Selene’s POV
The tunnel narrowed the deeper we went.
The walls pressed in, not with stone, but with memory—heavy and suffocating. Every step stirred the air like it was made of breath not ours. Every heartbeat echoed too loudly. Even Kade was quiet now, his hand never leaving the hilt of his blade.
My other self walked ahead of us, torchlight catching the carved lines along her arms—runed scars, not ink.
She’d bled for this journey once before.
And she’d failed.
“We’re close,” she said.
“How can you tell?” Kade asked.
“Because she’s hungry.”
The floor trembled beneath our feet.
And the air changed.
Not colder.
But aware.
The Core wasn’t a chamber.
It was a wound.
A hollow space carved beneath the bones of the earth, vast and endless, like the gods had gouged a crater from th
