Chapter 33: 33 Tremor

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33: Tremor 33: Tremor Far from the Crest, in the Black Tower, Zaroth suddenly opened his eyes.

He had heard everything.

The tremor of the mountain.

The echo of the merging of the two auras.

The thousand-year-old seal shattering like glass.

For the first time in ten thousand years, something he thought impossible had happened.

He rose from his throne.

And laughed.

Softly, this time.

A tired laugh, almost moved.

“I knew it,” he whispered to the void.

“I knew it, my son.” Beside him, in another wing of the Tower, Lilith clasped her hands to her chest.

She had felt it, too.

Behind the veil of an ancient pain, behind the secret she had kept too long, something that resembled a tear glimmered.

And, with it, a hope.

“Forgive me,” she murmured, unheard.

“One day you’ll understand why I lied to you.

And perhaps, then, you’ll forgive me.” In another room, plunged into darkness, Misael awoke with a start.

His heart pounded in his chest.

He couldn’t explain what he’d felt: only that something, somewhere, had changed forever.

That the world was no longer the same as when he’d closed his eyes.

And that that change, in a way he couldn’t fathom, bore his brother’s name.

He clenched his fists in the darkness, his knuckles white.

“Kairan,” he hissed.

In the center of the room, Zaroth’s throne loomed over everything like a profane altar.

It was made of black metal.

A single, solid, living block, covered in thorns and horns that sprouted in every direction.

They weren’t decorations.

They were growths.

As if the metal had decided to grow outward over the centuries, slowly making its way through its surface like roots making their way through stone.

Each tip was different from the others.

Some were curved.

Some were straight as nails.

Some had a shape that had no name in any known language.

The iron roots of the throne dug into the floor like claws into the flesh of the earth.

They had become part of the floor.

Zaroth had never intended to leave that room.

And the room knew it.

The black marble floor, which had learned to bear the weight of that presence, knew it.

The torches on the walls knew it, burning with a red fire without heat, only light, only the form of light without its substance.

The air itself knew it, having adapted over the centuries to contain something that should not be contained.

Zaroth remained still.

Not as normal people sit, with their bodies constantly adapting in response to their surroundings.

How things that do not belong to the category of people sit.

The way a stone settles.

The way the night settles.

His body was wrapped in a robe of living shadows.

It wasn’t a robe in the sense of fabric.

It was shadow that had learned to behave like fabric.

To stay where Zaroth wanted it to stay.

To move when Zaroth moved.

His skin had ceased to be flesh in an instant he himself could no longer remember precisely.

It had become a pulsating red mist.

Not of life.

Of something other than life.

Of something that had the same function as life but not the same nature.

Like the difference between the flame of a candle and the flame of a fire.

Both are fire.

Only one is under control.

His eyes were two red spheres.

The abyss is not dark because it is devoid of light.

It is dark because it is so deep that the light is lost before reaching the bottom.

Looking into Zaroth’s eyes was like looking down a cliff.

The black tower was silent.

Too silent.

That silence wasn’t peace.

It was the quiet before a collapse.

Zaroth knew it.

He felt it in his bones.

In that deep place where power meets fear.

The red flame of the torch closest to the throne flickered.

Not from the wind.

Not from the drafts.

From something moving in the tunnels beneath the castle.

Something that shouldn’t have been there.

Zaroth didn’t move.

He didn’t say anything.

But something in his silence changed.

The sound sharpened.

Like the sharpening of a knife blade.

Like the pause before thunder.

And then, from atop the walls, came the sound of footsteps.

The footsteps were irregular.

Not the controlled rhythm of a guard on duty.

The broken rhythm of someone using every ounce of strength left to keep from falling before they arrive.

The sound penetrated the throne room before the bearer arrived.

It bounced off the black stone walls.

It multiplied between the columns.

The main door to the throne room swung open.

It wasn’t opened.

It was struck from within with a force that spoke of desperation.

A metallic scream shattered the harmony of the darkness.

A figure rushed in.

His robes were torn in several places.

The dark fabric was torn by what looked like claws or sharp blades.

His face was covered in blood.

His movements betrayed a clear sense of desperation.

He wasn’t running to deliver a message.

He was running because stopping wasn’t an option.

He was running because the body, when scared enough, stops waiting for the mind to decide and goes on its own to the only place it identifies as safe.

The messenger stopped in the center of the room.

Not by choice.

His legs gave out.

He knelt on the black marble floor.

The sound of his knees touching stone reverberated through the empty room like a drumbeat.

His body, twisted by wounds and the weight of what he carried, continued to tremble.

We couldn’t stop trembling.

It was the kind of trembling that comes from within.

From the marrow.

From the point where fear ceases to be an emotion and becomes a physical condition.

A dull cry of pain escaped his lips.

I couldn’t control it.

He didn’t have the strength.

His gaze, tormented and lost, rose to Zaroth.

Toward the throne.

Toward those eyes that expressed nothing but seemed to already know.

The messenger opened his mouth.