Chapter 51 : prison of crystals

The prison smelled of cold stone and older things — metal, dust, and the faint tang of mana that refused to die. Light here didn’t warm; it judged. The crystalline cells, set deep beneath the living roots of Elandor, hummed with a steady, clinical pulse, each shard absorbing and folding magic into itself. It was a mausoleum for hope. It was where the council left those they wished forgotten.
The iron of the cell was ordinary, but it was the crystal lattice beyond it — the grafted, rune-etched panes — that held them: Aldah, Kael, Vix, Lara, Ryo, Ryo’s restless beast pressed close as if against the glass. Around them, the roots of the city only whispered; above, the living wood pulsed with anxious life.
They did not remain alone for long.
Footsteps — precise, ceremonial, the kind that carried both authority and contempt — echoed along the corridor. A figure approached, wrapped in the muted finery of the council: a mid-ranking member by the cut of his robes and the clipped way he moved. His face was plain, forgettable in a room that demanded memory. He paused, letting the distance between them stretch like a question.
“You survived the spider,” he said, and his tone was not cruel so much as satisfied.
Aldah spat through the bars. “what are you doing old fart ?”
The councilman’s eyes flicked to Aldah with a slight, practiced pity. “We call it necessity.” He tilted his head. “You must understand that there are calculations above feelings. The balance of Geneva is delicate. A passage opened wrongly is not merely a door. It is an invitation to ruin.”
Aldah tried to hurt him.
“We did what any responsible steward would.” The councilman’s voice was flat, the speech of men who have learned to say monstrous things without meaning them. “Central Geneva’s order keeps the borders stable. The fallen king’s resources are... effective. Your survival was weighed against the lives of many. We chose the fewer deaths.”
“Fewer deaths,” Vix repeated, as if testing the words in his mouth. “By feeding us to monsters?”
The councilman’s expression softened, the practiced mask slipping for a fraction of a breath. “War is arithmetic. We divided pieces and minimized loss. You are — were — a vector. You are not the first to be sacrificed for the whole.”
Ryo’s eyes — bright and magicked — burned with something between fury and a sorrow that had nothing to do with numbers. “You sold him,” Ryo said simply. “You sold a boy to resurrect your politics.”
The councilman made a small, defensive gesture. “There will be other princes. There will be other… strategies. You will understand, in time.”
He turned as if to leave. One of the crystalline sentries droned beside him, its voice like chimes hitting glass. “Subject classified. Recommended containment: permanent.”
“Permanent,” the councilman echoed, ten thousand tiny choices and their consequences written across his face. He stepped back into the corridor and left the cell block to its silence. The sound of his departing footsteps was the sound of a decision closed and locked.
The cell became, for a long moment, nothing but breath and small sounds: Lara's ragged inhale, the soft metallic hum of Aldah’s fists cooling, the low rumble of Ryo’s beast. For the first time since the ambush, defeat hung over them like a heavy cloak.
Then something inside Ryo’s satchel shifted — small, almost comical, the way a caged thing might fidget when left too long in darkness. The satchel had been slung across his shoulders since before the fight, wrapped in cloth and warded by half-remembered charms. Nobody had expected what lived inside it.
A voice — not from lips but from the bag itself — filled the cell. It was thin, like moonlight over a mirror, and impossibly old. It sounded like a secret being remembered.
“Open,” it said. “Open, child.”
Ryo froze. The beast’s ears flattened. The others looked at the satchel.
“What—?” Aldah breathed.
Ryo’s hand went to the strap. He fought impulse and fear with equal measure, fingers trembling. Slowly, he loosened the ties and peeled back the cloth.
Light spilled like liquid.
“Yel'mor,” breathed Ryo, “Yel'mor ?” recognition and disbelief combed through Lara's voice. “The name from the old tales.”
The one who helped my father...
The orb — Yel'mor — regarded them with something that resembled amusement. “Not a tale,” it chimed. “A promise, misread.”
Ryo staggered back as the beast sniffed and then bowed its head, strangely deferential. “now you can see it?” he stammered.
Yelmor’s glow shivered. “yes, I was resting so I unable humans other than you to see me, and now, they can”
Aldah’s fists flared a strand of light, but she didn’t attack. The presence in the satchel shifted something inside everyone — a possibility that felt like air after being buried.
“How?” Lara's demanded.
The orb pulsed, projecting a schematic of lines and nodes into the air — a little map of mana conduits stitched across Geneva like a web. Points flared red where the king’s influence fed the beasts and bled into the land.
“You can free us?” Vix asked, skepticism and hope braided tight.
Yel'mor hummed. “Free you — perhaps. Save Geneva — maybe. Stop the orb he is forging? That needs more than a whisper. The Reincarnation Orb draws on three anchor nodes: the Heart of Central, the Hollow Spire in the North, and the Root-tether beneath the West. If those nodes are severed or reclaimed, the Reincarnation Orb will fail its work. If the nodes are purified, the beasts falter. If the passage is sealed by a living key —” Yel'mor hesitated, almost amused, “— then Central Geneva cannot be opened like a book.”
“Sever nodes,” Kael repeated, the plan forming like a blade. “But how do we get out?”
Yel'mor’s light brightened, revealing a faint pattern along the base of the crystal cell: a seam of mana that pulsed cloak-like, nearly invisible to the naked eye. “This prison is grafted onto the root-net. The crystal’s lattice steals the city’s song, but it cannot stop the old chord. I can attune to it — if you let me.”
Yel'mor looked at Ryo then at his companions. “You delivered me to the real world,” he said slowly. “ I owe you.”
Yelmor’s glow softened. “and also, I shouldn't have given my knowledge to that man, and now he would unmake the world for his grief. If you follow me, I will show you the way to the first node. You will have to move fast.
Kael’s jaw set. “We have no better option.”
Yel'mor aligned to the seam, and the crystal bars blinked in response — a resonance, then a small fracture. With Aldah’s mechanical strength and Kael’s steady hands, the lattice gave way like old ice. The cell released a sound like a sigh.
They stepped out into a corridor that smelled of root-sap and old cold, hearts hammering like drums. Above, through hairline fissures in the stone, something darker moved: the slow, deliberate unlocking of will. Guards and sentries would come; the council’s treachery would be a blade drawn.
They followed, stepping into the rootways where light thinned and the living city hummed like an animal tightening against an unseen winter. Behind them, the crystalline prison sealed, and distant, indignant voices rose — the sound of a plan starting to unravel.