The Sunken Dominion was not a single place but a wound that had been carved into the earth over centuries, a labyrinth of tunnels and caverns that stretched for miles beneath the Frostfangs. The entrance was a crack in the mountainside, narrow enough that they had to squeeze through single file, and the darkness beyond was absolute.
His father went first, his blade drawn, the marks on his chest glowing faintly—not with power, but with something else. Recognition, perhaps. Memory.
They had been here before, his father and the thing that lived in his blood. Theron could feel it, the same way he had felt the presence of the Hounds in the wastes. There was something waiting for them in the darkness. Something old. Something hungry.
"Stay close," his father said, his voice echoing in the narrow passage. "Don't touch anything. Don't speak unless I tell you to."
"What's down here?"
"Things that have been sleeping for a thousand years. Things that the Skylords tried to bury when they built their new world on the bones of the old. Things that remember."
They moved deeper into the earth, the passage widening into a tunnel, the tunnel widening into a cavern. The walls were covered in carvings—symbols that Theron did not recognize, scenes that seemed to tell a story he could not read. He wanted to stop, to study them, to understand what they meant. But his father was moving ahead, his steps quick, his eyes fixed on something in the distance.
And then they were in a chamber, and the darkness was not darkness anymore.
It was a city, or the bones of one. Columns of black stone rose from the floor, their capitals lost in the shadows above. Bridges of some metal that had not rusted in a thousand years spanned chasms that dropped into darkness. And at the center of it all, a door.
It was massive, twice the height of a man, its surface smooth and black, without seam or handle or any way to open it. But it was not the door that drew Theron's attention. It was the thing that stood before it.
A statue, or something that had once been a statue. It was human in shape, but larger, its proportions wrong, its limbs too long, its head too small. Its face was featureless, a smooth oval of black stone, but there were eyes there, somewhere. Theron could feel them looking at him.
His father stopped ten feet from the door, his hand tight on his blade.
"We've come for the Echo," he said. "The second piece. I know it's here. I know you have it."
The statue did not move. But something changed in the air, a pressure, a weight, a presence that pressed against Theron's mind and tried to push its way in.
The Shattered Oath, a voice said, and it was not a voice that spoke in words. It was something older, something that communicated in feelings, in memories, in things that had no name. You have returned.
"I never left," his father said. "I've been here the whole time. In the darkness. In the silence. In the thing you left behind."
We left nothing behind. You took it with you. The mark. The hunger. The broken piece of what was. You carry it still.
"I carry it because I have to. Because it's the only thing keeping me alive. Because it's the only thing that can kill them."
The statue—the thing that had been a statue—moved. Its head tilted, its featureless face turning toward Kaelen, and Theron felt something brush against his mind, something that was searching, seeking, trying to find the truth beneath the words.
You want to kill them. All of them. The Skylords. The ones who made you and broke you and left you to die in the cold.
"Yes."
And you think the Echo will help you do this. You think it will give you the power to end what they began.
"I know it will."
The thing was silent for a long moment. The pressure in the air grew, pressing against Theron's chest, making it hard to breathe. And then, slowly, it eased.
The Echo cannot be given, the thing said. It cannot be taken. It can only be earned. And the price is high. Higher than you know.
"I'll pay it. Whatever it is. I'll pay it."
You say that now. But when the door opens, when it shows you what you must give, you will hesitate. You will try to find another way. There is no other way.
His father stepped forward, his hand reaching for the door. "Then show me. Show me what I have to lose."
The door opened.