Goddess Of The Underworld. Chapter 85

**Xavier**

The Underworld breathes like a beast tonight. I feel it shifting beneath my boots, coiling in the walls, whispering through the spines of obsidian trees that should not grow, but do. The magic here is old, older than kingdoms, older than names. It listens. It watches and tonight, it waits. I stand at the edge of the southern ridge, where the veil is thinnest and most dangerous. A pulse runs under my skin, not panic. Never panic. Awareness. Preparedness. I’ve spent centuries hunting things that don’t bleed and can’t be reasoned with. But this? This isn’t something I can kill. Not yet. Behind me, Layah shifts on her feet. I don't have to look to know her paws are glowing faintly, the shimmer of her magic laced through her fingers like moonfire and teeth. She doesn’t speak, but I feel her thoughts brush the edge of mine. She’s focused. Good. We’ll need her wildness here. Envy had tasked us with guarding this place. Her place and gods help anything that tries to take it from her. I inhale slowly. The air tastes like burnt roses and regret. There are cracks in the sky again, thin as spiderwebs but when I reach out with my shadows, they flinch. Something else is leaking through. Not just sunlight or grass or memory. Intent. And I don’t like that one fucking bit. The souls are restless. The forgotten, they press against the gates, drawn toward the cracks in the veil like moths to flame. But this flame doesn’t burn. It devours.

Layah curses low under her breath. “They’re gathering faster. Like they know something’s coming.”

“They do,” I say simply, letting the shadows roll out from my boots like a tide. “They’re listening.”

“To what?”

I nod toward the fracture near the canyon’s edge. “Whatever calls from the other side.”

She doesn’t ask what. She’s smart enough to know not to name the thing you fear. We fall into motion, patrol patterns, magical sweeps, reinforcement glyphs etched into stone and bone. Envy asked me to hold the line. She didn’t need to say why. Because if this place falls, the rest of the world follows. And if something touches her through that breach… it won’t live long enough to whisper twice. I flick my wrist, and a net of shadow spikes into the ground, sealing a fresh split that hadn’t been there an hour ago. Layah watches me with quiet curiosity, her fur shifting slightly.

“You’re not afraid,” she says.

“I am,” I answer, voice flat. “I’m just used to it.”

She smiles like she understands, then goes back to her own spellwork. I glance once more to the distant edge of the rift where the sky flickers and something just beyond sight watches back. Let it come. I was born in shadow, raised by war, sharpened by silence and if this place burns, I’ll be the last thing standing in the ash.

**Levi**

The dead don’t speak like the living. They whisper in memory. In blood. In fragments. The graveyard we’re standing in isn’t on any map. Not a marked one, anyway. It’s hidden deep in a forgotten stretch of land where the trees grow sideways and the wind hums in broken tones. The moss here is thick and wet, curling around the stones like fingers. Haiden and I have been tracking the pull, following the strange current of soul-magic that Envy tuned us into. I crouch beside a crooked marker, the name long since worn away by time. My fingers brush the edge of the stone and the air tightens. A pulse echoes beneath my palm, slow… steady… broken.

“Got something,” I murmur.

Haiden’s already at my side, silent as ever when he’s in this mode. Hunting. Calculating. A different kind of predator than the rest of us. I can feel the shift in his energy as he reaches toward the earth, his own magic threading through the ground like roots searching for bone.

“They’re here,” he says, voice low. “Or… what’s left of them.”

We found one grave hours ago. A girl with half a soul still lingering. She didn't remember her name. Just pain. And fire but we need more. I unsling my tools, enchanted to not disturb what shouldn’t be disturbed. We aren’t grave robbing, we’re searching. For patterns. For sigils. For remnants of the spell Marcus and Salira used to tear the veil and build their sick ritual. The one that made Envy. The one that stole dozens of children from their futures and left only silence behind.

“I think this one's newer,” I say, pointing to a partially hidden mound behind a tree with strange black bark. “Could be one of the cloaked.”

Haiden nods once and begins clearing away the earth with precise movements. I can tell he’s trying not to think about it too hard. If he does, he’ll break something. Probably himself. Or whoever’s nearest.

The first shovel full uncovers bone. The second, a faint glint of metal. The third, a carved symbol burned into the base of the coffin.

“That’s not human magic,” I whisper.

“No,” Haiden agrees, his jaw tight. “It’s god-touched. Like her.”

He means Envy. The one we’re all doing this for.

“Can you feel them?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. He just closes his eyes, places a hand over the disturbed soil, and listens.

After a long silence, he opens his eyes, haunted.

“She was nine. Her name was Ilyra. She liked honey bread and had a pet mouse named Stitch.” His voice cracks, barely, but I hear it. I feel it.

“They buried her alive.”

I almost vomit. But I don’t. I grip Haiden’s shoulder instead, grounding us both.

“We’ll find them,” I say. “Every last one.”

He nods, but his hands are already glowing. He whispers to the bones, his magic speaking in ancient runes passed through bloodlines older than the sun.

A flicker of light rises from the dirt. It hovers in the air, small, trembling, like a child’s breath caught on the wind. Then it disappears.

“She’s free now,” I say softly. “One more.”

We rise and move to the next grave. We don’t stop. We won’t. Because Marcus thought these children were expendable. But they weren’t. They were the beginning. And now they’ll be the end.