Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 76 of 86

The fog on the island rose to meet them. Zach watched it thicken over the crack in the black stone. He had found the source, but he still didn't know what made the crack. Strike it wrong and he might tear open something worse than fog. He signaled the three airships to hold position and waved the mages back from the rails. "Nobody attacks yet," he shouted. "We don't know what's under that stone." Raven leaned over the side of the sleek brass vessel, her cat ears pinned flat. She squinted down at the crack. "There's light," she said. "Under the fog. See it, Talon?" Her brother swung his north ship alongside and stared where she pointed. Talon had read this land for seven years, and even he frowned. "Something's glowing down there," he said. "Deep. Not the fog. Something built." Lyra pressed both hands to the deck. Her purple eyes went wide. "The crack goes down for miles," she said. "I feel space below. Hollow. And I feel movement—not monsters. People." She looked up at Zach. "There are living heartbeats under the stone. Hundreds of them." Zach's stomach turned. The missing villagers. Every emptied town, every family taken by the dark. He had thought them dead. "They're alive," he breathed. "The fog didn't kill them. It took them down there." He gripped the rail and made his choice. "We fly in. Through the crack. If the answer's below, we go get it." Garrok's south ship pulled close, the barbarian's axe already in hand. "You want to fly into a hole full of fog," he said. It wasn't a complaint. He grinned. Ayla raised her silver staff, and its crystal flared white. "My light and Lyra's fire cleared a path once," she called. "We'll burn the fog as we descend. Stay near the glow." Zach nodded. "Talon, lead. Ayla and Lyra hold the light at the bow. Raven, watch for stone." The three ships dropped in a slow line toward the crack. Fog swallowed the hulls. Ayla's white beam and Lyra's flames swept ahead, and the mist peeled back before them. The stone walls closed in, then opened wide. The crack became a shaft, then a vast dark cavern. The airships slid free of the fog into open air. Below, light spread across the cavern floor. Zach saw streets. Towers of pale stone. Bridges over black canals. A whole city, buried under the Dead River, glowing with a cold blue fire. And he saw the people. They moved through the streets in silence, the missing villagers, hundreds of them, walking as if asleep. The fog didn't destroy. It herded. Something down here was collecting them. Zach lowered the ship toward the nearest bridge. He knew what made the crack now. Not a wound. A door. And he had just flown his people through it.