BENEATH BROKEN STONES
Lyra slammed into the ground. Pain shot up her spine. Dust and darkness swallowed her scream.
Bone shards tore at her palms as she hit the rubble. Dust clawed her throat, burning her lungs as she tried to push herself up.
Silence pressed down, crushing and still.
Rot here, gutter-rat, it seemed to whisper.
Grinding her teeth, she dragged herself forward, elbows and knees scraping raw against the rubble. Anger flared. She grabbed the nearest thing, a snapped length of bone and hurled it into the dark. It clattered hard against something unseen.
A faint glow answered, dim and wavering. She froze, heart pounding. Crawling closer, she brushed away shards and debris until her fingers touched it: a shard of graveglass, cracked but still alive, pulsing faint against the cold stone.
"Storm-cursed shit," she rasped, coughing up grit.
She sprawled across cracked stone, blood welling from her torn wrists.
She pushed onto one elbow, grimacing.
Her hand closed on brittle bone. Skeletons surrounded her, their empty sockets staring from the dark.
Lyra shuddered and wiped her mouth with a filthy hand.
She sucked in dusty air sharp, broken gasps that scraped her throat. The dark felt alive, thick with the stink of old death. She gripped the shard tight, its weak light the only thing keeping her grounded.
The shard barely lit the wreckage around her, casting sick light over the dead. She forced her battered body forward. Chains scraped against the stone.
She gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright, muscles aching like rusted hinges. Her legs shook under her weight. "Rot you all," she muttered, stumbling over a twisted skeleton.
The shard pulsed, shadows twitching across broken stone.
Lyra pressed her forehead against its cold surface. It throbbed once in answer, weak and dying.
Stone above her sagged, groaning. Debris rained down, slamming into the rubble nearby.
She flinched low, heart hammering.
One breath slower and she'd be under it.
"Great," she rasped, spitting dust from her mouth.
The air hung heavy, sour with decay and the mildew of long-forgotten stone. Lyra hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder. Part of her mind whispered to find a way back up, to scramble for the surface but what waited up there wasn't much better. Knights. Chains. Worse.
She stayed frozen, not sure if staying put was any smarter. The shard dimmed suddenly, its glow choking out. Her breath snagged, chest clenching tight. With a growl, she smacked the side of the stone with her palm. It sparked weakly, light coughing back to life.
In the corner of the dying light, she spotted a doorway… a frame gnawed by time, scorch-lines etched deep. Beyond it, a vast, shadowed chamber loomed, hinting at the chapel that once stood proud.
The air beyond smelled different, heavier, sour with old incense and stone dust. A brittle snap echoed through the dark wood giving under unseen weight.
A cold draft breathed against her cheek, carrying the sour tang of mold and the metallic sting of rust.
Something flickered fool's hope, hungry and wrong. But she moved anyway.
This wasn't a cellar. It wasn't some abandoned vault.
What is this place? she thought, unease gnawing at her gut. No plan, and now the dark pressing in from every side.
She stepped carefully, the glass held low. Shelves sagged, papers crumbled to sludge, and rusted lanterns lay shattered.
"An office?" she muttered, voice barely more than a breath. Her hand brushed a toppled desk, the wood splintered and black with age.
Faint carvings caught her eye a broken sun, a pair of hollow wings, half-scraped away but still clinging to the shattered stone. Symbols of the Thunderborn, or what was left of them. Warnings, some said. Markers of sacrifice.
Lyra shook her head and turned back the way she came, scanning for the only doorway she had spotted when she fell. Her boots scuffed over shattered bones and scattered rubble.
She gripped the sliver tighter, wiped her brow, and moved toward it.
A forgotten place, buried with the rest of Seresthos. Lyra hesitated. The thought slithered up unbidden: Would they ever find her body? Would she end up the same? Left to rot for centuries, just another broken body lost under the rubble? Her grip on the shard tightened. She needed to move. Standing still would only make her part of the ruin.
The Wyrmwatch wouldn't care if they found her. She pictured the cold clink of chains, the snap of bone under a gauntlet, the pit where they dumped the others. Whether in chains or in pieces didn't matter to them.
First rule: survive.
She staggered away, the sliver clutched tight in her hand. Its light barely held shuddering, shrinking, struggling like a drowning spark. She cursed under her breath, fear pressing harder against her ribs. If it died for good, she'd be blind in a world built to bury her alive.
"Damn it, you were working for centuries! Why now?" she hissed, shaking it in frustration.
She stooped and grabbed the shard. It bit like ice. Pain flared but she held on.
The silence thickened as Lyra dragged herself deeper into the dark.
Around her, bones shifted under her boots. She froze for a moment, skin crawling like tiny spiders were creeping up her neck.
The space widened, colder now, empty as a crypt. Her boots scuffed stone worn smooth by forgotten prayers. Broken pews and shattered icons littered the edges. Once a church—now rot and ruin.
A child's skeleton curled around a rusted blade. Priests knelt at altars, robes fused to bone. Some skulls were melted into each other, as if by heat or time
Lyra swallowed hard. The air stank of rot, mold, and something older like a grave left open too long.
The floor gave in places, soft with rot. The place seemed to cling to her. She trudged on, breath shallow.
At the edge of the glass's wavering glow, she saw a circle of robed corpses, their hands locked together in prayer.
Their jaws sagged open, frozen mid-scream, as if whatever had killed them hadn't given them the mercy of silence.
Between them, a black stone sat, cracked and damp. It looked like it had been buried and forgotten, forced back up by the slow crush of rubble and time.
As a thief, her first urge was to grab it all, the dagger gleaming in the withered hand was too tempting, too easy. But all she truly wanted was to run, to get out of this grave before she became another body.
Pain burned through her ribs with each breath. Her fingers twitched toward the blade even as her mind screamed to leave it alone.
A whisper scratched at her ears for the first time. "Take it. Take it."
Cold sweat prickled her spine. The dagger pulled at her like hunger, like hate.
Gold glinted, just enough to reveal a dagger, its hilt threaded with graveglass. Lyra stared. A sick buzz filled her ears. The whisper returned, soft and wrong.
Stumbling back, she caught herself on instinct.
"Who's there?" she hissed into the dark, voice cracking low in her throat.
"Jace?" she snapped, teeth bared. "If that's you, this isn't funny. I swear, I'll kick your ass."
No footsteps. No laughter. Jace would never be this quiet. Her fingers tightened around the flickering glass, sweat slick on her palms. Nothing answered but the thick, suffocating silence.
Hand outstretched, she crept forward—then halted, breath caught tight.
The corpse's fingers twitched once, a tiny, stiff jerk, like something deep inside it had tried and failed to wake up. Lyra stumbled back, heart hammering, as deeper in the dark something heavier shifted, dragging itself across stone.
Reeling, she pressed a hand to her chest, breath staggered and shallow.
A long, slow dragging sound.
No breath. No voice. Just motion in the dark.
Her knees locked as panic surged up her spine.
Lyra slammed into rubble. Pain jolted through her ribs. Gasping, she clawed forward, half-crawling through grit.
Books burst apart underfoot. Banners crumbled in her fists.
Behind the ruined bookshelf...
A door. Half-buried.
She hesitated only a heartbeat.
The scrape behind her thickened, louder now—closer.
No choice.
She hurled herself against the wreckage, pain flaring through her battered arms. The door groaned, stone scraping stone.
The tunnel smelled of wet earth and rust. A thin, cold draft kissed her face as she stumbled deeper.
Beyond... blackness.
The graveglass's last light guttered.
From behind her, in the tomb's gut, something stood up.
Lyra didn't look back. She couldn't. The air behind her shifted as if something huge had just uncoiled from the stone. Her bones screamed to run. Her breath didn't wait.
She lunged into the tunnel, limbs screaming. No choice but forward.