Chapter 57
The Abyss breathes.
It is alive—not in the way of beating hearts and whispered prayers, but in the shifting, writhing currents that twist unseen. The void watches with coiled shadows, sentient in their silence. They wait. They listen.
I draw my arms close, pressing against the cold that seeps past flesh, sinking into bone. The air hums—thick with an unseen power, a weight that does not press upon my shoulders but upon my very essence. Each breath is shallow, constrained. This place does not belong to me.
Before me, Aks’stof lingers. Not standing, not quite floating—his form wavers at the edges, as if reality itself rejects him. Darkness clings to him like a second skin, parting only where the abyssal runes glow beneath his feet. They flicker, an erratic pulse of light, illuminating a figure that is neither wholly present nor wholly absent.
My heartbeat stammers—a frantic thing, wild against my ribs. I force stillness into my breath, into my voice. “Aks…” No. That name is too small for what he is. “Grandfather. I need—”
The void responds before I could finish, as if he already knows the question. A sound—hollow, resonant—not quite laughter, not quite words, but something in between.
“Need,” he muses, the word curling through the air, soft as a sigh, sharp as a blade. “Such a mortal thing, Elara. And what is it you think I can do?”
I swallow against the dryness in my throat. “Malak.” The name alone feels like poison, like something that should never be spoken aloud. “You can stop him. You have the power to end this.”
Aks’stof stirs. The darkness deepens, thickens, as if the void itself listens.
“The Lich Lord is not so easily unmade,” he says, the words slithering through the abyss, absolute. “And even if he were—why would I?”
A sharp ache unfurls in my chest, anger and fear coiled so tightly they are indistinguishable. I step forward, past the suffocating grasp of hesitation, into the void’s pull.
“Because you know what he is. What he’s done. If he isn’t stopped, he will consume everything—including you.”
Silence answers first. Long. Unyielding.
Then, Aks’stof moves.
A flicker of motion in the dark. A gleam of teeth, too sharp in the half-light.
“You ask for my help.” His voice is softer now, more intimate. “Do you know what that truly means?”
“I do,” I say, my voice steady. Or at least, I want to believe it is.
Aks’stof laughs—a ripple in the void, warm yet wrong, like a lullaby sung in the dark. Then, without warning, his massive hands seize my waist, and the world tilts.
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My breath catches as he lifts me effortlessly, twirling me as though I weigh nothing. Space bends. My stomach flips. His laughter is deep, resonant, vibrating through the abyss itself.
“What—what are you doing?” I gasp, grasping at his wrists, my pulse hammering against my ribs.
He cradles me in the air, grinning. “My darling granddaughter,” he purrs, the endearment curling around me like smoke. “You confide in me. You ask a favor of me. Does this mean you have accepted me as your own?”
He lowers me slowly, his cheek grazing mine as he sets me down. The touch is light, fleeting—yet it lingers, an echo of something long buried. A memory stirs, unbidden.
Merydeth, her arms wrapped around me, pressing her face to mine in that same quiet affection. Selene giggling, Lyra whining for her turn. Love, simple and whole. A time before shadows. A time before the world turned cruel.
The past beckons, pulling at the edges of my mind, but I shove it back. Not now.
With a breath, I snap out of it and smack Aks’stof over the head. “Focus.”
His booming laughter shatters the stillness. He rubs the spot where I hit him, his grin lazy but watchful. There’s something knowing in his gaze now—something deep, unspoken.
Then, with a snort, he waves a dismissive hand. “Malak? Pah. A religious fool, slumbering in an eternal sleep.”
I blink. “Eternal sleep?”
Aks’stof hums, folding his arms, his presence thickening like the void itself. “He is not your enemy, nor your threat. He is one of the Guardians. One of the few who still sit at the Round Table.”
The words settle over me like a shroud. The Round Table.
A chill trickles down my spine.
Malak was no mere Lich Lord. He was something else entirely.
I frown, the weight of his words pressing against my mind like an iron band. The name feels like a relic, something distant, something...wrong. “You mean—like King Arthur’s Round Table?”
Aks’stof chuckles, low and deep, his amusement rippling through the void. It is a sound too vast, too knowing, as if the abyss itself shares in the joke. “The very same,” he murmurs. “His most trusted. His greatest. The ones who carried the will of the old world into the new.”
The breath stills in my throat. That—
doesn’t make sense.
“But... we’re fighting him,” I say, each word careful, deliberate, grounding me in what I to be true. “Right now. As we speak.” My pulse quickens. “My friends—your other granddaughters—their lives are in danger.”
Aks’stof’s grin spreads, slow and sharp, a sliver of white against the shifting dark. His fingers brush my chin, the touch light, almost tender—yet laced with something older, something just beneath understanding. “Are they now?” he muses, voice like silk threaded with something ancient. “Are you ?”
The words slither through me, sinking deep. I saw the battle. The heat of magic, the clash of steel—I
it. I I did.
Don’t I?
A chill coils in my spine, doubt gnawing at the edges of my certainty. I shake my head, forcing my thoughts into order. “What are you saying?” My voice tightens. “Stop speaking in riddles and tell me what’s really happening.”
Aks’stof sighs, a breath drawn from the marrow of the void. He steps back, darkness folding around him, drawn to him, , as if he is the axis upon which the abyss turns.
“Oh, my dear Elara,” he murmurs. “There are things even I am not meant to say outright.” His golden-red eyes glint, unreadable. “But since you insist…”
He lifts a hand.
The void shifts. Tightens. Breathes.
A pressure—neither seen nor heard but —presses against me, something vast and formless, something just beyond understanding.
“Then watch,” he says.