Chapter 287: Light at the End
For a a while, nobody moved.
None of them dared breathe.
Morgan lay there in the settling dust, a ragged, broken heap.
His clothes were shredded, his leather coat ruined beyond recognition and soaked through with mud and blood.
The skin of his bare arms was a map of deep purple bruises and open lacerations with a coat of barely dried blood.
His right leg sat at an unnatural, sickening angle, clearly broken in multiple places.
Dried blood crusted his chin and trailed from his left ear, and his breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps that made his chest shudder.
He looked like he had been put through a meat grinder and spat back out by the abyss.
Slowly, heavily, the silence stretched on .
Valerius was the first to move . He stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching softly on the gravel, the figure blurred and materialized in front of Morgan’s limp body a moment later.
He looked down at the broken young man.
"Morgan," Valerius said, his voice unusually quiet, stripped of its usual commanding resonance.
There was no response.
The youth didn’t stir, save for the faint, weak rise and fall of his chest.
Valerius knelt down, his lean frame casting a long shadow over the fallen boy.
He reached out a gloved hand, resting it gently on Morgan’s torn shoulder.
"Morgan..."
Angel stepped forward.
"Let me try."
Grasping the youth’s head, she spoke softly.
"Morgan!"
Her melodic voice floated through the air, barely a whisper and yet Raven felt a wave of goosebumps break out on her body, her hair rising on end.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then, slowly, agonizingly, Morgan’s eyes fluttered open, his glimmering with a flicker of ethereal golden light that quickly faded.
Angel flinched, her body instinctively recoiling before she could stop herself.
Morgan’s head lolled to the side.
His vision was clearly unfocused, rolling blankly across the grey sky before slowly drifting down to register the shapes standing around him.
He saw the tall, dust-covered silhouette of Valerius. He saw Raven, frozen in place, her mouth slightly open.
He saw Sye, wide-eyed and pale, silently staring at him.
He saw Angel, her hands still trembling even she held him.
Morgan stared at them for a long time, his face entirely devoid of expression.
Then, with supreme, painstaking effort, he lifted his right hand an inch off the freezing stone.
His bloody, dirt-caked fingers gave a tiny wave.
Hey," Morgan rasped.
Raven stared at him, her eyes wide, a strange mix of profound disbelief, overwhelming relief, and sudden, fierce irritation washing over her face in rapid succession.
"You..." she breathed, utterly speechless.
Sye looked from Morgan’s battered face down to the jagged, solid bedrock he had somehow crawled out of, his mind completely failing to reconcile the reality before him.
"How in the absolute hell..."
Sye had also felt the emergence of the being within the Zeregran Ranges in the wake of the rockfall and because of that, he knew just how powerful whatever it was had to have been.
None of them, not even his beloved master, Valerius could have stood a chance against. Even simply thinking about going toe to toe qith it sent cold chills down his spine.
Perhaps things would have been different if Lord Velagrew were present.
And that’s why it’d been even more jarring when the powerful presence had abruptly disappeared.
Angel stepped forward quickly, dropping to her knees on Morgan’s other side. Her sharp eyes immediately swept over his ruined leg and the dark stains on his torso.
"He’s in shock," she said tightly, her voice regaining its composure as her instincts took over.
"He’s bleeding internally. We need to stabilize him now."
Morgan turned his head an inch, his eyes focusing on Valerius’s stoic face.
"Took me... a while," Morgan muttered, a tiny, faint twitch at the corner of his bloody mouth attempting a smirk.
"Did you... miss me?"
Before anyone could answer, Morgan’s eye rolled back.
The small thread of power holding his consciousness together finally snapped. His hand dropped limp against the rock, his body going completely weightless.
Valerius reacted instantly, slipping his arms beneath Morgan’s back and knees, lifting him effortlessly from the bloody dust before he could slump back against the cold stone.
Valerius held him close against his chest, feeling the faint, rhythmic flutter of the boy’s chest against his armor.
He pressed two fingers to the side of Morgan’s neck, holding his breath for a terrifying beat.
"He’s alive," Valerius said quietly.
Raven let out a quiet relieved sigh.
"Idiot..."
She let out a long, shuddering breath, rubbing her temples with the back of a dirty hand.
"Of course he is," she muttered, though her voice quavered slightly.
"The idiot is too stubborn to die in a cave."
We can’t stay here," Angel said, already reaching out to press her glowing palms against Morgan’s shattered leg to stem the bleeding.
"The mountain is still unstable."
"Sye, find us a path down the ridge. Now."
Sye didn’t hesitate.
He gave Morgan one last bewildered look then turned, and sprinted toward the narrow descent through the pines, his movements swift and inhuman.
Within moments figure blurred into the distance .
Valerius stood up, cradling Morgan in his arms as if he weighed nothing at all.
He looked back one last time at the dark fissure in the mountain face—the entrance to the abyss that had swallowed Morgan whole.
For now, he had no answers. He’d failed to get the cery thing he’d sought in this forsaken place.
He didn’t know what had transpired in the dark, what horrors Morgan had faced, or how a crippled mortal had dragged himself out of the belly of an ancient god’s tomb.
But for now, none of it mattered. The boy was still alive.
"Let’s go," Valerius commanded softly.
A moment later, Sye returned.
The small group turned away from the shattered lip of the Zeregran Ranges, disappearing into the swirling white dust and the looming pines of the mountain path.
Behind them, the wind continued to howl through the crags, slowly burying the pale beast and the cracked fissure in a blanket of grey ash.