Chapter 99: The vault had changed
It was no longer just a chamber of relics and ruin. It breathed. With every step Beckett took deeper into the darkened corridors, the walls seemed to exhale against him. Cold air kissed the back of his neck, a whisper, a warning, or maybe the breath of the stone itself.
Celeste’s light orb hovered above his shoulder, casting warped shadows across the jagged walls. Behind him, Camille muttered words in a dialect Beckett couldn’t place. Not ancient Spellbinder, not Latin. Something raw. Elemental.
Her voice wasn’t steady. It trembled as if her tongue warred with something beneath her skin.
"I don’t think she should be here," Beckett murmured, glancing over his shoulder.
Celeste ignored him. "She must be. It’s calling her."
They reached the end of the vault, the place where time had not touched the stone. A half-collapsed altar jutted from the center, covered in runes that bled light when Camille approached. Beneath it, something pulsed.
A heartbeat.
Beckett knelt, fingers brushing away decades of dust. The pulse was faint, but undeniable. Then, the ground beneath the altar groaned, shifted, and split, revealing a shallow cavity lined with obsidian.
There it was.
A stone. No larger than a closed fist, shaped like an embryo curled in sleep. But it glowed, not with flame or light, but life.
"Don’t touch it," Celeste ordered sharply.