Chapter 78 Elena Heart POV
I pushed myself off the bed, my legs still feeling like leaden weights, but my mind was sharp, cutting through the haze of the paralytic.
I looked at James, who remained rooted by the door like a gargoyle carved from the very stone of this miserable room.
"James, listen to me," I whispered, my voice echoing hollowly against the damp walls. "I know the layout of the Cathedral.
I know about the Sanctum of the Third Eye—the basement chamber that isn't on any public map.
That’s where they’ll take him. If he walks through the front doors, he’s walking into a kill box."
James’s eyes sharpened. "That chamber is a myth. Only the High Priest and the King’s inner circle know its location. How could you—"
"I don't have time to explain how I know things that haven't happened yet," I snapped, Xavier told me this before, about how Leo managed to bring Grace and her mages, and those rebels to the tunnel below the palace though my heart ached at the memory of finding Xavier’s broken crown in that very room.
"We aren't going to the front. We’re going through the Veins of Drakmor."
James hesitated for a heartbeat, then nodded, his duty to protect the King finally outweighing his orders to stay put.
He moved a heavy, rusted chest in the corner of the room, revealing a loose floorboard. Beneath it lay a narrow, vertical shaft with a ladder that disappeared into an abyss of absolute black.
As we descended, the air changed. The scent of the city, horse manure, coal smoke, and rain, was replaced by the ancient, heavy smell of wet earth and cold, stagnant minerals.
These were the tunnels built before the kingdom was even a dream, a labyrinth of pre-Drakmorian architecture that ran like a nervous system beneath the palace and the holy grounds.
The walls were not smooth stone but jagged, crystalline rock that seemed to pulse with a faint, rhythmic indigo light, residual mana from the earth’s core.
Every few yards, we passed massive, calcified roots of the Great Weirwood trees above, thick as dragon necks, twisting through the ceiling like petrified snakes.
"Stay close," James breathed, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. "The mana down here is unstable. It plays tricks on the mind."
We moved in a slow, rhythmic crawl through the "Lower Veins." The landscape here was haunting.
Water dripped from the ceiling, echoing like a slow, rhythmic drumbeat in the oppressive silence: tap... tap... tap. Small, bioluminescent mosses clung to the crevices, casting long, distorted shadows of us against the damp quartz walls.
I could feel the pressure of the palace above us—millions of tons of stone, gold, and secrets pressing down. We reached a junction where the tunnel widened into a vaulted passage.
The architecture changed here; the jagged rock gave way to smooth, black obsidian blocks etched with silver runes that hummed with a low-frequency vibration.
"We’re under the Palace's North Wing," I whispered, pointing to a heavy iron grate embedded in the ceiling.
"If we follow the silver line, it leads directly to the Cathedral’s sub-basement. But we have to be silent. The 'System' has sensors down here that react to hostile mana."
The ground became slick with a strange, oily substance—runoff from the mana-refineries above. Every step was a gamble. I don't even know how I knew this, but something in me knew.
I could feel the cold of the stones seeping through my thin slippers, a reminder of how ill-prepared I was, yet my blood was boiling with a singular purpose.
After what felt like hours of navigating the suffocating darkness, the indigo light of the crystals began to fade, replaced by a flickering, sickly yellow glow from ahead. The smell shifted again, incense, old parchment, and the ozone-heavy scent of a ritual about to begin.
We reached a heavy stone door, its surface carved with a weeping eye.
"This is it," I breathed, my hand hovering over the stone. "The back door to the Sanctum. On the other side of this wall, Xavier is facing the Silver Sun representative. And Leo is likely standing right behind him, his hand on his hilt."
James stepped up beside me, his face set in a grim mask of determination. He reached for a hidden lever disguised as a decorative stone.
"If you're wrong about this, Elena," he whispered, "we’re both dead before we hit the floor."
"I'm not wrong," I said, the image of Xavier’s dead eyes in the first timeline flashing before my mind like a brand. "I'm the only person in this world who knows exactly how this ends. And I’m rewriting the script."
The heavy stone door yielded with a slow, agonizing groan, sounding like a dying breath exhaled from the very lungs of the earth.
As it swung back, a wave of pressure hit me—a thick, ozone-heavy charge that made the fine hairs on my neck stand on end. It was the taste of high-grade mana, ancient and volatile, the kind that usually preceded a massacre.
I stepped through the threshold, my dagger drawn and my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I expected the chaos of the first timeline: the glint of Leo’s treacherous blade, Grace’s cold, triumphant laughter, and the shadows of the Silver Sun rebels swarming the altar.
But the Sanctum was silent.
The vast, vaulted chamber was empty of enemies. No rebels. No Grace. No traitors. Instead, the room was bathed in a rhythmic, pulsing indigo light that emanated from the center of the room. There stood only one man.
Xavier.
He was standing before the ancient weeping eye, his back to me, his hands raised as he whispered a rhythmic, low-frequency chant that seemed to make the very air vibrate.
He looked solitary, a king standing at the edge of an abyss.
My mind reeled, the gears of my memory grinding against this new, distorted reality.
What the hell happened? In the first timeline, I remembered, this was the hour of the Great Betrayal.
While I had been distracted in his chambers, trapped in a haze of pleasure and moans as Xavier claimed me, the rebels had been here, sealing the King’s fate. But now, the timeline had shifted. The pieces were off the board.
Damn it! I realized with a sickening jolt in my stomach. By trying to rewrite the script, I had burned the pages. My warning hadn't just alerted the King; it had spooked the vipers.
Xavier’s chanting stopped abruptly. He stood still for a heartbeat before slowly turning around. His blue eyes, usually so sharp and commanding, looked weary, shadowed by a dark realization.
"You are right, Elena," he said, his voice echoing hollowly in the vast chamber. "They gathered here. I could smell the stale incense and the lingering trace of their mana cores. But I was too late."
I took a shaky step forward, the cold of the obsidian floor seeping through my shoes. "Too late? But... I saw them. I knew they would be here tonight."