The Shard-Bearer

Chapter 5 - Beneath the Bones

The stair dropped us into a throat of stone, narrow and slick, the air growing colder with every step. Our boots echoed, each sound swallowed by the dark like it was listening.

Fennric’s lamp sputtered, painting the walls in ragged circles of light. Symbols carved into the stone slid past us in spirals and jagged lines, shapes like eyes scratched by hands long rotted. Some were worn smooth, others gouged as if someone had tried to erase them.

Corin muttered under his breath, “Tombs on tombs. Nothing good lives here.”

Fennric’s grin shone crooked in the lamplight. “Not lives. Waits.”

The whisper slid through me again, soft but clear, threading into my bones.

Closer.

I stumbled on the step, catching myself on the damp wall. My pulse thudded too loud in my ears. Neither of them reacted. They didn’t hear it. Only me.

The air thickened as we reached the bottom, where the stair spilled into a long corridor. The walls here weren’t bare. Bones jutted out, mortared into the stone, skulls staring hollow-eyed from the mortar. A thousand dead, maybe more, built into the very bones of Drakemire.

Fennric’s lamp flickered across them, and shadows moved like the skulls were turning to watch.

I tried to look away, but the whisper curled through the silence, warm, insistent.

Almost there, Malrik.

And for the first time, I realized it wasn’t promising. It was hungry.

The corridor narrowed, bones packed tighter, their sockets hollow and endless. Dust drifted with every step, filling my mouth with the taste of rot.

Fennric swung his lamp low, humming some broken tune under his breath. “The Guild never comes this far,” he whispered. “They know better.”

The whisper brushed my ear.

Step left.

I froze mid-stride. Corin nearly bumped into me. “What now?”

I didn’t answer. I just shifted, one step to the side.

The floor gave way where I’d been about to plant my boot. Stone crumbling into a black maw. Rusted blades snapped out from the walls with a shriek, sweeping through the air like hungry teeth.

Corin jerked back, swearing, the edge of one blade grazing his sleeve. The cloth tore, a thin red line blooming on his arm.

The trap shuddered once, then stilled, settling back into its centuries of silence.

Fennric grinned wide, lamp light gleaming in his eyes. “Sharp as the day they were set. Beautiful.”

Corin rounded on me, voice tight with anger. “How did you know?”

I stared at the hole, heart hammering. The whisper lingered, warm against my skin, smug.

“I just… felt it,” I said.

Corin’s eyes narrowed, sharp and searching. “Felt it,” he echoed, like the word itself was poison.

Fennric chuckled, already moving past the ruin. “Trust the gutter-rat’s instincts, eh? Seems the dead favor him.”

But Corin didn’t laugh. He just kept watching me, and the weight in his stare was heavier than all the bones in the walls.

The corridor bled into open space, the air shifting, cooler but heavy with a silence that pressed the lungs flat.

We stepped into a chamber so vast the lamplight couldn’t reach its ceiling. The walls weren’t stone anymore, they were skulls, stacked in endless layers, fused together by time and mortar, grinning down in their thousands.

Corin stopped dead. “Gods,” he whispered. “This isn’t a tomb. It’s a warning.”

The whisper surged inside me, drowning the chamber’s hush.

Closer.

At the far end, rising from the skulls like a black wound, stood a gate. Iron bars thick as tree trunks, slick with damp, threaded with veins of something that pulsed faintly red, not rust, but light.

Heat breathed from it in waves, though the air was otherwise cold. The closer we drew, the sharper it pressed at my chest, like standing too near a forge.

Fennric’s lamp swung wide, catching the bars. His grin split his face, it was wild. “There,” he hissed. “The Vault of Shards.”

The whisper filled my skull. Not words now, not suggestions. A roar and a hunger, a pull so strong it set my teeth on edge.

Malrik. You are mine.

I stumbled, catching the gate with my hand. The iron seared my palm, but I didn’t pull away. The heat sank through my skin, through bone, burning and sweet.

Behind me, Corin’s voice cracked sharp. “Don’t touch it!”

But the whisper only grew louder, and the gate trembled under my grip.

The iron burned, but I couldn’t let go. The heat wasn’t pain anymore, it was a pulse, a heartbeat, and it matched mine.

The gate shuddered. Dust fell from the skulls above, raining in thin streams.

Fennric stumbled back, lamp swinging, his grin gone brittle. “By the old gods…”

The whisper split open into a voice, deep and velvet, filling me until it was the only thing in the chamber.

You’ve found me, Malrik. At last.

I gasped, but the sound wasn’t mine, it was pulled from me, ripped out, as if the shard spoke through my lungs.

Shadows uncoiled from the gate, black smoke alive with red threads. They slithered along the ground, curling around my boots, licking up my legs like fire without flame.

Corin’s hand grabbed my shoulder, yanking. “Get off it! Malrik!”

The shadows recoiled from him, snapping back, and the gate groaned deep, a sound like iron bending under the sea.

I tore free of his grip, chest heaving. My palm stuck to the bar, fused by heat, skin searing but held fast. And still I couldn’t let go. 

The voice purred, low and triumphant.

You are the key. Open me.

The gate jolted, a quake shaking the chamber, skulls tumbling loose from the walls. One shattered at Corin’s feet. He swore, unsheathed his blade, eyes wild, not at the gate, not at Fennric, but at me.

Because for the first time, he heard it too.

The voice.

The shard.

The gate screamed as it moved. Iron shrieked, skulls split and fell, the ground trembling beneath our boots. The bars bent outward, slow at first, then surging, as if something inside had been waiting centuries to be free.

Heat roared out, not warmth, but the stifling, choking breath of a furnace. The shadows writhed back, folding into the blackness beyond.

And then the vault lay open.

The chamber inside was smaller than I’d imagined, but it didn’t matter. The walls were smooth obsidian, polished so dark they drank the light. And in the center, rising from a pedestal carved from the same stone, was the shard.

It wasn’t stone. It wasn’t glass. It was something between, jagged yet perfect, its edges cutting the air itself. A crimson glow pulsed at its heart, slow and steady, like the beat of a living organ.

The moment I saw it, the whisper ceased. Not exactly though, It became everything. A tide flooding my skull, every thought drowned, every nerve alight.

Come to me.

Fennric dropped to his knees, lamp clattering from his hand, eyes wide and glassy. “By the bones… it lives…”

Corin’s sword was out, but his grip shook. “Malrik. Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

But my feet were already moving. One step, then another. I couldn’t stop. My body was a puppet, strings drawn tight.

The shard pulsed brighter, the crimson deepening.

And as my hand lifted, whether by my will or its, the world narrowed to that single point of light.