Into darkness.

The tunnels had been dark. What they faced now was pitch.

As soon as the stones had ground shut behind Cecile, the light from her flame dimmed by half. She frowned and reached out to it, but it stubbornly refused to put out any more light. What they had was all there was.

Three narrow passageways opened up before them, each one wide enough to admit one man. Even then, Raff could already see that he'd have to turn sideways up ahead if he wanted to keep going, at least on the second path. The walls pressed in from all sides, suffocating, claustrophobic. It was easy to imagine getting stuck down here, caught between thousands of tons of earth on either side. No one would hear them scream. No one would come to help.

Raff whipped around to face the door. What if? But no. But... it was meant to seal the god in. No. He had to look. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned his own small flame and held it up to the wall, examining it closely.

"What?" Cecile asked.

He swallowed. Made another pass, just to be sure, eyes scouring every inch of the stone surface. Then he turned towards her.

"There's no way back."

All three of them froze. Edith was the first to come back to life, turning toward the leftmost passage like the needle on a compass divining north. "Then we go forward," she said. "It's so close now. I don't even have to try to feel it." She slid into the passage. Almost immediately, the shadows swallowed her up.

Raff and Cecile exchanged a look. Raff shrugged, then gestured for Cecile to go first.

"How courteous," she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him with a tiny, sarcastic smile.

"If you get stuck, I want to be able to escape backwards," Raff explained.

He could've framed the deadpan expression on Cecile's face.

They proceeded. On and on. The floor was covered in gravel. Once, Raff slipped and only caught himself because falling meant being wedged in the stone. As he extricated himself, unwinding his belt from the stone prong that had grabbed it and redistributing his weight from his hands back to his feet, his mind presented him a horrible possibility: falling flat, sliding between some impossibly thin jut of stone and getting stuck, unable to press his head back upwards past the jut and stand again. Another: his head caught between two stones, completely stuck, unable to move up or down. Frozen in place, until he starved to death and died.

Raff breathed out. His eyes found Cecile's flame and settled there, letting the fire burn away the fear. It would be fine. He wasn't that clumsy. They would get to the end of the passage, they'd find the Godstone, and they'd escape. That was all there was to it.

Multiple paths branched out. Left and right turns twisted up, down, away from them. Every time, Edith unhesitatingly chose her path, not even giving it a moment's thought before she turned and pressed on, through the cave, on and on. It was all he and Cecile could do to keep up.

What if there is no Godstone? he thought, as he bumped his head on the low ceiling for the hundredth time. He wiped moisture from his forehead and told himself it was from the dampness of the cave, not fear. If they got to the end and there was nothing... what then? Then we starve to death, came the grim answer. His guts twisted for the hundredth time, heart pounding away in the tight space of his chest, enclosed like him, trapped between stony ribs like he was trapped in the bones of the earth. No. It had to be here. What else could it be? Why else would everyone be here, trying to find it?

By that logic, they should have found the Godstone ages ago, a little voice replied. So many people had searched for it. Why would he be the one to find it? And on Schola grounds. Surely someone else had thought to look beneath the music room's floor. Surely someone else had noticed the circle and the odd construction of the room.

Then again, if he'd been Milo, or Giada, or Sab, he would've stopped. Wouldn't have pressed on and risked the ghouls, risked getting thrown out of the guard, risked everything for this. Maybe it wasn't so impossible after all.

Cecile paused ahead of him. The path grew tighter than before, enough that he wasn't sure he could fit through. Cecile, too, paused before slowly shimmying into the tight space, one limb at a time. She was almost laying down against the rock face, only standing because the gap in the rock was too thin for her to slide down. "Are you sure about this?" she asked Edith.

"Are you sure you can't feel it?" Edith responded, equal parts awe and disdain in her voice. "It's like... it's like staring into an oven. But not heat. Different."

Raff remembered when he had felt the heat on his face, the bonfire, the sun, burning bare feet from his face. When he closed his eyes, he could see it. The stone, glittering in the dim light. Unconsciously, his hands clenched. Despite Lorenzo and the other healers' best efforts, his palms still felt shiny and smooth. He'd been overwhelmed by it. Swallowed by heat. The bare Godstone without anything to contain it, and it had devoured him. He could still feel the pain surging through him, heat and pain and he wanted it. Despite, because of, he didn't know. The power. For a second, he'd held the sun in his hands. Everything he'd ever desired had been within his grasp.

And then he'd let go.

"Raff, c'mon," Cecile called.

His eyes opened. Hands unclenched. Pale blue eyes met his, dancing with the little fire's flame. Cecile had moved past the snag. Taking a deep breath, he nodded, then, facing the snag, let it all out. Rock scraped against his hip bones and chest. It clawed at the back of his head, while spurs scraped at his eyes. Slowly, he twisted forward, turning his head, then his shoulders. His shoulders caught on the rock. He stopped, stuck. No. Raff tensed. Fingers dug into rock. He twisted, and his back scraped over the stone, sharp pain less than the panic in his gut. No, no, no, no, no—

"Tip your shoulder up," Cecile said gently. Raff found her eyes, her face. She smiled at him and nodded, then hiked her shoulder up to demonstrate. "Right and up, and you'll slide right through."

Right and up. He heaved a shuddering breath and obeyed, twisting his shoulders. It wasn't working, it wasn't working. Rock dug into his flesh and scraped against bone. His breath caught again. Raff kicked with all his might and dragged his shoulders through, careless of the pain.

He popped free. Too much! Rock rushed up at him. He had enough time to wince before his head snapped against the rock wall opposite with the force of his escape. He pressed a hand to his smarting forehead, but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. Raff's heart thundered, tight with fear, aching like poison. He was free. I never want to go through that again, he thought, then realized he wouldn't have to. If there wasn't a way out ahead, there was no way out at all.

What a cheery thought.

"Almost there," Edith called. "I can see the end."

Then Raff could see it, too, the sudden openness casting the shadows from Cecile's flame large against the far wall. There was something... wrong about the way they moved, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Not while he was stuck in a stone tunnel, anyways. Edith squirmed out, then Cecile, and then there was a final jut between him and freedom. Twisting his hips around it, Raff stumbled free.

Before him stretched a huge chamber, so huge that Cecile's light couldn't illuminate the whole thing. Their shadows had been cast from the gap across the antechamber, he realized now. The whole open space was an awkward, uneven shape, a smaller bubble here that opened up to a larger bubble ahead, as if the bubbles had met in the sink and conjoined. The wall was cragged, as it had been before, but here, an effort had been made to smooth it over. At least until head-height, the surface of the wall was a ninety-degree angle. Whoever had done it had even gone to the effort of giving the lower edge a trim. Above the wall, however, a rough ceiling curved upward, rounded out to shape the arc of their sky.

Suddenly, he saw why the shadows from before had seemed wrong: the entire chamber was coated in shiny black glass. The shadows had been reflected in the mirror-smooth coat over the smoothed section, distorted in the black glass. Above the smoothed section, the glass was rough-cut and jagged, sharp edges promising a slit finger to the curious explorer. Even the floor was coated in glass, but whoever had constructed the chamber had the forethought to roughen it underfoot just enough to give good footing without being as sharp as it looked to be in the higher places.

"Look," Cecile breathed, pointing down.

Coming out from a narrow-bored tunnel in the wall were the same wire they'd seen leading out of the circle in the room. There was no way Raff could prove it was the same, and yet he knew it was. Out of place in the grand, black chamber, it snaked as inconspicuously-conspicuously as possible along the wall, deeper into the chamber. The wire vanished into the darkness, travelling further than Cecile's flame could cast light.

Edith stalked into the darkness. With a glance at Cecile, Raff followed. Cecile hung at the back, Edith walked at the very edge of Cecile's light, and Raff stood somewhere between them, head swinging. There could be ghouls anywhere, around any corner. Or worse, those men from before.

They were down the ghoul passages, he realized suddenly. He hadn't seen a scratch on either of them. A shiver ran down his spine. I'm definitely in over my head.

The thought was accompanied with a grin, a strange surge of energy running through him. In over his head, but so horribly, wonderfully alive. He hungered for it, for success, and here he was, on the verge of satiation. He was going to come back with the Lost Godstone and show them all. They'd be lining up to hand him Ignis'.

The bigger room opened up before them. It was empty, aside from the wire and the darkness. And the darkness was a presence, oppressive and heavy, weighing on his shoulders, his eyelids. Cecile's little flame flickered, and his vision was stolen away in an instant. The little flame only illuminated a small patch around them, and the patch seemed to be getting smaller.

"Can't you make it brighter?" Raff asked, turning towards her.

A small bonfire was raging behind Cecile's head, burning as bright as the sun. "I'm trying," she whispered back.

Excitement and fear thrilled up his spine, the two intertwined, indistinguishable. Raff met her eyes, and they shared a smile, the same hunger he felt reflected in her eyes.

Slowly, they crept forward. The chamber seemed simultaneously too large and too small. Unseen depths loomed all around them, cloaked in shadows, but all he could see was the small circle of light around Cecile. The wire led them onward, twining along. He found himself wondering if they were moving at all, if the cave was infinite, if this was some kind of spell.

Edith stopped abruptly. Raff bumped into her back, and Cecile into his, the bonfire close enough to feel its warmth for a moment. "It's here," Edith breathed.

The shadows relinquished their prize reluctantly. A vague shape. A block. A table. Raff blinked, looked down. A circle had been carved into the earth by his feet. No fancy words, no strange symbols. Just a circle. It was intimidating in its simplicity. Whoever had carved it had supreme faith in their abilities, their focus. The wire ran in the circle, set in the floor. He couldn't tell where it had been melded together, though he was staring right where the wire entered the circle. There were no weld marks. No imperfections.

Cecile gasped. A second later, Raff's eyes found it too: the table.

Not a table. An altar.

Like the circle, it was simple. A block of black glass, so clear he could watch the fire reflect inside it, flames twisted and muted by the darkness. Shackles were fused to the floor at each of the four corners of the altar. The chains snaked up, black metal on black glass. Black metal on blackened flesh.

Atop the altar was a mummy.

Each wrist was encircled by a shackle; each ankle, the same. The shackles were comically large now, limbs shrunken as the body desiccated. Metal rattled around skin stretched taut over bare bones. Scraps of clothing clung to the body, the belt, the trousers, the shoes. The shirt, Raff suspected, had been torn to scrap long before the mummy was interned, because it was gone. Though the body had been chained spread-eagle to the altar, the expression it bore was surprisingly peaceful—what little was left of it. A knife, black as the glass, pierced it through the heart.

Just below it, big enough to fit snugly in the center of his palm, a pitch-black soulstone was set over the corpse's sternum.

His lungs deflated, breath stolen away. Raff stared in awe. There it was. After all this time, there it was. It seemed small, for something so many people had sought after for so many centuries. Small, and yet, he couldn't tear his eyes away.

"Oomph," Edith spluttered. Two heads turned to watch as she bounced off an invisible barrier and staggered back, away from the circle's edge.

"A barrier," Cecile concluded.

Raff reached up his hand and felt it. Rising from the edge of the carved circle was a stiff... something. He couldn't see it, no matter how he tilted his head, and it didn't catch the light of the fire in any way. Magic, then. Magic like he'd never seen. Like he hadn't known possible. Even the prison could only attack people who crossed the line. A barrier like this was... godly.

Godly. It could be. The gods had sealed Tenebrae away, according to myth. He looked around him and realized he could see nothing of the chamber. Not its walls, not its roof, just the little circle of light around him and the girls.

The black was white. Snow all around him. One set of footprints, already fading. Going. Gone. Nothing but white. White in all directions. He was lost, adrift in a sea of snow. Drowning.

He sucked in a slow breath. It was fine. He wasn't lost. They were surrounded by darkness, not snow, and he could follow the wire out if he needed to. He wasn't lost. He wasn't.

"I thought Tenebrae was a goddess," Cecile commented, jabbing her thumb at the corpse's chest.

Raff blinked. Her voice was an anchor, forcing him back to the here and now. It took a moment to process her words; they weren't as important as the fact that she'd spoken. Then he shook his head. "That's not her true form. The gods have had to inhabit human bodies through the Godstones since time immemorable, for fear of destroying us with their full presence. They took whichever body could contain their power the best. That's what the High Priests are for—were for. The gods no longer walk the earth, but if they did, it would be through the High Priests. So this" he gestured to the mummy, "is not Tenebrae, so much as her final High Priest."

"Right, I remember now," she said, nodding. She smiled, confident, but one hand worried the edge of her sleeve. He almost missed it, except for the soulstone on her wrist flashing with the motion.

He understood. It was imposing, being in the presence of the dark god. Even if she was no longer here, even if it was just her Godstone. His spine crawled whenever he gazed into the too-deep darkness. Anything could be here. Anything, just out of sight, waiting...

Raff huffed. Focus. "How do we get past this barrier?" he asked aloud. He thumped his fist against it. Nothing.

"Stand back," Cecile demanded. Raff stepped back; Edith skittered away. Cecile stepped back, too, and raised her hands, fingers held stiff. The space between her forefingers and thumbs formed a triangle, and she squinted through it. Slowly, she took a deep breath, stomach filling with it.

Raff took another step back.

Cecile breathed out. Just beyond her lips, the breath caught fire. It narrowed through her fingers, focused to a tight stream, then pounded against the barrier.

His hair blew back from the force of the fire. Heat splashed against his face. Instinctively, he raised a hand and narrowed his eyes. A quiet voice in the back of his head made a note: Don't fuck with Cecile.

He could see it, then. The barrier shimmered like a soap bubble, impossibly thin surface wavering. Ripples spread through it, the fire a stone tossed onto a placid lake. The barrier let out a high-pitched keen, setting Raff's teeth on edge. Edith flinched back and covered her ears. In the center of the ripples, at the heart of the flame, he could see the barrier thinning. It was slowly bending inward, Cecile's flames making a dent. The material stretched. Slowly, it gave, soap bubble starting to pull apart. Raff held his breath. She'd done it. She'd really done it.

Abruptly, the flames stopped. The barrier snapped back to normal, ripples vanishing into nothing as it returned to invisibility. Cecile bent over, panting, hands smoking gently where they clasped her legs. "Can't, I can't," she gasped. "It's too much."

"You almost had it!" Raff urged.

She shook her head. "Did not. It was... it was absorbing... everything I put into it. I felt like... it was just getting... stronger."

Raff bit his lip, looking from the barrier to Cecile. He knew she had more in her, but it would be asking her to injure herself to go further. And he didn't know. Maybe she was right. Maybe the barrier was absorbing her magic. He hadn't tried it, so he wouldn't know. It just—he gazed at the barrier. It felt so futile. They were here, right on top of the Godstone, and they couldn't reach it, all because of some stupid barrier? No. But there it was. He grit his teeth, glaring at the thing. It was so—so stupid!

His eyes travelled down. A grin replaced his grimace. He pointed. "Cecile, aim here."

Cecile raised her eyebrows, then grinned back. She took a deep breath and aimed her hands toward the spot he'd pointed at. "It'll be hot this time," she warned.

Raff stepped further back, pushing Edith behind him this time.

Air swelled Cecile's slender form. She breathed out, fire igniting once more. It surged through the air and over the point where the wire vanished into the barrier. The wire burned red hot, then white. As he'd hoped, the heat travelled through the barrier and up the wire to where it joined in upon itself to close the circle. The wire began to melt, both at the place it met the barrier and up a centimeter where it connected to shape the circle.

The wire glowed hotter yet. Raff covered his eyes and looked away. There was no wondering if they were on the right track; it was obvious. He could hear the barrier struggling. It flapped like a stiff sheet in the wind, snapping and popping. Curious, he peered back at it, looking not at the wire but the barrier. It shook, iridescent ripples spreading up from the place the wire joined the end of the circle. A low humming started out, a deeper counterpoint to the earlier keen. As she kept on, though, it grew louder and higher, reaching for that same note. The iridescence grew brighter, the ripples racing faster and faster until all of it was shivering and bright. The mummy was obscured as the barrier became opaque, its walls bright enough that Raff had to squint. For a moment, the barrier looked almost real, solid as a real wall except for the motion, and the brightness. The hum had become a keen, higher than before, so loud it echoed and redoubled and made itself louder. Raff covered his ears and squinted. So loud! So bright! It can't last much longer! he thought, bracing himself.

The barrier shattered with the force of a lightning bolt and the rolling peal of a thunderclap. Pieces flew at his face. Sharp like glass and large as his fist, they spun at him edge-first. He couldn't duck. He couldn't move. As they flew, they tore themselves apart, tinier and tinier shards breaking off. When it reached Raff, it was nothing but a wave of light. It passed through him and beyond him, rippling into the room further than he'd thought the room large.

A second later, shadow surged from the altar. He could see it, rolling off the mummy, a flood of black not-water. Raff shouted and grabbed for his sword, one hand out to keep Edith safe. Before he could do anything, the shadow overwhelmed him. He went blind when it hit. It slammed into him, as physical as river rapids, and forced him back, lifted him off his feet. He felt himself collide with Edith, reached out—missed her. All he could see was darkness. How high was he off the ground? How close to the razor-sharp ceiling? His heart pounded in his ears. He reached out, trying to catch anything. Stop himself, somehow. His hands closed on nothing. Only the shadows, untouchable, unstoppable. Is this why they sealed it? A second later: Oh gods, I'm going to die.

His skull hit rock with a crack. White flashed before his eyes. Pain followed, sharp, then deep. Blackness became his everything, oblivion his world. Fear broke the oblivion. He tensed, expecting pain, a dagger between his shoulder blades where the wall protruded, teeth in his head. The wave of shadow held him in place, paralyzed spread-eagle against the wall. He was a piece of paper in high wind, helpless, slammed against the nearest object at the whim of something much more powerful than him. Wetness dripped through his hair. Down his back. Was it sweat? Blood? He gasped for air, realized suddenly that he couldn't breathe. The darkness was too thick to breathe through. Is that even possible? He clawed at the air, at his open mouth. He could touch his tongue, his lips, but not the thing that blocked out his air. Raff choked and bucked, fighting the force of it.

As suddenly as the shadow had knocked him back, it vanished. One second he was pinned; the next, nothing. Everything was still black, but the force was gone. Raff slid down the wall. His knees buckled when he found the floor, hands barely able to catch his weight. Raff gasped, sucking in sweet air. He couldn't see a thing. Not his hands in front of his face, not the black floor, not anything. I'm blind. It blinded me. All he could do was breathe, heart loud in his ears, fear racing through him, paralyzing him. This was the end of everything. If he was blind, he couldn't be High Priest. Couldn't even be a Shrineguard. His life was over.

He was shaking. His whole body. It was hard to breathe. Sab was right. I shouldn't have come down here. I ruined everything.

Light. He needed light. If there was light, he'd know. He scrabbled at his belt. One hand found his sword, the same place it had always been. The familiar weight reassured him. It would be okay. He still had his magic. His finger found the soulstone. Warmth and hunger burst through him. He'd pulled too much magic, but he didn't, couldn't care. Now. Light now. He needed to know.

Raff closed his eyes and held out one hand, arm trembling.

When he opened them, there was flame. Flame, and his arm, and the glassy cave floor. A headache pounded in the back of his head, and he was trembling, but he was okay. He was okay. He'd get out of this fine.

Raff breathed out and stood. His legs were shaky—no. The world was shaking. Everything was trembling, the floor, the walls. Bits of glass chipped from the ceiling and tinkled to the floor all around him, black snow. Now that he could see them, he could feel them, little bits of glass bouncing off his shoulders and hair. "Cecile," he breathed. "Edith?"

"Here," Cecile said. He turned and found her leaning against the wall, her hair draped in her face. She pushed it back with a shaky hand and met his eye, fire dancing in hers. "What... what was that?"

"I don't know." But he did know. It was the same as the heat he'd felt from Ignis' Godstone, wasn't it? The same heat, the same overwhelming sensation, only darkness. Shadow like he'd never seen before. It's the Lost Godstone. The real one. If there'd been any doubt in his mind, it was obliterated now. This was it. They'd found it.

There was a subtle thud from behind him. When he turned, Edith was hunched over the altar, her back to him. A pang of guilt went through him; he'd forgotten her for a moment. "Edith? Are you okay?" he asked. He stepped closer, careful with the floor bucking beneath him.

She turned. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, showing so much white her irises looked tiny. Shadow clung to her face, hollowing hollow cheeks to a skull, painting her body in black. The way it traced her clothes gave her odd angles, shaped her body oddly. She reached toward him. "Help," she whimpered.

"What's wrong?" Raff asked.

"It's touching me," she whimpered.

He took another step forward and froze.

The mummy had moved. No. Was moving. It had ahold of Edith's shirt and was pulling her down, slowly. Dead, blackened fingers gripped the back of her neck. Empty eye sockets stared up at her. A bony jaw worked its way open as Edith was drawn down, pale skin of her neck growing closer to yellowed teeth.

Another step forward, and it wasn't. The mummy was as still as it had ever been. The shackles held its limbs too tight for it to grasp Edith, and besides, it was long dead. She had gotten snagged on the altar, her shirt caught in the mummy's hand. The mummy hadn't moved. It was all just shadows playing with his mind. She was just horrified because she had been accidentally ensnared by a mummy, not because it had grabbed onto her.

He sighed and shook his head. "I'll get you freed, one second," he said. The floor bucked under him more viciously than before as he approached the altar. Raff stumbled. He fell onto the stone block and felt the mummy's brittle feet break under his weight. Rigid from disgust, he shivered and pushed himself away, refusing to look at the now-mangled feet. Focus on the tangle. The hand. He was hyperaware of the brittleness of the fingerbones twisted in her shirt, the long yellowed fingernails hooked into fabric, the taut, dried skin. Vomit rose up in his throat. With some effort, he swallowed it back. "Hold still."

Edith startled. "They're here," she whispered.

Raff turned. Light was bleeding through the crack in the wall. Over the rumbling of the earth and the shattering glass, he hadn't heard them at all. He exchanged a panicked look with Cecile, who gestured with both hands, a tossing motion. Raff understood: he had to hide her.

"Don't make a sound!" he snapped. Edith stared back, eyes wide, uncomprehending. Raff put both hands on the mummy's dry, blackened skin. It cracked under his grip like dry leather. Biting back his disgust, he shoved. Brittle bones snapped and cracked. Taut skin shattered. He expected resistance, but there was almost none. Both it and Edith vanished behind the altar. A startled squeal, bit back before it could really start, was followed by a thump as Edith hit the ground. Two of the shackles clattered to the floor on Raff's side of the altar, still clasping the mummy's hand and foot, though the limbs were no longer attached.

Cecile moved forward, toward the entrance. There was less distance than he remembered between the altar and the door, and suddenly, it seemed like far too little. "Cecile, don't!" he hissed.

"I have a plan!" she hissed back.

Raff bit his lip. He started towards her, but before he could get any closer, the man in the green cloak stepped out of the slit in the wall, followed by the illusionist with his ball of light. At the sight of Cecile and Raff, they froze.

"Thank the gods!" Cecile said, suddenly shrill and afraid. She wrapped her hands around herself as she approached them and shivered a little, unless that was the floor shaking her body. "We got lost in here... we were worried we'd never make it out!"

Raff shifted a little, casually trying to hide as much of the altar as he could with his body. The cool metal of the sword and the always-warmth of the soulstone reassured him. Cecile had a soulstone too, and she was stronger than he was. They were safe.

Neither of the men reacted. Hesitantly, Cecile continued forward. "Are you lost, too?" she asked, confused. Raff tensed. Something was wrong. Something about the way they were standing there, so still.

Like the illusionary guards.

"Cecile! Get back!" Raff shouted. In the space between him shouting and drawing his sword, a knife pressed into his throat. He staggered to a halt, his head held precariously behind his body, hands out before him to catch his balance.

"Good choice, good choice," the rickety old man he'd met in the alleyway chortled. A laugh rang out, high, brittle, crystalline.

Raff's stomach twisted. I gave them the key. It was all his fault.

Cecile screamed, catching Raff's attention. He whirled in time to see her fall to her knees. A disembodied hand draped in green gripped her shoulder, forcing her down. Thin tendrils of shadow lashed out from nowhere and sliced at her wrist; he heard a clatter as the soulstone fell away. Panic rushed through him. She'd been disarmed. She was helpless.

The man holding Raff, the illusionist, tutted. "I hate when he ruins the picture," he sighed, in a lovely voice that sounded nothing like the old man's. He clicked his tongue. The still images of the men vanished.

The man in the green cloak was standing over Cecile. Hovering over him was the illusionist's ball of light. Won't that weaken him? Raff wondered. And then: the illusionist wants me to see.

The man's shadow twisted up out of the floor. In long, spindly tendrils, the shadow arced over his body. He was a spider, the shadow his legs. It was elegant, in a way, the shadows almost delicate except for where they wrapped around his arm and bit into Cecile's shoulder. She fought the shadow, writhing away from him, expression twisted in pain.

"Where is the Godstone?" he asked calmly, as if he was inquiring after the weather.

His voice sent a shiver down Raff's spine. The way it rasped, the dryness of it, the whisper-loudness that he could somehow hear from across the room. It was sepulchral, dry bones and dust and empty graves.

Silence. The light glittered on the man's face—no. An emotionless silver mask, tucked deep in the hood. He waited. Raff held his breath.

Cecile shook her head. "I...I don't know," she gasped.

The shadows darkened, twisting deeper. Cecile screamed wordlessly. No! Raff twisted in the illusionist's grip. My sword— The knife pressed into his neck, and he halted. He couldn't. He'd be killed first.

"You can answer too, you know," the illusionist told him conversationally. As if he wasn't holding Raff at knifepoint.

Raff stayed silent. If Cecile wasn't going to break, then he wouldn't either. These men weren't going to steal the Godstone out from under him. He'd finally found it. His way to end up High Priest. He wasn't going to give it up to anyone, and murderers like these least of all. He shifted again, slower this time. Maybe if he could press the soulstone into the gap between his shirt and his pants, he could—

"I'd think that over," the illusionist warned, pushing the knife a little deeper. Blood trickled down his neck. Raff froze. He fought the urge to swallow, afraid of the edge.

"We know you found it," the cloaked man continued. His voice was as steady as a ghost's whisper could be. "I felt when it was freed. Where is it?"

"You'll never find it," Raff bluffed. "It's gone." His eyes flicked to the altar, now empty. No—not empty. Two shackles still coiled around the base. One held the mummy's hand, the other, the mummy's foot. Shit. They hadn't noticed. Not yet. He could still—

He flicked his eyes away and made eye contact with the illusionist. Fear spiked in Raff's gut. No, no, no. It had been going so well. The illusionist turned, took in the altar, the disembodied limbs.

"Anima," he started, a slow grin spreading over his cheeks. "I believe I've found it."

The man in the green cloak turned. Cecile collapsed to the floor, forgotten. "Where," he demanded, but it came out strange, desire and longing mixed in, a pained but hopeful note. As if they'd found his child or lover, not a stone.

It was now or never. The illusionist was distracted. Raff twisted in the illusionist's grip, ducking his neck as he reached for his sword. The knife bit his jaw instead of his neck. In the distance, Cecile came suddenly to life and dove on her soulstone. The green-cloaked man spun, cloak swirling.

Then the world went black.