Chapter 5: Beneath the Sleeping King

Chapter 5: Beneath the Sleeping King

Rage is a powerful fuel. It burned away the last vestiges of my disbelief, leaving a core of hard, cold certainty. The journey to the foot of Arthur's Seat was a blur of taxi lights and tense silence. Alistair sat beside me, clutching a leather satchel full of God knows what, his usual mischievous twinkle replaced by the grim focus of a man walking into a war he’d only ever read about. Morana sat in the front, a statue of deadly purpose, the streetlights sliding over her pale features without leaving any warmth. My mission was a single, pure, animal instinct: get Fiona back.

We didn't take the tourist path. Alistair led us up a treacherous, muddy scramble on the hill's dark side, away from the city lights. The wind howled over the volcanic rock, carrying the scent of wet gorse and a deeper, metallic tang of ozone.

"The Veil is thin here," Alistair said, his voice nearly snatched away by the gale. "Worn down by centuries of… activity. The entrance won't be a door. It's a fold. A place where the world doesn't quite meet itself properly."

He stopped by a jagged outcrop of rock that looked like a broken tooth. He ran a hand over its surface, muttering words in a language that slid past my ears like water. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the space between the rocks seemed to shimmer, to warp like a heat haze. The solid stone became a transparent, wavering curtain, revealing not the hillside beyond, but a cavern pulsing with a faint, sickly green light.

"Once we step through, the way back may not be so simple," Alistair warned, his eyes grave. "The landscape on the other side… it answers to him."

I didn't hesitate. I plunged through the shimmering portal, the psychic image of Fiona's terrified face burning in my mind.

The transition was like being submerged in ice water. The air on the other side was cold, still, and heavy with the smell of damp earth and decay. We stood in a vast cavern that was a grotesque parody of the hill outside. Twisted, phosphorescent fungi clung to the ceiling, casting everything in that ill green glow. The familiar shape of the Salisbury Crags was visible through an opening, but they were warped and serrated, like the jaws of some colossal beast. This was a Thin Place, a nightmare reflection of my city.

"This way," Morana commanded, her voice a low anchor in the disorienting silence. She moved with an unnatural confidence, her storm-grey eyes scanning the shadows.

But the path she chose felt wrong. A deep, instinctual revulsion coiled in my gut. The air in that direction seemed thicker, more cloying. It was then that I first saw it.

It wasn't a hallucination. It was like my vision had suddenly gained a new dimension. I could see the very fabric of this place, a shimmering, interwoven tapestry of energy. And ahead of us, along the path Morana had chosen, the threads were knotted, tangled, and pulsing with a malevolent, predatory light. A trap.

To our left, however, was a narrow, almost invisible fissure in the cavern wall. From it, I saw a single, faint thread of silver light, thin but unbroken. It felt… clean. It felt like the right way.

"No," I said, my voice hoarse. "Not that way. Over there." I pointed to the fissure.

Alistair looked at me, confused. "Lad, that's a dead end."

"It isn't," I insisted, not knowing how I knew. "The path she's on is a trap. I can… see it."

Morana turned, her expression unreadable but tinged with what might have been surprise. "Explain."

"I can't. It's like… lines. The lines are all wrong that way. This way, they're straight." It sounded insane, but the conviction was absolute. My latent ability, the curse of my bloodline, was waking up. It wasn't a power I could wield; it was a sense I couldn't turn off.

For a long moment, nobody moved. Then Alistair nodded slowly. "The Cunning Man's blood. He sees the seams. Trust the key."

Morana's gaze lingered on me, sharp and calculating, before she gave a stiff, single nod and changed direction. We followed the faint silver thread I could see, scrambling through the fissure into a network of tunnels that felt ancient and alive. The walls seemed to breathe, and whispers slithered just at the edge of hearing. Twice, my new sense screamed a warning, and I guided us around patches of shimmering, distorted reality that Alistair identified as 'Fae traps'—pockets of compressed time or illusions designed to ensnare the unwary. I wasn't just a key; I was a key and a bloody map.

Finally, the tunnels opened into a vast central chamber, the heart of the sleeping king. At its center, bound to a jagged pillar of black rock by thick, pulsating vines, was Fiona. She was pale and shivering, but alive. A wave of relief so powerful it almost buckled my knees washed over me.

Standing before her, his back to us, was a tall, unnaturally slender figure in robes the colour of a starless midnight. He turned slowly, and my blood ran cold. He had no face, only a smooth, polished surface of obsidian that reflected our horrified expressions. His psychic voice, the same one that had violated my mind, echoed not in the cavern, but inside our skulls.

The key arrives, just as I intended. And it brings Death's own errand girl with it. A bold move.

"Let her go," I snarled, taking a step forward. "This is about me, not her."

The Soul-Eater tilted its featureless head. Oh, this has always been about you, Dan MacLean. You, and the cosmic injustice hardwired into your very bones. You think I want to use you to open the gates? To let chaos reign? The voice was laced with a dry, ancient amusement. How utterly predictable.

He raised a long, slender hand, and the obsidian surface of his face swirled, showing an image of a burning sky, of worlds colliding in a storm of raw power.

Your ancestor didn't just bind a shard of power to his bloodline. He bound a lock to a wound. A festering, weeping wound that poisons both our worlds. I don't want to pick the lock. I want to shatter it. I want to destroy the key—you—and let the wound bleed out. It will destroy this place, yes. But it will also cauterize the link forever. No more Veil. No more balance. Just… separation.

I stared at him, my mind reeling. He wasn't an invader. He was a radical surgeon, willing to sacrifice the patient to cure the disease.

"That would unmake everything," Morana said, her voice a low hiss of cold fury. "The balance would be annihilated."

Precisely, the Soul-Eater replied. And your masters are so afraid of that, they sent you to enact their own monstrous solution.

He turned his reflective face towards me. She hasn't told you her true purpose, has she, little key? Go on, ask your protector what her orders are. Ask her what 'maintaining the balance' truly entails.

I turned to Morana, a sickening dread dawning in my soul. Her face was a mask of cold granite, but for the first time, I saw a flicker of something in her storm-dark eyes. Conflict.

"Morana?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "What is he talking about?"

The Soul-Eater's voice was a triumphant, venomous whisper in my mind. She isn't here to save you. She's here to deliver you. Not to me. To the wound itself.

He gestured to the pillar where Fiona was bound. "This is the nexus. The weakest point. My plan is to overload it with your destruction. Her plan," he said, the psychic word dripping with contempt, "is to shove you into the lock and turn you, a living sacrifice to be sealed between worlds. A permanent, sentient plug for the hole in reality. Alive. Aware. And trapped. Forever."

The cavern spun. Every cold word from her, every calculated action, every mention of 'balance' and 'necessity' clicked into place with horrifying clarity. She wasn't my shield. She was my shepherd, leading me to a slaughterhouse far worse than death. My protector was my executioner. I was caught between a monster who wanted to shatter my soul, and one who wanted to entomb it for eternity.