Chapter 34 Pawns and Players
The Dravorn District didn’t have walls like the other territories. Instead, the air itself changed.
Ren felt it before he saw anything—a subtle pressure at his temples, like someone pressing a thumb against the bone from the inside. The Void in his chest hummed softly, resonating with something invisible stretched along the district’s border.
“Ward,” Sera said beside him, her pace never slowing. “Old magic. Not for attacking—for detecting. They already know we’re here.”
“You could’ve told me that before we walked in.”
“And miss the look on your face? No.”
Ren glanced at her. Sera wasn’t smiling, but there was a flicker of humor in the corner of her eye—a glimpse of the lighter version of herself, before The Accord had ground everything down into efficiency and constant vigilance. The moment passed as quickly as it came.
They moved together through the narrow alleys of the eastern district with an unplanned but natural synchronization. When Ren slowed at a crossroads, Sera was already checking the right corner. When shadows shifted at the end of a passage, Ren’s hand drifted to his weapon and Sera stepped half a pace ahead—a living shield acting on instinct. They hadn’t discussed formation. Their bodies had decided for them.
The Dravorn headquarters wasn’t a building—it was an ancient temple that had stood long before Eryndal became a city. Its stones were dark, overgrown with moss, and the carvings on the walls seemed to move if you stared at them too long. Two guards in black opened the doors without a word. They had been expected.
Lady Morrith sat on a stone chair in the center of a room lit only by blue candles—flames that never flickered, gave off no heat, and needed no wick.
She was old. Not old in any measurable number of years, but old like stone, like roots that had pushed through the foundations of the world. Her skin was wrinkled into deep folds that resembled a topographic map. Her hair was silvery white, pulled back into a single braid that fell all the way to her lap.
Her eyes—or what remained of them—were covered by a milky white film. Blind. Yet when Ren stepped into the room, her head turned directly toward him with a precision that made the hairs on his neck stand up.
“Stop.” Her voice sounded like tearing paper. “No closer.”
Ren stopped.
Morrith tilted her head. The white film over her eyes shifted—as though something behind it was scanning, reading, dissecting. Her lips parted, but what came out wasn’t a greeting.
“You carry a dead sun inside your body, boy.”
Silence fell. Even the blue candles flickered for the first time.
“Who taught you to swallow something like that and still live?” Morrith asked, her voice carrying a tone that could have been awe or fear.
“No one taught me,” Ren answered. “I learned it myself.”
“That’s worse.” Morrith let out a dry snort—perhaps what once passed for laughter. Her thin hand beckoned him closer. “Sit. You came because of the resonance, didn’t you? The vibration you feel beneath the city.”
Ren sat on the stone floor in front of her. There were no other chairs. Perhaps that was intentional. “You know what it is.”
“I know who it is.” Morrith corrected sharply. “Deep beneath Eryndal—far below the sewers and the first foundations—lie the remnants of Gallax.”
The name sent a chill down Ren’s spine. Gallax. The ruined city he had encountered in the Ashlands. The city that should have been dead.
“Gallax wasn’t built in one place,” Morrith continued. “They were a sprawling civilization—underground cities connected by a network of Void. Eryndal was constructed over one of its nodes without anyone realizing.” Her finger tapped the arm of the stone chair in an irregular rhythm. “Gallax created Void as a weapon. And the Nexus Core was its heart—a collective crystal that stored the consciousness, memories, and power of their entire civilization. They fell because the Core grew beyond control. Too much consciousness. Too much power in one place.”
“And that Core is down here.”
“A part of it. A fragment.” Morrith leaned forward. “The resonance you feel—it isn’t random. The Core is responding to you. The Void in your body is the key that fits its lock. You’re not the one seeking the Nexus Core, boy.” Her blind eyes somehow found his. “The Nexus Core is seeking you.”
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In a narrow room two corridors away from the Dravorn temple, Sera sat alone.
The message had arrived an hour earlier—slipped into the pocket of her jacket by a hand she never saw, the standard method of communication for The Accord. Thin paper, ink that would fade within hours.
She had read it three times.
Subject REN ASHFORD. Status: non-cooperative. If the subject does not demonstrate compliance within 48 hours, proceed with Elimination Protocol. No exceptions.
Her hand trembled. Not much—just a small tremor at the tips of her fingers that no one else would notice. But she felt it, and she hated it.
Sera struck a match and burned the message over a tin plate. The paper curled, blackened, and turned to ash. The order vanished.
But the Accord token in her pocket remained. She touched it through the fabric—a cold metal circle that felt like a chain.
She didn’t discard it.
Not yet.
The first explosion came from the west.
Ren and Sera felt the vibration in the temple walls before the sound followed—a heavy boom that shook dust from the ceiling. Then the second, closer. Shouts followed, distant but sharp.
“Ashvaren is attacking the Velthorne district,” Morrith said without moving from her chair, as if the violence above was weather she had long predicted. “The Noble War is escalating. It always does—slowly at first, then all at once.”
The third explosion. This one close enough to make the blue candles flicker out for a moment.
Ren stood. “We have to go.”
“Yes.” Morrith didn’t try to stop him. But as Ren turned toward the door, her thin hand shot forward—fast, far too fast for someone her age—and gripped his wrist.
Her hold was cold and strong like roots.
“One more thing.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. Sera, who was already halfway to the door, couldn’t hear it. Only Ren.
“The man leading Velthorne—Dorian.” The name dropped from Morrith’s lips like a stone into still water. “He has already gone down below. He has seen the Core.”
Ren felt the world narrow to the point where Morrith’s fingers gripped his skin.
“And he came back changed.”
Morrith released his wrist. Ren pulled his arm back and stared at the old woman—blind eyes holding centuries of knowledge, a face that showed neither mercy nor cruelty, only raw truth served without sweetener.
The fourth explosion shook the temple’s foundations.
Ren ran out with Sera, into the burning city, with one new question burning hotter than any fire in the streets of Eryndal:
What did Dorian find down there—and what did the Core do to him?