Page 148 of The Last Remaining Light

“So do you.”

His mouth tightened. “Not like you do.”

There was too much beneath that answer. Like the light no longer belonged to him or he had already accepted the darkness as his own.

It was too much for her heart to accept. She couldn’t examine it closer. Not while Starless followed and the city was falling apart above them.

Still, the words lodged beneath her ribs. Not like you do.

Elowynn lifted the crystal again, but held it farther away from him. Then they moved on.

Korvel led them through two more turns before the passage widened into an old service gallery. The space opened unexpectedly around them, revealing a long chamber lined with disused transit rails and suspended resonance anchors that hung from the ceiling like the ribs of some ancient beast. Dust lay thick across everything. One of the old transport platforms rested halfway along the track, its brass fittings corroded and its reso-tech core dark.

Elowynn had read about these galleries.

Every scholar in Veylspire had, though most references treated them as curiosities from a less efficient age. Before the modern lifts and terrace routes, the old transit system had carried archive materials, resonance cores, and scholars between the lower observatories through tunnels carved into the mountains. She remembered sitting through a lecture about their design during her first turning in the city, bored almost to tears while the instructor droned on about obsolete infrastructure.

Now the obsolete infrastructure might save their lives.

A bitter laugh rose in her throat before she swallowed it down.

“This way,” Korvel said, gesturing toward a narrow stair descending from the far side of the gallery. “The shelter is beneath the old eastern relay. If the seals still hold, it should have water, emergency lanterns, and access to the outer maintenance tunnels.”

Alyra looked toward him. “Outer tunnels lead where?”

“Somewhere beyond the city wall,” he said.

Elowynn’s heart lifted before she could stop it.

Caelyn’s gaze found hers, and for one fragile moment they shared the same thought.

Out.

Not safe, perhaps. Not healed or whole. But beyond Veylspire’s walls, beyond Vigil containment, beyond the burning heart of a city that would kill him if it discovered what he was.

A sound rose from the far end of the gallery. It was not scratching this time.

It sounded like a wet, rattling breath.

Alyra stepped in front of Lora before anyone else moved. The resonance blade brightened, its glow spilling across the old transit rails and catching on the dust suspended in the air. Korvel drew a compact silversteel pistol from beneath his coat, the kind Council guards carried during formal processions when they wanted a weapon hidden beneath elegance. Lora’s eyes widened at the sight of it, but for once she said nothing.

Elowynn’s hand tightened around the crystal as movement stirred near the abandoned platform.

At first, she thought it was only a torn cloak fluttering in the disturbed air. Then the shape unfolded. A man stepped from behind the platform with one shoulder hanging at an impossible angle and his head tilted too far to one side. His eyes were clouded white. Black veins spread up his neck and across his jaw. When his mouth opened, no sound came out.

Another figure emerged behind him.

Then another.

Elowynn’s stomach dropped as more shapes appeared from the shadows along the gallery walls.

They were not rushing. That might have been easier to understand. Instead, they filed into view one by one, drawn by light, sound, or something else entirely.

A woman in torn scholar’s robes. An elderly man with one side of his face blackened by corrupted veins. A child no older than seven clutching a rag doll by one stained arm.

The child was what undid her.

Elowynn had seen Starless before. She had seen them tear through people when they stood in their path. She had seen what they became when something interrupted whatever call they were answering.