Chapter 16: Visions in the Dark

Darkness entombs us. Footsteps scrape back and forth on the other side of the wall while Colin stands perfectly still, barely breathing. A murmur rises, followed by a sharper voice. “Where is Lord Colin?” Colin’s eyes flicker, knowing the voice carrying those words. Magic pools hot in my blood.

“We haven’t seen him, sir,” someone replies. “Though his steed is tied up outside.”

“Find him. Now.”

The command snaps the air. Colin exhales and clasps my hand, damp with sweat. We spiral down a stone staircase and continue deeper into the world’s core. His pace quickens but mine falters. Only the faint glow of my blue skin lights our descent. Suddenly, the steps flatten and I stumble at the shift and nearly fall. Colin ignites the lanterns with a sweep of his sword and light floods a narrow room that folds in on itself. Ahead, iron bars enclose a cramped corner, where a splintered bench slouches against the wall. A viscous drip from above creates a shallow pool on the damp stone floor. I study the barred corner and notice shackles hung on the wall. It’s a cell. Colin’s familiarity makes it seem it’s used often.

“Follow me,” Colin says. The cell vanishes behind us as we reach a fork in the stone passage, one path veering right, the other left. “What is all of this?” I whisper, my gaze circling the walls around us.

“Tunnels,” he answers. “Infrastructure that existed long before the Nemrisians arrived.” He points left and I fall into step beside him. Time unravels as we walk. My heart thrums, but his pace never falters. Darkness presses in from every side, the tunnels twisting endlessly until I begin to wonder if we’ll ever find our way out. Who built these tunnels?

Suddenly, we reach a collapsed wall with stone blocking our path. Colin huffs under his breath and paces. “This is our way out,” he says with his hands on his hips.

“Can’t you use Magic to move the rocks aside, like you did before?”

“The King will sense it. I’m sure he already has. There are elements of my magic that he controls. It’s too dangerous…”

We share a quick glance and a realization washes through me. The Enforcers are his prisoners, too. Colin’s pacing refocuses me.

“There has to be another way,” I say. Colin exhales, his gaze fixed down the endless dark of the opposite corridor. “I’m unfamiliar with that path. I only know it leads to The Ranges.”

My ears prick. “These tunnels… they reach The Ranges?”

“Yes,” he says quietly, but before he speaks again my heart sinks to my feet. “There are villages there. Abandoned ones.”

A chilling truth falls over me. I shift my weight against the wall next me while the silence stretches. The lore of the Valerians snaps into place. I sift through distant memories, all of the bedtime stories I once dismissed now coming to light. The ache deepens in my chest as I struggle to draw in air, gripping the dirt with my finger tips. I fold over, incapable of holding myself upright, and bury my face in my palms. In that moment, I slip into the space between here and the familiar darkness. At first there’s only the echo of my breath and the pounding in my ears. Then, the silence bends until it breaks.

The whispers rise once more.

“Save us!” They screech. The world tilts and spins. Colin’s grip clamps around my wrist to steady me.“Jo, breathe,” he says, but the voices drown him out. “This way!”

I open my eyes and sparks ripple down the corridor. The voices guide my steps. One by one, the lanterns blaze to life and a path unfolds before me. Leading me not just deeper into the Dominion, but to the very heart of this world. My world.

“I need to follow them,” I whisper. Colin’s jaw tenses. Fear shadows his eyes as they trace the path ahead, a place even he doesn’t know. “I’m coming with you,” he says evenly, though his voice carries the weight of doubt.

I nod once and take off. My boots echo against the stone, every lantern sparking alive with my presence, guiding me forward. The air thickens and pulls at my chest as though something inside me is tethered to the journey ahead. We wind through turns of encapsulated stone until the path ends, and we reach a door. Vast and carved with veins of crystal that pulse faintly with light. My hand lifts, I succumb to the pull as if the door itself has been waiting for me. I press my hand to it and a gentle spark flames between us. The door awakens. Searing blue glistens and fills the darkness with its decadence, the door opens to something else. Something I’ve never seen.

Colin eyes widen as he steps away from the door. He tucks his chin in, knowing his kind might not be welcome. I look up at him, my breath shaky, and reach for his cheek. I brush my lips against his. “Stay here,” I say. He nods and we share a knowing glance. I need to face this alone.

I step through the door and glance down a long corridor lined with chambers carved into the stone, open but doorless. My mind flickers to the stories I’ve heard of the Valerians, of their villages etched into the Ranges. This place is nothing like them. No grand palaces with sweeping views and high ceilings. The hall is a wasteland of withered bunks and abandoned goods, untouched for centuries. No warmth. Only ruin. My footsteps echo as I move slowly forward, shuddering when I catch sight of skeletons slumped in the corners, their bones twisted in fear. I glance back. Colin lingers at the door with his gaze fixed, making sure I don’t stray too far.

As I look ahead, one chamber draws me in. I take a step towards it.

Bunk beds stand crooked against the wall. Stuffed animals lie on them, devoid of shape. In the far corner, something horrible steals my breath. I look down then back up again, facing it head on.

Two tiny skeletons cling to each other, their hands still intertwined. A small table rests nearby, ringed by miniature chairs. Atop it sits a wooden canvas stand scattered with brittle paintings. I sift carefully through them while pages crumble at the edges. Childlike strokes wander outside the lines, notes scrawled in a language I can’t read. But at the bottom of the stack, one painting stops me cold.

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On one side, dark figures with blackened eyes and jagged teeth raise spears, their bodies smeared with blood and rage. Opposite them stands a host of women, tall and blue, with one leading. Her stance commanding. Beside them, a cluster of beings who look like humans fight shoulder to shoulder.

I study the painting with a sharp focus, my gaze flicking to the tunnels around me. Walls whisper a story that is almost too painful to bear. These were not mere ruins. People had lived here. Hidden here. Families sheltered from the evils above.

With the dark army pressing from one side and Valerians and humans resisting at the other, I no longer need to wonder whose skeletons lie in these bunks. I lower to my knees, staring at the children who were holding onto each other until the very end. Taken by something unknown. A sound I don’t recognize heaves from my chest like something just tore inside me. Sobs race through me, releasing a pain I was born with. A sorrow carried in the blood of my people all around me.

A force pulls me back onto my feet, drawing me to the room at the very end. A bedroom. A blanket lies crumpled on the floor beside a broken chair, and in the corner an intact mirror still stands. The only thing left untouched down here. The dull mirror, coated in centuries of dust, flickers faintly as if something beneath its surface still breathes. The pull toward it is undeniable. I step closer and feel the heat radiating from the glass. A warmth that prickles against my palms and draws me in. Leaning it forward, I wipe at the grime and trace the carvings etched along its smooth edges. Mountain peaks rise in abundance, the jagged lines unmistakable. A stream curls around the Mountain like a silver thread. The Ranges. And wrapped within them, the spiral design of the Flaire.

Finally, I take my sleeve and wipe away the dust covered glass, glistening without a scratch.

I lift my gaze and a girl stares back, but not as I stand now. She is human, the me I’ve known for my entire life. Her shoulders are narrow, her skin is pale from lack of sun. Her eyes stretch wide with fear and wonder, brown hair hangs loose around her ordinary face. But as I look down at my flesh, blue and charged with power, I realize I’m everything that girl isn’t. It’s not a reflection, but a doubling. A moment of shared flesh. A merging of my two worlds into one.

The glass ripples, and the girl dissolves.

“What’s happening?” I whisper, but the mirror shifts, and something else takes hold. A memory.

A girl with brown braids paces her room, eyes swollen from hours of crying. Her mother has been sad before, angry too, but today is different. Heavier. Darker.

She knocks on the door, “I’m okay, honey, just give mommy a few minutes,” her mother replies through her tears.

But she doesn’t want to wait. She wants to help. She wants to make her mother smile again. Her gaze drifts to the figurine on the mantle, the one her mother treasures. The warrior. The defender of her lands. A wielder of Magic. She lifts it in her hands as if it might carry her mother’s pain away.

The room vanishes in a blaze of light.

The mirror flickers. A new face appears. Crowned, fierce. She reaches out through the glass, her hand stretching for me. I clench my fists and brace as the vision drags me deeper.

The crowned one stands tall before him. The Dark King.

The battlefield explodes around them. Everyone charges, their cries sharp in a language I don’t know. Blood fills the air, bodies falling in heaps. Screams claw through my ears.

“Help us! Save us!”

The voices ring in my head. Ones I’ve heard before in faint whispers begging to be saved.

From Kai.

Blood drips onto the floor as I grip the mirror harder, refusing to let go.

The crowned one towers over the fallen, her presence burning brighter than the fires around her.

Her army waits, a wall of strength and fury, ready to fight for their land and for the humans they have welcomed into it. The King advances toward her. “Surrender, Queen Arrin. The war is over.”

The army hisses, ready to strike, but Arrin lifts her hand and silences them. Her eyes blaze like fire as she faces him.

“Let the humans live.”

I rip my gaze from the mirror. Heat surges through my veins until it bursts out in a visceral scream. My hands blaze with molten power, foreign and terrifying yet so completely mine. The blanket and withered chair crumble to ash.

The mirror stirs once more. A storm brews within its glass. Fire and air swirl together, forming a path I can't yet see but somehow recognize. I close my eyes and let the wind wrap around me. When I open them, clarity strikes. I see.

A colony of Beings kneels in silence, deep within a stone fortress.

Queen Arrin stands at the edge, gazing Eastward. Intricate crystal patterns on the floor beneath her.

She kneels, hands pressed to stone, head bowed, eyes closed. A vibrant blue light pours out of her, flooding the dark, feeding the crystal.

The Dark King drives his spear into it, twisting her gift until her magic feeds the festering beast. She lifts her head and growls, defiance burning through her tears.

Her cries vibrate through the stone, as if bringing the world to life, and taking hers with it.

Then,

The light mutes. The mirror shudders, and everything drowns in black.

I stare into the glass and grip it tightly, desperate for a different story to appear. But the surface lies dark and still. She’s gone. Everything is gone.

I tear my gaze away, my hands still trembling with the weight of what I saw. Colin hasn’t moved from the doorway, though his eyes are locked on me as if he sensed every ripple of my pain. Only when the vision fades does he cross the chamber softly, reaching for me until his hand brushes my shoulder. My knees nearly buckle at his touch. Sobs rise through me as the truth takes shape, the weight of who I am rising to life only to be torn away in the same breath. I glance at the man beside me, the one who should resemble the creatures in the painting. Yet his touch is nothing like theirs. Standing before the mirror together, the walls shudder and something unspoken locks into place.

My hair spills past my shoulders, my eyes burning blue in the blaze of light. A surge of blue current floods through Colin while a red one courses through me, feeding each other with the very essence of our being. We stand in our truest forms, his auburn hair falling loose to his shoulders, his hazel eyes vivid and alive. Then a voice floods my head, pulling me from the pain and fear that had just consumed me. You’re perfect, Jo, Colin says, though his lips never move. I hear him as clearly as if he had spoken.

The stone presses tighter with every breath. Stones collapse all around us, trapping us here for good. Colin and I lock hands and place them against the trembling wall, closing our eyes, willing it to give way.

Please.