The dais began to hum around the five of them, with Thomas watching on from one side, a stack of thick books at his feet. They had been fiddling around for the better part of a couple of hours trying to figure out how the waypoint worked. 'Is it working?' Thomas called as the humming got louder and louder.

'Maybe? I don't know what's supposed to happen,' Lewis said.

At the centre of the dais, the carved tracks that spiralled across the surface began to fill with pale blue light. Is it safe to move? he wondered, watching as the light spread faster and faster. By the second, it grew more and more intense, rising up like sheets of partitioning around the edges. 'Good luck,' Thomas shouted. The hum had now become a roar, as if they were standing down a narrow street facing a howling wind.

'We'll see you soon!'

Lewis had barely managed to get the words out when his stomach dropped, the stone dais beneath them disappearing and sending them plummeting into the ground below. Louise's scream cut through the noise, but he could see she wasn't the only one screaming. Even Captain Caldwell had his mouth wide open.

The bright blue light around the dais disappeared out of view, the only trace of it becoming a tiny blue pinprick far above them as they fell. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the noise stopped and their descent slowed until they were left falling like leaves from a tree in the wind. They all glanced around at one another, Captain Caldwell's face taking on a slight pinkish tint.

He didn't know what he had been expecting to happen, but that was far from it. As he slowly descended, he took in his surroundings. It resembled something like a mine shaft, with supports pinning back the rock faces. Every hundred or so feet, a sconce had been fixed to the rock, a dim, grey blob of light floating above it.

'Fascinating,' Edward muttered to himself. 'This place probably hasn't been seen by anyone for decades, and the power invested in the lights still remains.'

'Maybe Edmund created the lights if he came through here?' Louise suggested.

'No, this looks to be far older; you can sense it. What's left is far more residual than it would be if he had created it,' Edward said. 'Besides, I don't think he's capable of much; his power is very weak.'

'How can you tell?' Lewis asked. 'He had been around powers at the Dawn Tower and other precursors but had never picked up anything.'

'It takes time for your senses to attune to it, but it's often helped by your own power if it has those sorts of tendencies. The precursor powers are unique in how they act on each person. While the majority of the traits are the same, they have different impacts on our senses,' he explained. 'For some, powers may register as spots of colour in their vision depending on the type or different smells and tastes in the air. It's quite fascinating, really.'

'David, do you want to light that lantern?' Captain Caldwell asked,

'I can do that,' Edward said quickly, before David had a chance to react. With a snap of his fingers, the candle inside the lantern burst into flame, a dull orange glow illuminating the area immediately around them.

'Thanks,' David said, glancing at Lewis, taken aback.

'No trouble,' he said, waving away David's thanks. 'That wasn't what I was expecting, though,' he said, nodding to the flame, which had now turned a sickly shade of green. The flame inside the lantern continued to burn merrily, albeit in a different colour.

'What did you say this lantern did?' Captain Caldwell asked, eyeing it warily.

'It said something about revealing things that couldn't be seen. I thought it might come in handy if we needed to try and find our way through the ruins,' Lewis said.

'I don't think it shows just hidden entrances,' Louise said, her face pale as she pointed towards the wall where the light was shining.

Illuminated in the same sickly green glow was what looked like long-removed scaffolding. With tools and wooden beams over their shoulders, ghostly figures walked along the scaffolding, descending around the outside of the mineshaft as the five of them floated down the centre.

'This is somewhat disconcerting,' Edward said as he watched them. They were completely oblivious to their presence, continuing on with the faint sound of their footsteps echoing in the distance. 'Quite remarkable, though.'

'I'm surprised you're not taking notes about all this, Edward,' Captain Caldwell said with half a laugh.

'Once this is over, I do intend to. I'd like to inspect the lantern as well, if I may, of course, Lewis?'

'Sure,' he muttered, only half listening to Edward. Once this was over, his only intention was to go and stay at the cabin in Fir Forest for a considerable amount of time. He wanted nothing more than to be away from the city and everything that came with it, which, as of late, had only been a chaotic disaster and a never-ending list of things that needed to be done yesterday.

'Fantastic, thank you,' Edward said excitedly.

Lewis felt a shiver pass through his body from head to toe. It passed as quickly as it had started, and he looked down, wishing that it hadn't happened a moment later. Tumbling through the air was a ghostly figure landing on the stone ground, which he now saw approaching, with a thwack. The others looked down as well.

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'Cold,' Lewis said before Edward had a chance to ask the burning question of what it had felt like that he could see in his eyes. 'Do you think all these people died here?'

'That person, certainly. It's hard to say with the others without fully understanding the lantern; we may just be seeing an echo of them that has imprinted itself in this place. The leylines are extremely powerful, and I doubt we'll ever fully understand their capabilities. Very few people have ever seen them or travelled along them in living memory, and they are very difficult to access at the best of times,' Edward said. 'Many waypoints like this one have been dormant for decades if not longer, lost to cave-ins or just lost to time.'

David cast the lantern up, away from the body on the floor below, as they touched down on the stone, a perfect replica of the dais above them beneath their feet. 'Which way do we go?' He asked. The dais was open on four sides, with the rock face from the mine shaft breaking it up in between each tunnel. Down each of the corridors, there was a faint grey glow, with more fading orbs lighting the way.

'It's a compass,' Captain Caldwell said, producing a silver one of his own from his pocket. 'That's odd; the needle is just spinning.'

'Could it have broken?' Louise asked, taking it from his hand and examining it. During their training for the city guard, she topped their class when it came to navigation during a week-long wild survival course.

'The leylines could be interfering with it,' Edward said. 'Arden said something about Tristan being built on a nexus. Perhaps it's acting like a pole for the compass, and whichever way we walk, it will think this point is north, at least until we're far enough away.'

'How are we supposed to know which way to go? If we knew which way was south, we could at least head for Oria until we got close enough to try and find the lost temple,' David said.

At the name Oria, there was a howl of wind from deep in the tunnel behind him. The orbs of light in three of the tunnels dimmed as the ones in the passage next to Lewis flared. Before he could say anything, the wind hit them, knocking them all off their feet and sending them spiralling down the now well-lit tunnel as if they were free falling once more.

It was all over in a flash. Dazed and with his head spinning, Lewis found himself standing on another dais, the grey orbs of light from the tunnel they had travelled down dimming once more as the wind dropped completely. David coughed, one hand on his stomach while the other gripped the lantern that was swinging wildly still. I'm not a fan of that,' he muttered. 'I'll take horseback any day, and that's saying something.'

Edward looked around, muttering under his breath, and Lewis caught the word "fascinating" at least three times. 'It seems as though we only need to will ourselves to a destination and speak its name to get there. If I'm not mistaken, we should be in Oria now,' he said before Lewis could cover his mouth to prevent him from speaking the name again.

The dais beneath their feet flashed blue, just as the one in Tristan had, the opaque partitioning of light shooting up before dissolving once more. As it faded, Lewis blinked. No longer were they surrounded by near total darkness, but inside a large emerald and gold room, a wooden desk with two men sat behind it, both looking stunned at their arrival.

None of them moved, eyeing each other carefully. Slowly, the man on the right got to his feet. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with curly, shoulder-length black hair framing his dark face. Moving the chair back, he continued to stare at them intently, his eyes locked on Lewis. 'Guards!' He shouted, shoving the chair to the ground and sprinting for the door that sat about thirty feet behind the desk, barrelling through it with a crash.

The other man stared at them, mouth agape. "Lewis, what? How did you get here?' He cast a quick glance towards the door. When he saw that they were alone, the dark skin melted away, his face changing and his short hair lengthening as it grew lighter, until Russell sat before them. 'You need to get out of here. Right now!'

Jumping around the desk, he ran over to them, smacking a hand on the plinth. The dais beneath their feet crumbled to dust, sending the six of them plummeting through the ground once more. This time, their descent was much quicker. While they didn't slam into the dais below, they landed heavily.

'You can't be here,' Russell said. 'It's not safe, especially not for you, Lewis.'

'Edmund stole the crown and is planning to resurrect Tristan,' Lewis said. 'We think he came here before setting off into the desert.'

'He did, about a week ago. He didn't go out into the desert straight away, though; I saw him speaking with the emperor when he returned,' Russell said. 'Emperor El-Farha has passed an order that anyone linked with you be taken away for questioning about the theft of a Dewdrop Jewel.'

'You're the one that stole it, though; it's got nothing to do with me,' Lewis hissed.

'I know that, he thinks that you're hiding it from him, though, because I gave it to Clara and she was supposed to go and find you,' he replied. 'How is she, by the way? She's very untrusting and wary, but she's not too bad once she settles down and stops trying to run away.'

'She's fine,' Lewis said slowly. ‘Hiding out at the castle for now. We weren't intending to come here; we're trying to find a way to a city that was lost in the desert; it's where Edmund is heading, and we were hoping the leylines would give us the chance to get ahead of him.'

'Avalkan? That place was lost centuries ago, buried beneath the sand. People have been searching for it for generations, combing every inch of the desert for it,' Russell said. They all braced themselves instinctively, expecting the howling wind to throw them down one of the tunnels just as it had when David had mentioned Oria. 'Nothing will happen. If it still existed, then the leylines would take you there.'

'So, this is as far as we can get?' Lewis asked, frustrated.

'No, if you come this far, they'll arrest you on sight. You can either turn back and prepare yourselves for what is to come, or we can forge a path of our own ahead,' Russell said as he glanced up worriedly. 'They know you were here; I would not count on them leaving the fact that you turned up here unannounced as a misunderstanding, even at the risk of a diplomatic incident.'

'What do you mean "we"?' Captain Caldwell demanded

'I'm not just going to leave you to wander unexplored leylines on your own; you'll get yourselves killed before I've even sat back down,' he said. 'Besides, I can't really go back now. They'll know I've spoken with you, and well, looking like myself, they'll have me hung, drawn, and quartered before the hour is out.'

'Which way do we go then?' Lewis asked reluctantly. Since their rise and fall to the surface, he had gotten turned around and couldn't work out which tunnel they had travelled down from Tristan.

'Compass,' he said, spotting Captain Caldwell's one that Louise still held in her hand. 'Thank you. This way,' he said, marching into one of the dimly lit tunnels after consulting the compass for a moment.

'Should we be trusting him?' Captain Caldwell muttered as they watched him go.

'No,' Edward said. 'At his core, he's a good person, but he is wickedly intelligent and can be particularly devious when he needs to be. I doubt he would ever try to hurt any of us, but he'll certainly be after something for his trouble.’

'We need all the help we can get, and right now it seems as though our options are pretty limited,' Lewis said, reluctantly following after Russell, who had stopped a hundred or so feet down the tunnel, waiting for them to catch up. He heard Captain Caldwell sigh behind him before his armour clanked, telling Lewis that he was following him once again.