Novels by Nexus Writer

For a moment, there was no falling.There was only the sensation of being suspended somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, as though the world had forgotten what it was supposed to do with me.Then I hit something.Not stone.Not earth.Something cold and hard struck my back, and the impact drove the breath from my lungs. I tried to move, but my body would not answer. My eyes opened.There was no sky above me.There was no forest.There was no gate.There was only darkness.I lay on a surface that looked black but felt strangely warm beneath my palms. When I pushed myself upright, the darkness around me shifted.Not moved.Shifted.Like something enormous had turned in its sleep.I remembered the last thing the Hollow King had said.Your first mistake was believing the prison was beneath the mountain.Your second was believing I was the prisoner.Then the ground had opened.And I had fallen.My hand went instinctively to my sword.It was still there.The golden blade lay beside

The ground exploded upward.Stone tore apart beneath us.I hit the ground hard as the circular floor broke into pieces, and for a moment there was nothing beneath my boots except empty air. Lucy shouted my name. Someone grabbed the back of my coat. I felt myself being dragged sideways just before a column of black stone erupted from the place where I had been standing.The impact threw dust across the valley.I rolled twice before coming to a stop.My sword was still in my hand.That surprised me.I looked around.Lucy was on her knees several feet away, one hand pressed against the ground.Heather had fallen beside Borius.Dwayne was already standing.Seth had been thrown almost to the edge of the stone ring, while Arlen was struggling to get back onto his feet.Then something moved inside the opening.A hand emerged.It was pale.Human-looking.Five fingers.It gripped the edge of the broken stone.Another hand appeared beside it.Then a head rose between them.I froze.It had my fa

Every voice in the forest spoke my name.Not loudly.That was what made it worse.The sound came from everywhere at once, carried between the black trees in a hundred different tones, some deep, some whispering, some sounding like children, others like people I had never met. Yet every voice said the same thing.“Patrick.”I stood completely still.The sword was still in my hand.Its light had faded, leaving only a faint warmth in the hilt, but I could feel something moving through the blade, as though the weapon itself had not finished reacting to what had happened beneath the mountain.Lucy came to my side.“Don't answer them.”“I wasn't planning to.”“Good.”Behind us, the stone gate remained closed.The words carved into it were still visible.THE PRISON IS NOW OPEN.I looked toward the distant figure.The Hollow King.Even from this distance, I could tell it was enormous.It stood beyond the black trees, perhaps on the other side of the valley, perhaps much farther away. The fog

The final chain broke.I knew it before I heard the sound because the entire shaft seemed to hold its breath.The enormous length of black metal hanging above the giant tightened for one impossible second, every link drawn taut beneath the pressure of whatever had been imprisoned below us, and then the chain snapped with a force that shook the mountain from its roots.The sound was deafening.I was thrown against the wall.Stone struck my shoulder.The sword nearly flew from my hand.“Patrick!”Lucy.Her voice came from somewhere above me.I looked up.She was clinging to a narrow ledge, one hand gripping a jutting piece of stone while Heather reached down toward her.“I'm all right!”The lie came automatically.My shoulder was burning.My ribs hurt.But I was alive.That was enough.Below me, the giant moved.Not quickly.It did not need to.Its enormous arm came free from the remaining restraints, and the movement alone sent a wave of dust and shattered stone through the shaft.I lo

The mountain breathed.There was no mistaking it this time.The sound rolled through the chamber from somewhere beneath our feet, deep and slow, carrying enough force that dust fell from the ceiling and the stone pillars trembled around us. It sounded like the first breath of something enormous that had been buried for so long that the act of breathing had become an event in itself.I could feel the movement through the soles of my boots.In.The entire chamber seemed to draw inward.Out.The floor pushed upward beneath us.Then the darkness swallowed everything.For a moment I could see nothing.I reached instinctively for Lucy and felt her hand close around mine.“I'm here,” she whispered.I squeezed her hand.“Stay close.”A faint blue light returned.It came from the symbols carved into the pillars.One after another, they began to glow.The first symbol.Then the second.Then the third.The light travelled around the chamber in a widening circle until the entire room was illumina

The fog was coming toward us.Trees disappeared behind it. Branches vanished. The ground itself seemed to be erased beneath itAnd inside that moving wall were faces.My faces.Dozens of them.Then hundreds.Every pale oval turned toward us as the fog advanced, every mouth stretched into the same impossible smile I had seen in the pool.“Run!” Borius shouted.That broke whatever had frozen inside me.I grabbed Lucy's hand.“Gate!”We ran.Heather was already moving, pulling Seth forward while Borius stayed close enough to catch him if his injured leg failed. Dwayne disappeared into the trees on our right, but I knew better than to think he had abandoned us. He was moving parallel to the group, searching for anything that might give us another route.The stone gate grew larger as we approached.Up close, it was enormous.Two walls of dark stone rose from the earth on either side of the opening, each one covered in carvings so old that roots had grown through them. The structure looked