It wasn't just a dead end of volcanic rock. It was a door.
You had to look incredibly closely, past the suffocating layers of Old Tongue script scratching the surface, but it was there. Barely visible in the flashlight beams. The exact same spiral geometries. The wolf heads. The ancient blueprints that had been dragging me forward ever since I put on Genevieve's ring.
"There's a cavity behind this," I muttered.
Cassian was instantly at my shoulder. I didn't need to look at him; the mate bond was throwing off sharp, electric spikes of adrenaline. He was already running his hands over the basalt, hunting for the trigger.
Elara brushed her weathered fingers against the etchings. "This syntax," she breathed, her grey eyes losing focus. "It’s older than anything in our archives. Pre-Maker.
