Chapter 1418: Story 1418: Elena’s Shadow
Mira’s foot touched the altar’s summit—
—and the cathedral vanished.
She stood in a vast plain of gray ash. The sky was the color of old bone, heavy clouds sagging low, and the air shimred with heat despite no visible sun. Beneath her boots, the ground crunched like brittle paper.
Soone was calling her na.
“Mira.”
She turned.
Elena stood a few paces away, wrapped in tattered fabric that clung like it had been soaked and dried a hundred tis over. Her eyes were the sa—sharp, alive—but her skin seed touched by the sa ash as the ground. A faint trail of black dust curled off her with every movent.
“Elena?” Mira’s voice cracked.
Elena smiled, but it was the kind that didn’t reach her eyes. “You took your ti.”
Mira stepped forward, instinct tugging her closer, but the space between them didn’t shorten. “Where have you been? I thought—”
“You thought I was lost,” Elena interrupted. “I wasn’t. I was pulled.”
The air stirred. Mira realized they weren’t alone—figures stood in the distance, silhouettes that wavered like heat mirages. Every ti she blinked, they were closer, though their movents were too subtle to see.
“Elena, we need to move—” Mira began, but Elena shook her head.
“No. This is where the Maw keeps its chosen until they decide.”
The phrase was almost identical to what the masked figure had said. Mira felt the tether inside her pulse again, binding her to this place.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Elena asked, stepping closer now, though Mira hadn’t seen her feet move. “The water. The towers. The thing beneath.”
Mira swallowed. “Yes.”
Elena’s smile widened, but it felt wrong—like sothing behind her face was controlling the muscles. “Good. That ans you can hear them too.”
The hum from the cathedral returned, but distorted, like it was echoing through stone. It vibrated in Mira’s teeth, in her bones. The gray silhouettes were much closer now, and she could see their shapes weren’t human—elongated limbs, necks bent at angles, faces covered in long, vertical slits instead of mouths.
“They’re here for ,” Elena said quietly. “And for you.”
“No,” Mira said firmly, though her voice wavered. “We’re leaving together.”
Elena tilted her head. “You can’t take . I’m already in.”
The ground trembled. From beneath the ash, sothing vast shifted, sending ripples across the plain. The silhouettes stopped moving, all heads—or what passed for heads—turning toward the sa point: directly beneath Mira.
Elena’s voice softened, almost pleading. “Mira… when it opens, don’t look away. If you do, it’ll take forever.”
The ash split. A circular maw the size of a house yawned open, ringed with teeth like splintered stone, and an impossible darkness inside that seed to lean toward her.
Mira’s tether flared white-hot.
Elena reached out a hand. “Choose.”
The ground gave way.
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