Chapter 20. The Bone That Remembers

The invocation chamber had shed its walls long ago, leaving only smoke-blackened outlines etched against the wavering torchlight, as if the very stones had exhaled and drawn themselves back into memory. The air was thick with the taste of ash and ancient iron, every breath a whisper of ruin. Curving arches sagged overhead in fractured grace, their keystones cracked like broken promises. Aeryn stood at the epicenter of what had once been a sanctuary of precise lines and polished marble—now only drifting embers, ash motes shimmering in the weak glow, and the deep, pulsing rumble of something immeasurably old stirring beneath her soles.

The fire at the chamber’s heart had not perished; instead, it had ripened to a molten red, pooling in long, flat rivers that bled heat without casting a single shadow—an impossible, humming glow that filled every corner of the ruin. Aeryn’s knees trembled; her scream had escaped in a hollow gasp, emptied her lungs of reason, and yet she did not co