Chapter 950
By sunset, they were packed. Supplies, weapons, dried food, the book itself wrapped in a protective cloth. Jude carried the ribbon, and Ashra carried a shard of bone carved with glyphs that pulsed faintly whenever they neared hidden passageways. The forest seemed to resist at first, paths overgrown, trails shifting, but the ground itself remembered Jude now. Remembered all of them. The forest bent. The path cleared.
Two days of travel passed in strange silence. The beasts avoided them. The birds mimicked human laughter, soft and eerie in the twilight. Once, Lucy pointed out a tree that had grown in the shape of a kneeling woman. Once, Jude saw his own face reflected in a pool where there was no water.
On the third morning, they found the entrance.
It was a circle of stone surrounded by fallen columns, half-submerged in moss and shadow. No doors. Just a symbol, the same spiral as on the ribbon, carved deep into the ground.
Ashra placed the bone shard in the center.
The earth shifted.
Stone uncoiled like a serpent, revealing a staircase of light leading down into the core.
No one spoke. They descended.
The Vault was not what they expected.
No corridors. No traps. Just a single chamber, circular and massive, the ceiling a dome of glass showing a sky filled with stars they had never seen before. In the center stood a pedestal.
On it: a mirror.