran into her back.
Slowly, she turned. “Say that again.”
“Varanth,” I repeated. “Big, angry, very glowy. Tried to drag him through a gate and into some kind of spiritual absorption therapy.”
Seris stared at Drake. “You didn’t think to lead with that?”
He shifted the boy in his arms. “We were busy not dying.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “We don’t have time for your selective honesty, Varyn. The first flame doesn’t just wake up. If Varanth’s echo is aware again, everything tied to the Breath Stone just moved three steps closer to the edge.”
“Trust me,” I said. “We noticed.”
She looked between us, then at the boy again. “And now there’s a child whose veins hum with that same resonance. Perfect.”
“We’re not leaving him,” I said.
“I didn’t say we would,” she replied. “I said it’s a problem.”
“Welcome to the club,” I muttered.
🔥🔥🔥
The tunnel opened into a wide chamber carved into the mountain’s heart. It was more war room than refuge—tables covered in maps and crystals, bedrolls scattered near the far wall, weapons racked in neat, lethal rows. A spring bubbled quietly in a stone basin, the water glowing faintly from runes etched around its rim.
There were maybe twenty people total. Some I recognized as the rebels who’d flanked Seris in Kaelor. Others were new—faces lined by smoke and loss, eyes that had seen too much. Every gaze snapped to us as we entered. To the boy. To the dragon. To the glow at my wrist.
One of them—the older man who’d cursed quietly when I’d described the drained corpses back in the temple—let out a low whistle. “They brought the storm with them,” he muttered. “And a spark besides.”
“Shut up, Tavir,” Seris said.
She motioned to a bedroll near the spring. “Put him there.”
Drake obeyed, kneeling carefully and easing the boy onto the blankets. The child didn’t stir, but the mark on his wrist pulsed brighter in the chamber’s light. The spring’s glow answered, its surface rippling.
“Of course,” Seris said under her breath. “The water remembers.”
“Remembers what?” I asked.
“The old oaths.” She straightened, eyes flint-hard. “Everyone else out. I want just my core here.”
The chamber emptied quickly. A handful remained: Seris. Tavir. A narrow, sharp-eyed woman whose fingers twitched like she missed the feel of a knife. Drake. Me. The boy.
Seris knelt by the spring and dipped her hand into the water. Runes flared along the stone, racing up her arm like liquid light. She hissed but didn’t pull away.
“The Gate at Kaelor opened for the first time in centuries,” she said. “The Breath Stone’s fragments are awake. Varanth’s echo clawed its way to the surface. And now this.” She nodded at the boy. “The flame is looking for anchors.”
“You said there was a prophecy,” I reminded her. “Fire and healer. Bridge and bond. All that very reassuring nonsense.”
“Nonsense doesn’t tear holes in reality,” she said. “This does.”
She stood, water dripping from her hand, and turned to us. “We don’t survive this by pretending you’re not at the center of it.”
“Love the way you say you and not we,” I said.
Her gaze didn’t soften. “You know what you brought me, Knight? Not just a child. Not just a dragon. You brought me the fulcrum. The point where the world tips one way or another.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been catching that vibe.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. “You have a plan.”
“Not a good one,” she said. “But a necessary one.”
She walked to the far wall, where an old, faded sigil had been carved into the stone—a circle with three interlocking lines. I’d seen it before, half-buried in the dust of Kaelor’s war room.
“The last time the gates threatened to open,” she said, “the guardians, the healers, and the wardens swore an oath. Blood, magic, and will, bound together to keep the bridge from tearing all the way through. They failed.”
“With rave reviews,” I said.
Her mouth twitched, but the humor didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re going to swear it again.”
“To who?” I asked.
She looked at the spring, at the runes, at us. “Not to who. To what. To the mountain. To the old lines of magic that haven’t picked a side yet.”
“So we make the world itself our witness,” Drake said.
“Yes,” Seris replied. “And our jailor. If any of us try to break the terms, it kills us.”
I stared at her. “You’re proposing magically enforced teamwork.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Yes,” she repeated calmly. “But it’s the only thing I trust more than good intentions.”
“What are the terms?” Drake asked.
She took a slow breath. “We bind the three of you—dragon, healer, and spark—to a single charge: protect the shards of the Breath Stone from weaponization. Keep the gates from opening fully. No handing them to the Syndicate. No using them for your own power. No running from what you are.”
My stomach dipped. “Just the three of us?”
“The child’s part of this whether we like it or not,” she said. “His mark’s tied to yours, and to Varanth’s echo.” She looked at me. “But the primary weight falls on you two. You’re the ones with a choice left.”
“And you?” I asked. “You’re just… officiating?”
“I’m the warden,” she said. “I bind myself to the same oath. If I try to use you as weapons beyond the oath’s terms, it burns me out from the inside.”
Drake tilted his head. “You’d do that?”
Her jaw clenched. “I already did. Once. I’m not eager to repeat the lesson.”
Tavir shifted his weight. “Seris—”
She cut him off with a look. “We don’t have time for your objections, Tavir. Either we stand in this together or we get torn apart separately.”
He swore again, but he didn’t leave.
The woman with the knife fingers stepped closer to the wall, hand hovering near the sigil. “Blood oath to a half-sleeping world,” she murmured. “I suppose worse ideas have worked.”
“Encouraging,” I said. “Really inspires confidence.”