Page 38 of The Curse of Golden Blood
I stopped, holding my breath, as if afraid to hear anything beyond the barrier.
Narietta stepped forward, placing her palm flat against the stone. Her tattoos shimmered faintly, responding to her touch. Then she whispered something in the old tongue, voice soft but steady.
"Ven'ae thalas miren."
The wall pulsed, once. Then slowly, it began to dissolve—melting into a pale, mist-like veil that shimmered with faint blue light.
“You can pass through now,” she said. “But I can’t go beyond this point.” She nodded towards the gateway. I stepped forward, barely able to believe my eyes. It reminded me of what I had felt coming into Thunder Court for the first time, the strangeness of this world still so new.
Without thinking, I reached out. My hand passed right through. It didn't feel solid, more like an invisible, paper thin sheet that concealed the unseen.
When I looked over at Narietta, she nodded. "I'll be here, waiting."
Holding back the questions threatening to spill, I simply nodded. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the gateway.
It was like stepping through a waterfall, a feeling of weightlessness, and then a pull. A pressure that threatened to hold me, to pull me through faster than I was meant to go, only it lacked the feeling of cold or wet. Instead, it was a sense of emptiness, a cool nothingness that wrapped itself around me.
Then, just as quickly, I was on the other side.
When I turned to look behind me, there was only a solid stone wall.
Turning back around, I found myself standing in the middle of a circular room, its pale marble floor blackened with scorch marks. Walls formed a barrier, their height disappearing into the shadows above.
From within their depths, I could hear it.
Screams, wails, cries, even prayers. Some muffled, some eerily clear, all eliciting a deep shudder in the pit of my stomach.
I walked towards them, instinctively knowing their source. And the closer I got, the darker the lines grew, the more distorted the space seemed.
Before long, I came to an alcove.
The space opened into a vast underground chamber, quiet and glowing like a dream half-remembered. Pools of green light dotted the floor, each one perfectly round, their surfaces rippling softly despite the still air. The liquid shimmered unnaturally, somewhere between water and glass.
It smelled faintly of crushed mint and something sweeter beneath, like sugarwood bark steeped too long.
Each pool held a figure.
Some lay motionless, heads tilted back, lips parted as if caught in a silent scream. Others trembled, muttering in garbled, broken whispers that didn’t quite sound like anylanguage I knew. Their skin was pale, blotched with bruiselike markings in jagged patterns that pulsed faintly.
Healers moved between them like phantoms, dressed in thick robes the color of frost, their faces obscured by strange, delicate masks.
Their gloved hands carried ladles, bowls, cloths—tools for tending, containing, soothing.
One was kneeling beside a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten. Though aging worked differently in the faerie realms, it was hard not to miss the innocence in his youth, the purity of his face.
I stepped forward without thinking.
His eyes flew open, darting wildly around the room before settling on mine.
"Who are you?" he asked.
I crouched down, keeping a distance of several feet between us.
"My name is Miralyte," I said quietly, meeting his gaze. He flinched, eyes darting to the floor.
"Are you also sick?"
"No," I replied, shaking my head. "I'm a... visitor."
