Into the Heart of the Matter

Down into the heart of things.

Fog clung low to the stone floor as the stairway opened into a wide underground chamber. The air was colder here older. Dust swirled in their lantern light, disturbed only by their breath and footsteps.

The walls were etched with strange sigils that pulsed faintly as Darius passed, lighting up one by one in soft gold. Elara trailed her fingers near them but didn’t touch.

“I feel like we’re inside a heartbeat,” Kale muttered. “A stone heartbeat.”

Rockford barked once, sharply. Then he stopped, ears flat.

They entered a domed chamber where the air grew impossibly still. At its center stood a low stone table, and on it resting inside a ring of carved runes was an object that caught and scattered their light.

It was a crystal, roughly the size of a fist, shaped like a jagged flame. Light flickered inside it like something alive, and strands of violet and blue energy coiled just beneath its surface.

Kale stepped forward, awestruck. “Is that...a heartstone?”

Darius’s eyes narrowed. “No. It’s older.”

Elara reached toward it instinctively, but Darius grabbed her wrist, voice sharp.

“Don’t touch it.”

She froze. “Why?”

“Because I think it’s not waiting for you,” he said, his hand still on her arm.

“It’s waiting for me.”

They stood in silence, the flickering light from the stone dancing across their faces.

The runes around the crystal began to glow first gold, then blue, then pulsing with the same violet hue as the storm Darius had once summoned without meaning to.

Kale swallowed. “If that thing’s alive...”

“It’s not,” Darius said. “But it remembers.”

He stepped into the ring of runes. The light intensified. Rockford barked again, whined, then backed up behind Elara’s legs.

Darius looked at the others. “If anything happens...”

“We’re not leaving you,” Elara cut in.