Page 187 of The Last Remaining Light

Lora was openly sobbing now, clinging to Alyra as she backed away with her sword still raised. Beside them, Korvel and Vaelor watched in grim silence.

The message couldn’t have been plainer.

The Starless didn't care about them at all.

They only cared about reaching the ring.

Vaelor looked toward the structure, then over to the corridor opposite where the Starless converged. It branched away from the chamber, curving beyond it

It was a corridor lined with familiar symbols.

Starway symbols.

Hope flared inside Elowynn's chest. Small and fragile, but it was there.

Vaelor pointed toward the distant passage. "We leave. There is nothing more we can do here.”

Lora sniffled, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “We don’t even know what’s really happening,” she choked out through a sob.

“No,” Vaelor said as he ushered the group toward the corridor. “That’s true. But I know someone who might.”

Chapter Forty-Three

“The longest journeys rarely end somewhere new. They end where the first question was asked.”

— Sister Agatha

The corridor should have led them away from the ring.

Instead, it led them beneath it.

The starway symbols continued appearing along the walls, but the architecture surrounding them no longer resembled a transit route.

Archaic maintenance markings accompanied the sigils. Resonance channels thick as tree trunks ran alongside the corridor. Every step carried them deeper beneath the containment structure rather than away from it, and the distant pulses shaking the mountain seemed to grow stronger with every turn.

The engineer's death hung over the group like a storm cloud. Even Lora had remained subdued for the last bell. Her usual humor was extinguished by everything they had witnessed. Alyra walked with one hand resting near her sword while Korvel repeatedly glanced over his shoulder toward the darkness behind them.

The sounds of the gathering Starless no longer followed the group.

That should have been comforting, but Elowynn didn't find it as such.

The corridor eventually ended at a circular platform overlooking an abyss.

Everyone stopped.

For several long moments, nobody spoke. Only the sounds of heavy breathing–erratic and scared–could be heard.

The chasm before them stretched so far downward that the lantern lights failed to reveal its depths. Massive support structures crossed the void at irregular intervals, disappearing into darkness below and above. Bridges connected portions of the cavern, while colossal pillars of astrylite crystals vanished into distances too vast for Elowynn's mind to comprehend.

None of that was what held her attention.

The aethercurrents did.

Rivers upon rivers of silver-blue light flowed through the darkness beneath them.

Not water. Not fire. Not resonance as she knew it.

Actual aethercurrents.