I couldn’t argue. The mountain was a maze, half-forgotten tech, half-organic. Some of the tunnels curved unnaturally, others narrowed into slits a grown male couldn’t squeeze through. Worse still, the enemy clearly knew this terrain. We were fumbling in a trap designed to be a tomb.
“You’re right,” Myccael said quietly. “But Grandyr didn’t bring us this far to die chasing phantoms.”
I looked over.
He wasn’t talking to us. Not entirely. His eyes were fixed on something distant, some memory none of the rest of us shared.
“Grandyr brought us here,” he said again, louder now. “He called me. He flew me through the stars to this moment. He marked me. Do you think he would waste that? That he would gift me with his fire just to allow me to die in a tunnel?”
Myccael’s voice was steady. Sure. “He will guide us. We just have to follow.”
Darryck made a low sound in his throat, half frustration, half reluctant belief. “Then he’d better hurry the snyg up.”
“Dragoons,” I barked again, snapping the tension. “You three take point. Five more at your backs. You’re loud. You’re mad. You’ve come to gut Eulachs. If you see movement—chase it. But never alone.”
“Zyn!” they echoed.
We split.
Our baldricked decoys took the center path, boots ringing like war drums against the stone. Their voices were a fury of threats and curses, their blades drawn and gleaming under the sputtering torchlight. From a distance, they might just pass as vissigroths too enraged to plan.
The three of us slipped away in their wake, ducking into a narrow vein of tunnel, half-collapsed and shadowed.
“I hate hiding,” Darryck growled under his breath.
“We’re not hiding,” I murmured. “We’re hunting.”
We crouched in the dark, waiting for the clamor of our decoys to echo far enough down the main artery to cover our tracks. The quiet that followed was thick. Heavy. Like the mountain itself was holding its breath. No one moved.
We waited for a few more heartbeats. Long enough for sweat to gather between my shoulder blades. Long enough to start doubting the plan all over again.
Then Myccael flicked his fingers. Forward.
We crept down the side corridor, following the faint scorch marks of old torch brackets and the slick sheen of moss crawling along the seams in the stone. The tunnels here were tighter, older, made by the gods, not carved. Not made for mass movement. Made to confuse, to channel, to trap.
“Here,” Darryck muttered, crouching low.
A twist of blue cloth caught on a jag of stone.
“Oksana,” Myccael whispered, reaching out, but not touching. As if even brushing the fabric would make her slip further away.
“She left it on purpose,” I said. “Same as before.”
“She’s marking their path,” Darryck growled. “Smart seffy.”
We kept following the signs.
Breadcrumbs. That’s what they were. A faint scuff of boot tread on a patch of dry blood. More scraps of cloth, wedged between two stones. A smear on the wall that might have been a handprint—all of them placed, small, precise, and deliberate.
“They’re guiding us,” I said, and the words gave me the strength I didn’t know I needed. It told us that our seffies were alive and fighting.
“Or leading us into a trap,” Darryck muttered.
“Either way,” Myccael said grimly, “we’re going.”
We would not leave this mountain without them. We would get them back or die trying.
We turned down another narrow corridor, this one curving unnaturally like the inside of a ribcage. The air grew damper. The walls shimmered with something like condensation, but thicker. There were faint bioluminescent veins, tracing some long-dead Zuten circuitry that throbbed like a buried heart.
