Astrid Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Astrid Runeweaver knelt in the dirt outside her rune-carved shelter and watched the marks bleed light. She had scratched them at dawn to find the source of her magic, the thing that hummed under Blancridge like a second heartbeat. The runes pointed straight down. Below her feet, past soil and stone, past the underlevels the regime had sealed and locked. If the enforcers found that source first, they would turn it into a weapon. She had to reach it before they even knew it existed. The problem was simple. She had no way down. Every stairway into the underlevels was welded shut and watched. Her cat paced beside her, its tail flickering with fire, its shoulders crusted with frost. It sensed her frustration and pressed against her leg. "You're going to get us both hanged." Astrid did not turn. She knew her sister's voice, and she knew that flat, sharp tone. Gayla Stormshield stepped over the runes without care, her boots smudging two of them dark. Older by three years, harder by ten. She had pulled Astrid out of more fires than Astrid could count. Now she stood with arms crossed, blue eyes fixed on the glowing marks in the ground. "The runes don't lie," Astrid said. "It's down there." "So is a garrison. So are three locked gates." Gayla crouched and touched the brightest rune. Her fingertips came away glowing. She frowned, because she carried the same gift Astrid did, and she could feel the pull too. "You want to dig? They'll hear it. You want to force a gate? They'll come running." "Then we don't use a gate." Astrid pointed at a crack in the shelter's foundation, thin as a knife. Cold air breathed out of it. "This runs down. I felt the wind change when I carved the marks. There's an old shaft under the floor. A drainage well, maybe. Forgotten." Gayla stared at the crack. "That's a fall, not a stairway." "I can slow a fall." Her sister was quiet a long moment. Then she stood and rolled her shoulders, the way she did before a fight. "You go first, you break your neck. So I go first." They pried the flagstones loose together. Beneath them the shaft dropped into black, older than the sealed gates above. A small glowing insect drifted up from the dark, wings shimmering, and hovered between them like a lantern. Astrid took it as an answer. Gayla went down the shaft, boots braced on wet stone, until the dark swallowed her. Astrid followed. The cat leapt after, fire trailing behind it. They landed in a low tunnel far beneath the shelter. The air smelled of old iron and something sweeter. Ahead, the walls glowed faintly with the same runes Astrid had carved above. But so did the floor behind them, where a fresh boot print marked the dust. Someone else had come this way. Recently. And the tunnel ran deeper toward the pull of her magic.