Chapter 63. Serana’s Shadow

The air beneath Hollowkeep pressed in on all sides, heavy as water in a sunken vault. It clung to skin and bone like a living thing—stale and fetid, threaded with the acrid tang of burned stone and the iron-tinged memory of long-forgotten rites. Even here, far below the blasted ramparts where Aeryn’s flames had turned marble to ember, where the Thorn Pact had torn every supporting pillar down to molten ruin, the labyrinth beneath the fallen fortress remained untouched by sky or sun. Not tunnels in the ordinary sense, these passages were ancient arteries—vaults and sanctums sealed against time, indifferent to collapse or bloodshed. They did not weep dampness, they did not groan under weight. They waited. And what waited here did not slumber.

The walls themselves seemed grown rather than carved, heaving in gentle coils like the gnarled roots of a primeval tree burrowing down into the marrow of the earth. Their surfaces bore the sheen of living wood beneath stone: veins of quartz