Page 155 of Veinblood
“Where are we?” Kalliss studies the walls, his voice shaking slightly.
“Beneath Blackvault’s outer fortifications.” Sacha’s voice is clipped. “These caves connect to the fortress’s dungeons.”
“How do you know about this place?” Meren asks, as he peers into the darkness beyond our circle of light.
Sacha doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looks around the cavern, and a wave of anger courses through the connection between us. It’s cold and deep, the kind of rage that’s had years to ferment.
“I was brought here after Sereven’s betrayal. Before the tower. Before …”
Before he was locked away for twenty-seven years. Before everything that made him into the man standing beside me now.
What did they do to him in this place? What did he see down here in the darkness beneath their fortress?
I’ll never ask, never force him to relive those memories just to satisfy my curiosity. But it’s clear whatever he experienced here, it played a part in shaping him.
“We should move. It will take at least an hour to reach the surface.” He steps toward the front of the group, shadows still clinging to his clothes like remnants of the void.
As we start walking through the narrow passages, my hands begin to shake. At first, I assume it’s a delayed reaction to the shadow travel, but it doesn’t stop. Instead, it gets worse. Sparks flash between my fingers. Silver light flares beneath my skin, the power behaving in a way it hasn’t since I gained control over it. No matter what I do, it won’t stop.
The path we’re following feels wrong in a way that makes no sense. Not wrong like dangerous, but wrong like returning to a place you never wanted to see again. At first it’s small things. I know when a fork is approaching before we reach it. I can tell which turn Sacha is going to choose before he makes it.
But then memories start to rise. Brief flashes of being carried along these underground pathways as a small child, thrown over someone’s shoulder while voices argued overhead. The sound of boots echoing through a confined space.
Terror and pain washes over me in a wave so intense it steals my breath.
“Ellie?” Mira’s voice seems to come from very far away. “What’s wrong?”
That’s when I realize I’ve stopped walking. The group continues moving ahead of us, but I can’t make my feet takeanother step. I try to answer Mira, but I can’t speak because the memories are coming faster now, becoming more intense, more vivid.
Morereal.
Being small, so terribly small, helpless in someone’s arms while awful things happen around me. Something foreign and burning being forced into my body, power blazing through veins too young and fragile to contain it. Being taken deeper underground to a cavern carved from ancient rock, to a place that feels wrong and dangerous.
“I remember this place.” The words come out shaky.
Sacha turns back, concern sharpening his features. “How?” You have never—” But even as he says it, I see understanding dawn in his eyes. “They brought you here.”
His palm cups my cheek, warm and real, and present.
“There’s a place …” The knowledge surfaces from a deeply buried part of my mind. “Deep beneath the fortress. It’s carved from black stone, and symbols cover the walls. There’s a platform in the center with restraints built directly into it.”
“The ritual chamber,” Vorith says quietly. “The one that used to contain the crystal before it was corrupted.”
“It’s still there … the chamber I mean. I need to find it.”
Silver bleeds from my skin more intensely now, lighting up the narrow passageway. Mira looks alarmed, and Sacha glances upward toward the path that would lead us to the fortress. But the pull I’m feeling isn’t coming from above. It’s coming from deeper down, from memories I’m not entirely sure I want to recover.
This is where the Authority conducted their experiments on children. Where they forced stolen power into bodies too young to contain it safely. And part of me—the part that was changed here, forged here through pain and Authority ambition—knows there's something waiting for me in that place.
“Ellie … we came here for Sereven. He’s above us, not below.” Mira says carefully, her voice gentle but worried.
“I know.” The words feel distant, disconnected from the growing certainty in my chest. “But there’s something else down there. I can feel it calling to me.”
The memory flashes are making it difficult to focus on anything else. The taste of metal fills my mouth. My ears are full of voices speaking in hushed tones about vessels and the greater good. About children who were acceptable losses in service of a larger purpose.
“I was there. It’s where they changed me. Where they forced power into me, and made me into what I am.”
A hand finds my shoulder, catching me as another wave of memories threatens to drive me to my knees.
