Free Web NovelChapter 410: Chapter 410
Circe was not naïve enough to miss what was happening. The cave was doing the exact same thing Dena had tried to do earlier. It was in the way both of them offered her their propositions, presented them like choices, yet leaving no real room for refusal. Neither of them had intended to give her a real choice at all.
They were trying to force her hand, pushing her into compliance by whatever means necessary. Unlike with Dena, however, Circe could see no path of escape from this situation without giving in. She could not fight the cave itself. She had already tried to defy it when she killed Dena, and that single act had landed her squarely in the predicament she now faced.
"What does binding my magic with yours entail?" she asked at last. If she was going to go along with this, she needed to know exactly what she was stepping into.
"It will be no cost to you, if that is what you wish to know," the cave replied, its voice echoing through the cavernous walls and reverberating in her mind. "It will not harm you or trap you here. It simply means that we will merge our powers with one another. I will be able to draw from your magic, and you will be able to draw from mine in times of chaos, no matter where you are. We will remain linked in this way until the day our connection is broken."
Despite the explanation, Circe remained skeptical.
"In return," she said slowly, carefully choosing her words, "I want you to free everyone trapped here. Every single one of them."
She saw the entire arrangement for what it truly was, nothing more than a transaction.
The cave did not object.
"If you become a guardian," it said, "I will give you far more than that. I will grant you access to the part of yourself that has remained locked away until this very day. Your soul is older than the veil itself, older than most things that still exist in this world. I can return to you the memories of the lives you lived before this one."
It was a truly tempting offer.
As the cave spoke, Circe felt its power winding slowly around her like unseen threads. The magic brushed against her skin, coaxing her own power outward, drawing it toward itself in a silent invitation.
For a moment she hesitated. Then she allowed it.
The instant she accepted the offer so carefully laid before her, her knees buckled beneath her and she collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud. A blood-curdling scream tore itself from her throat as agony far worse than anything she had ever experienced rushed violently through her body.
The pain was immediate and all-consuming. It felt as though she had been set ablaze from the inside out. Invisible flames licked along her flesh, burning through her veins and charring something deep within her chest. Every nerve in her body ignited at once, sending waves of torment crashing over her senses until pain was the only thing she could feel, the only thing she could understand.
Then something inside her chest snapped.
The sensation was sharp and final.
The torment stretched on for what felt like an eternity, though in truth it could not have lasted more than a few short minutes. The pain dulled, then ebbed away entirely, leaving behind a hollow stillness.
Circe did not even remember when she had closed her eyes. But when she opened them again, the sight that greeted her made her stomach drop.
She was standing over her own body. It lay motionless on the cavern floor, limbs sprawled awkwardly where she had collapsed.
Circe stumbled backward in shock.
Was she... dead?
No. No, that could not be possible.
Yet how else could she explain what she was seeing? How could her soul be standing outside her body if she had not died?
A surge of rage flooded through her almost instantly, hot, sharp, and directed squarely at the cave.
"What did you do to me?" she demanded, her voice echoing harshly through the chamber. "This wasn’t part of our agreement."
"You demanded that I free every person trapped here," the cave answered calmly. "That is precisely what I intend to do with your help. Aside from the vampires, there is another prisoner who has been here longer than any of them. But the place where they are held is very heavily warded and cannot be reached by any mortal. But do not worry. Your current state is not permanent. It will last only until you retrieve that prisoner."
Circe raised her hands slowly, turning them over as she studied them. Her fingers looked the same as before, though they felt strangely weightless. She might have been outside her body, but she did not feel particularly different.
Her lips parted as more questions began to form, but before she could speak them aloud, a sudden current surged through her. Then the ground vanished beneath her and she was falling.
It felt as though she had been hurled from the top of a towering cliff. Air rushed past her as darkness swallowed her whole. Somewhere in the distance she heard the unmistakable sound of water, an echoing splash but she barely felt the impact.
When she looked around, the tunnel from earlier had vanished entirely. Instead, she was surrounded by the same unnatural cerulean glow that illuminated the pool at the heart of the cave. The strange blue light shimmered, rippling around her as she continued to fall through it.
And still she kept falling.
At last, her feet struck solid ground.
The impact was soft, almost unreal.
Circe lifted her head and scanned her surroundings. She had landed in a place buried deep within the bowels of the cave, a vast chamber that resembled an ancient crypt. The air was heavy and cold, thick with the scent of damp stone.
The space was enormous, its ceiling disappearing into darkness above.
At the very center of the chamber stood a single raised platform carved from smooth black stone. It resembled an altar more than anything else and something lay upon it. freewebnσvel.cѳm
Even from a distance, Circe could see the shape of a body stretched across the surface like an offering. But she was still too far away to make out any real details.
A sense of foreboding crept up her spine, cold and unwelcome, tightening around her chest as she wondered whether approaching it would be wise.
But the choice was not hers to make.
Without warning, her body began to move.
Her feet stepped forward against her will, carrying her slowly across the crypt as though invisible hands were shoving her from behind.
A few seconds later, she was close enough to finally see what the figure was. She glanced down at it and a gasp tore through her throat as the sight struck her. The sound escaped before she could stop it. Instinctively, she forced herself to halt, her body going rigid as if her feet had suddenly been rooted to the ground.
A woman lay atop the raised platform, perfectly still. And just as she had only needed a single glance to know that Dena was not her mother despite their identical faces, she only needed one look to recognize that her mother’s sleeping face stared back at her now.
