Chapter 9: The Forgotten Path

The road ahead of them lay out like a silver ribbon across the horizon, thinning to a bitter reminder that the real war had only just begun. Kael's mind reeled at the magnitude of what they were being asked to do. Find the source of the energy being sucked off the Core, break its codes, and—crime following atrocity—destroy it before it swallowed everything whole, was unthinkable. And yet there was no other way now.

And as the company retreated from the village, their hushed which had followed them thicken. The trafficked roads now still and vacant, as if the desert itself had withdrawn to see what next would transpire. Kael sensed it—a slackening of the heartbeat of the land, as though the land itself groaned with a faltering heart.

"Where do we begin?" Finn's voice broke through his haze, his voice taut with tension.

Kael took a deep breath, gazing out over the world. Aethoria stretched out before them, her rolling hills and green woods disappearing to conceal not only their world—but their secrets from it as well.

Reika, two steps in front of them, lost her footing and glared back over her shoulder as if she can sense some doubt in him. Deliberate eyes with more than slight intent were a trembly soft glimmer on her otherwise chalky pale face, and along her face alone was gritted, hard-bitten determination, something hidden behind her smile. "The power of the Core is not of flesh alone. It is the earth itself." She concluded her silence with cautionary circumspection. "There's somewhere. an old temple. Nobody ever comes close. But it's resonating with the Core appallingly. If we're going to take anything, they will."

Kael's brow rose. "A temple? Within?"

Reika nodded. "It's in the mountains deep, far deep in the Vale of Lost Echoes. Few were foolhardy enough to get close, and fewer returned."

Finn frowned, clearly not comfortable with the idea of venturing into such a place. "Sounds like the kind of place we're better off avoiding."

Kael shot him a sideways glance, a slight grin tugging at his lips. "It's not about comfort, Finn. It's about answers. And if the temple holds the key to stopping the Core, we'll have to face whatever's in there."

Reika didn't flinch, though her expression remained unreadable. "The Vale is a dangerous place. The land itself seems to turn against those who enter, and those who do. often lose themselves."

The words hit Kael like a punch to the gut, but he steadied himself. There was no room for hesitation now. "Then we'll need to be careful."

And the three vanished into the hills, their path curving through wood and across rock country. The farther they went, the thinner air became, the green wood shrunk to bony shrunk-in picture, the trees stunted, twisted as if life had been drained from their arms.

Cold dripped down Kael's column of neck as gusts blew in. Gusts ululated up, screaming through trees like a banshee to wasteland. The Vale threatened them off, in warlike warning whispers, with an unyielding finger, that pushed them back in the direction they'd come.

And they didn't. They couldn't.

The climb was arduous, earth increasingly treacherous. Sun hung, distant from mountains dark and saw-toothed against dying eve. Kael's body complained at the climb, but his mind kept reverting again and again to what they had planned before. He could not get his head around it—that the Core was not just reaching into the world, but something more—something ancient.

It was nightfall when they arrived at the bottom of the mountains and camped. The flames spat sparks as the three huddled together at the campfire, reflective. Outside, in the world, the stillness had descended, broken by a roving echo now and then of the fractured wood loosened on the fire.

Kael stared at the fire, streaks of darkness burning on his cheekbones to fall. His head reeled from Reika's reading of the Core and temple. What were they searching for in a world so weighed down by past? What would it do for them?

The soft voice shook him out of his trance. "Kael."

He noticed Reika stood up to stand by him, observing the fire. "What's what?"

Reika halted and whispered. "I didn't say all I had to say about the temple. There is. there's something I didn't say. About it."

Kael's eyes grew wide with amazement, curiosity getting the better of him. "What are you saying?"

She stared hard at Finn, his face expressionless and open towards something in the street, and at Kael. "The temple wasn't a temple. It was parked on a fault line across the ground that stretched back for centuries, one which ran straight on in to the Core." She did not shift, eyes shutting. "It isn't even a site of power, though. It's a prison. And whatever was gouged there. it still is."

The words hung in the air, weighted with ominous foreboding. 'Colour seeped from Kael's cheeks as understanding struck him. "You are telling me there is something other than the beast that we caught?"

Reika's head shook. "I don't know what it is, but it was sealed off hundreds of years ago before the Core even began to leak. But if the Core itself is beginning to disintegrate, then the cage is cracking. And if that is allowed to occur."

She did not need explanation. Kael knew exactly what she said.

There was fire and the world stopped for a second.

"We don't have a choice," he said to her, his tone as level as he could manage, but the words tightening him up like the hangman's noose. "We just sit back and wait and see how we're going to be able to do it. Whatever it is, whatever is inside that temple. It is the beginning."

Reika's eyes swept over him, her face serious. "And then if we don't?"

Kael sprang to his feet, teeth snapping with rage. "We won't."

And out of the stillness of their tableau were they, other than the quiet susurration of the wind and crackle of the fire in the back. Before them was the mountain, and behind it the temple where their destiny was—and death.

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