The tunnel walls pressed close as Seraphine ran, her breath coming in ragged gasps that echoed too loudly in the confined space. Kaelan's hand gripped hers with bruising force, his sword scraping against stone as they stumbled through the darkness. Behind them, the sounds of battle faded, replaced by something worse. Silence.Then the screaming started.Not human screams. Not even the prototype's mocking laughter. This was the sound of stone itself being torn apart, of roots snapping and earth groaning under some unimaginable weight. The ground trembled beneath their feet, sending pebbles skittering into the void ahead.Seraphine's shoulder slammed into a sudden turn in the tunnel. Pain lanced down her arm, but she bit back the cry that rose in her throat. The crown's thorn still embedded in her temple pulsed in time with her racing heart, a constant reminder of the thing that now wore her face in the chamber behind them.Kaelan jerked to a stop so abruptly she nearly collided with him. Before she could ask why, she saw it—the tunnel ended in a sheer drop. Below, black water reflected the faint greenish glow from the cracks spreading through the ceiling. The surface rippled with each distant impact. No way back," Kaelan murmured. His voice had regained some strength, though blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with a trembling hand. "They'll follow the crown's pull."
Seraphene touched the thorn in her temple. It burned at the contact, sending fresh waves of nausea through her. "Then we remove it."
"Not here." Kaelan's gaze darted to the water below. "That's the old cistern. Leads to the river if we can" a section of tunnel collapsed twenty paces behind them. Dust billowed through the passage, carrying with it the stench of rotting vines and freshly spilled blood. Something moved in the debris cloud, a silhouette too large to be the prototype.
Seraphine didn't wait to see more. She squeezed Kaelan's hand once and jumped.
The water hit like a thousand icy needles. The shock drove the air from her lungs, the darkness closing in from all sides. She kicked blindly, disoriented until a hand grabbed her collar and dragged her toward what she hoped was the surface. They broke through with identical gasps. The cistern's ceiling loomed close overhead, its stonework veined with glowing green cracks that pulsed like arteries. Across the water, the tunnel they'd jumped from was gone, collapsed into rubble. But the water itself..It was moving.Not the gentle flow of a subterranean river, but a purposeful current dragging them toward the far wall where the cistern's overflow channel gaped like a mouth. Seraphine barely had time to grab a breath before the water swallowed them again, tumbling them through stone channels that scraped skin from elbows and knees.Whene they finally surfaced, it was in a wider tunnel where the water ran shallow over broken statues. Seraphine recognized the style, old Thorn Kings from before the monarchy fell. Their sightless stone eyes seemed to follow as she dragged herself onto a half-submerged plinth.Kaelan collapsed beside her, his sword still miraculously in hand. "The river's ahead," he panted. "If we can"The thorn in Seraphine's temple flared white-hot. She cried out, clutching at her head as visions flooded her mind, not memories, but something watching through Elyssia's eyes. The throne room in ruins. The prototype's mangled body twitching as Elyssia knelt beside it. And worst of all, the knowing smile the thing wearing her face turned toward some unseen point, as if meeting Seraphine's gaze across the miles.Then the connection broke, leaving her gasping on hands and knees in the shallows.Kaelan's hands framed her face. His lips moved, but the ringing in her ears drowned out the words. She focused on the shape of them instead. Three syllables. A name.
Pip.
The water around them began to ripple against the current.Small at first. Then stronger. The submerged, statues trembled where they lay. From the darkness downstream came a sound like a hundred whispers given form, rising to a chorus of half-remembered voices all speaking in unison "Seraphine.Kaelan yanked her upright as the first skeletal hand broke the surface, its bone fingers glistening with that same unnatural green. Then another. And another. The river was giving up its dead,and they all wore the Thorn Crown's mark.The nearest corpse turned its hollow gaze toward the thorn in Seraphine's tempel and smiled.