Through their matebond, Dex felt everything. Her magic bleeding out. Her body failing. Every shallow breath she took reverberating through his chest as though his own lungs were the ones struggling.

He wanted to take her from Gav. He wanted to carry her himself. His arms wouldn’t close properly and his legs were only still moving because his wolf was holding the wheel.

Aegon: Keep walking. She needs us standing when this is over.

Dex said nothing back. He kept walking. He would keep walking until his legs gave out, and then he would crawl.

They moved in silence, carrying nothing between them except purpose and the sound of their own breathing.

The tunnel-bridge sealed itself behind them as they advanced, disappearing in segments, gold magic dissolving into the dark. Even that small act of closure drained her.

Her breathing turned shallow and her head lolled toward Gav’s shoulder. Her fingers twitched weakly at her sides, and the gold light threading through the walls of the bridge dimmed in response, flickering once, twice, before holding at a fraction of its original strength.

She couldn’t hold the bridge forever. And she was fading fast.

They moved quickly, the golden bridge carrying them toward the cavern’s far end. A waterfall thundered above the tunnel’s arch, but the water couldn’t reach them. Serena’s barrier held, thin as paper to the eye, fortified as steel to the touch.

Instead of another open chamber on the opposite side, they met a vast stone wall carved with intricate rune-patterns, circles inside circles and spirals of ancient script that climbed from floor to ceiling. At the center, a great dragon-serpent was carved in full relief, its stone scales coiled in eternal vigilance, its eyes set with rubies that caught the dying gold light and threw it back red.

The talisman’s chain was still around Serena’s neck. The fine gold chain had survived the water, the spikes, the extraction, because the magic that forged it was older than every threat that had tried to destroy its bearer tonight.

Gav carried her forward, slow and steady, her weight light against him. She managed to lift her arm, weak and trembling, and closed her fingers around the talisman before pressing it into his palm.

"The serpent’s chest," she whispered. "Center."

Gav placed the talisman into the carved depression at the heart of the dragon-serpent.

Serena’s eyes snapped open, glowing gold so bright they cast shadows behind every man in the tunnel. She spoke in Draken-Vorah, her voice low but resonant, threading the air with a power that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with bloodline.

"Xyr’thali vorun’ka. Ven ti’varis aen dal’kor. Mviwos norv’walx."

The wall vibrated beneath their feet. The serpent ignited with sapphire light.

Hyran inhaled sharply, his exhaustion forgotten for exactly one second. "Guardian of the Gate, awaken. Let only the worthy pass."

The carved serpent untwisted itself, stone scales grinding as though they had waited centuries for her voice. The talisman dissolved into the stone in veins of liquid gold, and the mark on Serena’s forearm burned hot enough to make her flinch. The entire wall shuddered and then split clean down the center, both sides sliding apart with a deep, ancient groan that resonated through the tunnel and across the surface of the lake behind them.

Aeron and Hyran exchanged looks, both wide-eyed, momentarily thrilled in the way only scholars standing at the edge of discovery could be. They read the situation immediately and forced their faces into something more appropriate, attempting, poorly, to hide the enthusiasm.

Maelor was less subtle. His mismatched eyes went wide, the green one brightening, the gold one burning, and for the first time since he’d arrived, his clinical mask cracked entirely into open, unguarded wonder. He looked at the carved script on the walls the way a starving man looked at a feast.

"Fae and Draken-Vorah script interwoven," he breathed. "This predates the Sundering. This predates everything."

"Contain yourself," Hyran muttered, though his own voice carried the faintest tremor of the exact same awe.

The group stepped through the opening.

The moment the last of them crossed the threshold, the stone sealed shut behind them with a finality that vibrated through bone. It cut off the lake, the cavern, the waterfall, and every threat they had fled, sealing them inside something older than the kingdom that sat above it.

What awaited them inside stole the air from every man present.

The chamber was carved from pure crystal and ice, glowing from within, every surface alive with light that pulsed in slow, rhythmic waves. Quartz lined the walls in natural formations that looked grown rather than built, spiraling upward into a ceiling so high it disappeared into luminous haze. The air felt charged, humming with the kind of magic that watched, judged, and remembered.

A crystal pedestal rose at the center of the chamber, carved from a single shard of shimmering quartz, a metal basin set into its heart. Smooth. Ancient. Waiting, the same way a lock waits for a key it has already chosen.

Gav carried Serena forward, one arm still supporting her full weight because her legs had abandoned the effort entirely. She reached out with her free hand and grasped one of the thin crystal rods that protruded from the pedestal.

Without hesitation, without asking, without so much as a flinch, Serena dragged the crystalline edge across her palm.

Blood welled instantly and dripped into the basin, each drop glowing faintly gold the moment it touched the ancient metal.

The chamber answered.

Multiple voices, hundreds, thousands, layered over one another in an unnatural chorus that echoed off the crystal walls and resonated inside the chests of every man present. The bones of the chamber itself were speaking, and the sound was old enough to make the hair on the back of every neck in the room stand rigid.

"Blood is required from all. The chosen alone will open the door, but the chamber will answer only when every soul present has paid."