The shadowy veil over Lewis' eyes lifted for what felt like the first time in forever, and the room he had been locked in slowly came back into focus. He rubbed his eyes. 'Hello Lewis,' an all too familiar voice said quietly.

He raised his eyebrows. 'What? You've come to torture me as well, Russell? Or should I call you Kannan now?'

'You know me as Russell; I'm happy for you to continue to call me that,' he shrugged as he sat down on the floor opposite Lewis, a mug cradled in his hands.

'There are a lot of things I could call you right now,' he muttered.

'I know,' Russell sighed. 'At least you're free of the shadows for now.'

'What happened to them?'

'I ordered them away at Tristan's request; it seems there's some commotion in the city this evening,' Russell said. 'Your allies are either very brave or very stupid; I haven't decided which yet.'

'Tell me you didn't send those shadows after my friends,' Lewis demanded. 'They don't deserve that.'

'I'm sure they don't, but I had my orders,' he said. 'Besides, if they're in the city, they aren't here.'

'What good does that do them? I'm sure they would be better off without the shadow guards around,' he said.

'I noticed that about you at the tower,' Russell said, taking a sip from the mug. 'You were always more concerned about the wellbeing of the others than yourself, even after all they put you through. Remarkable, commendable.'

'What are you doing here?' Lewis said. Why did Russell always have to beat around the bush with everything?

'Just catching up,' he replied with a grin. 'I'm supposed to be watching you until they return. I would have thought you would have more interesting questions for me after everything that happened.'

'You betrayed me; you betrayed us. They're all dead because of you,' Lewis spat. If it weren't for the shackles, he would have probably strangled Russell by now just for sitting their drinking from his mug with that smug look on his face.

'There we go, now we're getting somewhere,' he said with a smile. 'If you had carried on fighting, he would have killed you with ease.'

'I don't understand you,' Lewis said.

'You're not the first to say that. That honour goes to my father,' he said. 'You certainly won't be the last either. Tristan would have killed you there and then if I hadn't intervened. You owe me your life; you should be grateful.'

'Grateful? Do you have any idea what he's done to me—the things those shadows have put me through for I don't even know how long?'

'I do. For a time, during the war, I worked here. It's not a job I am proud of, but at the time, it was where I needed to be,' he said. 'The day at the temple was not your day to die; I had to make sure that you survived.'

'You could have helped us defeat him! Then maybe more of us would have survived,' Lewis said.

'You saw the answers to the question you asked of the flame. What you saw is what would have happened if you had killed Tristan in that moment. It would have brought destruction to the world, and even then, someone, somewhere, would have one day stumbled across the crown and been called down the same path as George and Edmund. There is a day to fight but that still lies in the future.'

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

'What about all those that will die in his wake?' Lewis demanded. 'What about them? Don't they matter?'

'To The Weave, no,' he said bluntly, taking another sip. 'It is better to die for something worth fighting for than to survive for a world that is not worth living in.'

'How can you say that? They all have their own lives. Each one of those is worth trying to save.'

'No matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to save them all,' Russell said. Placing the mug on the floor, he pushed it across the stone so that it stopped in front of Lewis.

'I don't want anything to drink, especially not from you,' Lewis said.

'That's good because there's nothing left in there to drink,' he said, nodding to the mug.

Lewis looked down. In the dark dregs was a fine silver chain with an hourglass pendant filled with bright blue dust attached to it. He had been so consumed by the torture that he hadn't even noticed that it was missing. 'Why are you giving this back to me?'

'You never know when it might come in handy,' Russell shrugged, pulling the mug back towards him after Lewis had taken it out and wiped it on the heavy black cloak he had been forced into.

'What happened to the Spiritbound Stone?'

'He's managed to pluck each piece of it out of you except for the very core. Before your friends decided to raid the city looking for you, he was on his way down here to get it. Quite fortunate timing on their part,' he said. 'He'll be back shortly, I imagine.'

'You talk about it not being my day to die at the temple, but you're sitting here chatting away, waiting for him to come back,' Lewis said. 'If you're not on his side, then why not let me go?'

'Who said I'm on your side and not his?'

'Why are you doing this then if you're not here to help me?' Lewis asked, growing more and more frustrated with Russell.

Russell got to his feet, turning towards the door. 'I don't take sides; I merely do the work of The Weave, maintaining the threads that still need to come to fruition. If you ever did find a way out of this cell, though, you'd want to head all the way to the bottom; that's a good place to start.'

With his words lingering in the air, he turned and walked out the door. There was a soft chink on the stone as something small and white dropped to the ground, settling in the doorway just in time to stop the cell door from closing properly. 'Lewis? Can you hear me? We need help finding you.' Emily's voice whispered in his ear, distracting him from the sound of Russell's retreating footsteps.

'I'm here,' Lewis whispered as he got to his feet, hoping that Russell was well out of earshot. 'Keep heading down; I'll find you.'

For good measure, he waited a couple of minutes before approaching the door. The chains might not have tethered him to the cell he was in, but they made enough noise that if he wasn't careful, someone would come running before long. He had tried to break them in those rare lucid moments where he had been alone, but he had felt so drained that nothing more than a twitch of the metal had happened. Lewis willed them to release him, focusing intently on them, but nothing happened. For now, he would just have to put up with them.

As quietly as he could, he eased the heavy door open, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked down at the piece of chalk Russell had dropped, which had kept the door from shutting properly. Crouching, he picked it up. It seemed completely mundane, but he knew better than to expect coincidences from Russell.

When he stepped over the threshold, he felt all the energy drain from him, fatigue hitting him like a landslide. His legs were heavy, almost buckling with each step. How long had he been here, he wondered. Using the wall for support, he looked in both directions. In the distance, painful screams echoed through the dimly lit corridor. Russell had headed right when he left; should he follow him or head in the opposite direction? All he had said was to head down, but the corridor was level.

In his chest, the core of the Spiritbound Stone gave a tug to the left, far fainter than it had been when leading him towards the temple. It had gotten him where he needed to go last time; what choice did he have but to trust in it again? The Spiritbound Stone tugged again, almost as if it were growing impatient. 'Alright, I'm going,' he muttered to himself, moving along the wall unsteadily. Inside him, it seemed to hum gently with approval.

'Do you know where Emily is?' he asked, feeling silly that he was talking to a fragment of the orb.

He felt a warmth in his chest for a moment before there was a gentle tug upward in the direction he was heading before the pull reverted to the direction it had been taking him. Suddenly, he had questions for it: could it lead them out of here? Did it know which way to go if he asked for the safest route?

The core of the Spiritbound Stone flashed hot for a second as the questions raced through his mind. 'Sorry,' he muttered, rubbing his chest. 'Too much for the moment. Let's find the bottom and Emily, then we'll worry about getting out of here.'