Chapter 7 | Part 5

Wyrmreach was wrong.

Drusniel forced himself upright, water streaming from his clothes. The rocks beneath him were black—not weathered black, but black like they’d been burned. Like fire had touched them so recently the stone still remembered.

The air was heavier here. Hotter. Each breath required effort, his lungs working harder to extract what they needed. The light came from everywhere and nowhere—no sun that he could see, just a diffuse reddish glow that cast everything in shades of rust and dried blood.

Zaelar said contacts would find me.

He looked around. Barren shore. Black rocks. Strange vegetation in the distance—plants that pulsed faintly with colors that didn’t exist in the mortal world. Not light exactly. Something else. Something that hurt to look at directly.

No contacts. No welcoming party. No sign that anything here knew or cared that he’d arrived.

Maybe they’re watching. Maybe they’ll come.

He checked his pack. The artifact was intact, the pouch still waterproof despite everything. His provisions had survived. The Vrinn dagger at his belt—

The artifact pulsed.

Drusniel froze. The sensation was different from before. Not the void of activation, but something else. A vibration. A resonance. Like something far away had heard a note and was answering.

He opened the pouch. The metal plate glowed faintly, symbols brightening and fading in patterns he couldn’t read.

Something knows I’m here.

He sealed the pouch. Stood. Looked around again with new urgency.

The landscape stretched before him—vast and alien and utterly empty. No paths. No structures. No sign of civilization. Just black rock and wrong-colored plants and a sky that pressed down like a weight.

Find Szoravel. That’s all that matters.

But how? Zaelar had said Szoravel would find him. Had said the artifact would signal his arrival. But the artifact was pulsing and no one was coming.

Maybe it takes time. Maybe I need to wait.

He started walking anyway. Sitting still felt wrong. The air here, the light, the faint wrongness of everything. His instincts screamed at him to move. To not be in one place long enough for the things that lived here to notice.

The terrain climbed. Black rock gave way to darker soil. The pulsing vegetation grew thicker, casting strange shadows. He passed something that might have been bones, too large to be any animal he knew, too oddly shaped to be anything mortal.

Don’t think about it. Keep moving.

Ahead, the landscape rose toward distant mountains. Not mountains—cliffs? Something that blocked the horizon. He aimed for them. Higher ground meant better visibility. Better chances of seeing anyone—or anything—approaching.

He walked for what felt like hours. The light didn’t change. No sun rose or set. Time was different here, stretched and compressed in ways that made his head ache.

Then he saw it.

One of the mountains moved.

Drusniel stopped. His heart lurched. His eyes had to be wrong—had to be playing tricks after everything he’d been through.

But no. The shape in the distance—massive, impossibly massive, blocking a section of the horizon—shifted. Resettled. The faint red light caught something that might have been an eye.

That’s not a mountain.

The thought arrived with perfect, terrible clarity. Whatever that shape was, it was alive. It was vast beyond comprehension. And it was looking in his direction.

Drusniel ducked behind an outcropping. His breath came fast. His hands shook. The artifact pulsed again—stronger now, more insistent.

Something knows I’m here.

Not just the contacts. Not just Szoravel.

Something else.

A presence brushed against his mind.

Not Annariel. Not the familiar warmth he’d grown to depend on. This was different. Older. Deeper. It didn’t speak words. Didn’t offer comfort or guidance or lies dressed up as friendship.

It just… noticed.

Attention. Awareness. A vast curiosity turning toward something new and small and interesting.

Something is watching.

The presence withdrew as quickly as it had come. But the sensation lingered—the knowledge that he’d been seen. That something ancient and powerful had looked at him and found him… what? Amusing? Intriguing? Prey?

Drusniel stayed hidden behind the outcropping, eyes locked on a thin fissure in the black rock until his hands stopped shaking.

Szoravel. I need to find Szoravel. Before whatever that was decides to take a closer look.

But Szoravel wasn’t coming. The contacts weren’t coming. He was alone in a prison realm, surrounded by things too large and too wrong to comprehend, carrying an artifact that felt like it might be broadcasting his location to anything that cared to listen.

Power costs, Zaelar had said. The question is whether you’re willing to pay.

Drusniel was starting to understand what that meant.

He forced himself to move. To keep walking toward the distant mountains that might not be mountains at all.

Behind him, somewhere in the depths of Wyrmreach, something vast turned its attention toward other matters.

For now.

End of Chapter 7.5 —> 8.1: The Road from Zuraldi: The Awakening