Chapter 2 | Part 4

Drusniel waited until the third hour past midnight.

The compound was quietest then—guards changed shifts, servants slept, and his father retreated to his study to review reports until dawn. Drusniel had learned the rhythms of this place over eighteen years. He knew which corridors were watched and which were forgotten. Which doors creaked and which swung silent.

He dressed in dark clothes. Practical. The kind his family would approve of—if they knew where he was going. He packed nothing. His father would call that foolish. His father could choke on his caution.

And one direction.

The surface passages weren’t secret, exactly. Everyone in Umbra’kor knew they existed—carved tunnels leading from the underground city to the world above, where sunlight killed and surface-dwellers walked in the burning light. Most drow never used them. Most drow never wanted to.

But Drusniel knew where they were. His family’s status gave access to certain maps, certain information. Years ago, out of curiosity, he’d memorized the routes. A useless skill, he’d thought then.

Not useless anymore.

He moved through the compound like a shadow. Past his parents’ quarters, where his father’s lamp still burned behind closed doors. Past Shyntara’s room, where silence suggested sleep—or pretended to. Past the servants’ wing, the kitchens, the training halls where he’d spent so many hours pretending to become an assassin.

At the compound’s edge, a service corridor led to the outer tunnels. Drusniel paused at the threshold.

Someone sabotaged me. The thought had crystallized over the past day, hardening from suspicion into conviction. He couldn’t prove it. But he believed it. Zaelar might know who.

It was sound reasoning. If the surface mage understood how magic could be blocked—broken—then he might recognize the method. Might identify the signature. Might give Drusniel something to chase besides his own questions.

And if “Annariel” was right about the intellect flattery… if the elders had truly feared Drusniel enough to sabotage him…

He pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter why. Not yet. First he needed to understand what.

The service corridor stretched before him, lit by sparse fungal clusters. At its end, a door marked with faded symbols—warnings about surface exposure, protocols for decontamination. Drusniel had never opened it.

He was opening it now.

The handle was cold under his palm. He paused, eyes finding a hairline crack in the stone beside the hinges. Follow it. Let the moment pass.

I could turn back.

The thought arrived unbidden. He could return to his room. Accept his father’s path. Become the assassin he was supposed to be. Forget the trial, the void, the sensation of something taken.

Live without answers.

His grip tightened on the handle.

No.

He couldn’t accept that life. He’d tried to want it, tried to see himself in his father’s image, and it had never fit. The trial failure hadn’t changed that.

If someone had stolen his future, he would find out who. And then…

The and then was blank. But the first step was clear.

He opened the door.

Cool air rushed past him—different from the compound’s stillness, carrying the faint scent of things that grew without fungal light. The tunnel beyond was darker, the bioluminescence sparse. Drusniel stepped through.

The door closed behind him. The sound echoed in the passage like a period at the end of a sentence.

No turning back.

He walked.

The tunnel climbed gradually, winding through rock that grew cooler as he ascended. His ears popped with pressure changes. His eyes adjusted to darkness, then adjusted again as faint light began to appear ahead—not fungal glow, but something harsher. Grayer.

Drusniel had never seen surface light. He’d heard it described: painful, blinding, capable of burning drow skin within minutes of direct exposure. But this light was filtered, diffused. Dawn, perhaps, or heavy cloud cover.

The tunnel ended at another door. This one was heavier, reinforced, marked with more warnings. Drusniel ignored them. He pressed his palm to the release mechanism.

The door swung open.

And for the first time in his life, Drusniel stepped onto the surface.

The world above was nothing like he’d imagined.

He’d expected pain. Burning. The sensation of skin crisping under hostile light.

Instead, he found gray. Gray sky, gray stone, gray trees with leaves the color of ash. The light was muted, filtered through clouds so thick they seemed to press against the earth itself. Dawn light, he realized. Not the killing sun of midday.

Drusniel stood at the tunnel’s mouth and breathed air that tasted of rain and growing things. Cold air. Wet air. Air that moved on its own, carrying scents he had no names for.

So this was the surface.

He looked back. The tunnel entrance was set into a rocky hillside, nearly invisible unless you knew where to look. Beyond it, far below, the caverns of Umbra’kor waited—his family, his compound, the life he was leaving behind.

For a moment, he let himself feel it. The weight of what he was doing. The betrayal of trust, the abandonment of duty, the risk of everything he’d been raised to protect.

Then he turned his back on all of it.

Zaelar.

The name was a compass point. A direction. “Annariel” had given him rough coordinates—a tower somewhere in the hills north of the tunnel exits, visible from certain vantage points if you knew where to look.

Drusniel didn’t know where to look. But he would find out.

He started walking.

The gray light stung his eyes, but not unbearably. His skin prickled with the unfamiliar exposure, but it didn’t burn. Dawn, he reminded himself. Not midday. He had hours before the light became dangerous—assuming the clouds held.

And if they didn’t…

One problem at a time.

He climbed a rise and scanned the horizon. Trees, rocks, hills that folded into each other like sleeping giants. And there—distant but distinct against the gray sky—a tower.

Dark stone. Sharp angles. Standing alone on a hill like a finger pointing at the clouds.

Zaelar’s tower.

Drusniel felt something shift in his chest. Not quite hope. Closer to determination. The same feeling he’d had in the grove, all those years ago, when he’d first reached for something beyond his station.

I’m going to find out what happened to me.

He started toward the tower.

Behind him, the tunnel entrance faded into the hillside. Umbra’kor. His family. His old life.

He didn’t look back again.

But as he walked, something lingered at the edge of his mind. A faint unease he couldn’t name. The memory of a voice that had known what he felt but not how. The wrong answer to a test only Annariel should have passed.

He pushed it away. One problem at a time.

The tower waited.

End of Chapter 2.4 — continues in Chapter 3.1: The Surface Mage: The Tower