Heir of Troy: The Third Son

The passage widened without warning.

Lysander had been walking for what felt like hours after the third door, the lamp burning low, the darkness pressing in from every side. Then the walls fell away, and he found himself standing at the edge of a wide chamber. The floor was a single slab of polished stone, smooth as ice, stretching into the blackness. The note had warned him about this place.

The fourth trap is a tilting floor. Walk along the left wall. Step lightly. Too much weight at the center, and the slab will tip, dropping you into the darkness below.

He pressed his back against the left wall and stepped onto the slab. It shifted beneath him. A faint, sickening movement. He froze, his heart hammering, and the slab settled.

He moved again. One step. Then another. Each footfall sent a ripple through the stone. He could feel the axis beneath him, invisible and patient, waiting for the wrong step.

Halfway across, he made a mistake.

He stepped too far from the wall. The slab tilted. Lysander threw himself sideways, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth stone. The tilt increased. He slid, inches at first, then faster. The edge of the slab was approaching, and beyond it there was only the pit.

He clawed at the stone, his nails tearing, his body straining. His foot caught against a seam in the floor—a gap between the slab and the wall—and he wedged himself there, gasping, his legs dangling over the edge of the pit.

For a long moment, he did not move. He could not move. The slab was still tilted, still waiting for him to make another mistake. He could feel the darkness below him, vast and hungry.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself back onto the slab. The stone settled. He pressed himself against the wall, his entire body trembling, and moved forward one step at a time, not daring to breathe.

When he reached the far side, he collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor. His hands were bleeding. His legs were shaking. He had not known that he could be this afraid.

The fourth door was there, hidden in the wall. He found the seam, pushed it open, stepped through. The handle of bronze was in the niche on the left, exactly where the note had said it would be. He pulled it. The mechanism groaned, deep in the walls, and then clicked into place.

The fourth trap was deactivated.

He sat down with his back against the wall and closed his eyes. His heart was still pounding. His hands were slick with blood. He had nearly died. He had nearly fallen into the dark.

He pulled out the waterskin and drank. He ate a piece of dried meat, forcing himself to chew slowly. His body wanted to rest. His body wanted to stay here, in this small alcove, where the walls were solid and the floor did not tilt. But he could not stay. The path led on.

He unfolded the note and read the next section.

The fifth trap is the Breath of the Mountain. The passage ahead has small holes in the walls. When you pass, they release a fine dust that steals the breath and brings sleep. Hold your breath and move quickly. The fifth key is behind the fifth door, in a niche on the right. Push the stone button. The trap will deactivate.

He folded the note and stood. His legs protested. His hands stung. But he had no choice.

He took a deep breath, held it, and ran.

The passage was long, longer than he had expected. The walls were riddled with small holes, hundreds of them, like the pores of some ancient stone creature. The dust came out in clouds, fine and grey, filling the passage with a thick fog. Lysander ran blind, his eyes stinging, his lungs burning, his feet pounding on the stone floor.

He had been running for perhaps thirty paces when he realized he would not make it. The passage was too long. His lungs were giving out. The dust was in his nose, in his mouth, in his throat. He could feel his body slowing, his legs growing heavy, his vision blurring at the edges.

No, he thought. Not like this. Not in the dark, alone, forgotten.

He ran harder. The dust was everywhere now, a grey cloud that swallowed the lamplight, that filled his lungs with fire, that dragged at his limbs like hands reaching up from the floor. He ran, and ran, and ran.

And then, suddenly, the air cleared.

He burst out of the dust cloud and collapsed to his knees, gasping. The air here was clean, cold, and he drank it in like a drowning man. His chest heaved. His vision swam. For a long moment, he could not think, could not move, could only breathe.

He had survived.

The fifth door was not far. He found the seam, opened it, and pressed the stone button in the niche on the right. The mechanism clicked. The trap was deactivated.

He moved on.

The sixth trap was the hardest.

The note described it briefly: Hidden blades. The passage floor is carved with symbols. Step only on the symbol of the sun. The sixth key is behind the sixth door, in a niche on the left. Turn the handle of copper. The trap will deactivate.

Lysander stood at the edge of the carved floor and looked at the symbols. They were old—older than anything he had seen before. Stars and moons. Serpents and birds. Eyes and hands. And in the center of each pattern, a small circle that might have been the sun, or might have been something else.

He could not tell which symbol was the sun.

He knelt and examined the carvings more closely. The light was bad. The symbols were worn. He could not be certain.

He chose a symbol near the left wall—a circle with rays extending from it. It looked like the sun. It had to be the sun.

He stepped on it.

Blades sprang from the walls.

He threw himself backward, crashing against the passage wall. The blades whistled past his face, so close he felt the wind of them. They retracted slowly, back into their hidden slots.

He stood there, breathing hard, his back pressed against the stone. The wrong symbol. He had chosen the wrong symbol.

He looked at the floor again, more carefully now. The circle with rays—it was not the sun. It was the sun’s mirror, the sign of the underworld. The note had said the sun. The real sun.

He found it after a long search: a simple circle, no rays, set near the right wall. It was so plain that he had overlooked it entirely.

He stepped on it. Nothing happened. He took another step, to the next sun symbol. Nothing. Another. The floor was a path of sun symbols, scattered among the other signs. He followed them one by one, his heart in his throat, until he reached the far side.

He had passed the sixth trap.

The seventh door was different.

Lysander saw it from a distance: a wall of black stone, smooth as glass, with no seam, no handle, no visible mechanism. It looked like the end of the passage. It looked like the end of the world.

He set down the lamp and ran his hands over the stone. It was cold, colder than the other doors, and it did not yield. There was no hidden latch. No secret seam. No mechanism to push or pull or turn.

He unfolded the note and read the final section.

The seventh door has no trap and no key. It opens only for the one who carries the mark. I do not know what the mark is. My father did not know. No one who came before us knew. The door will open when it is ready to open, and not before.

The mark. He did not know what the mark was. He did not have a mark.

He stood before the black stone, his lamp burning low, and felt the weight of the mountain pressing down on him. He had come so far. He had survived six traps. He had bled and run and nearly died. And now, at the final door, he was stopped.

He pressed his palms against the stone. He pushed. Nothing. He pulled. Nothing. He searched the edges, the frame, the floor around it. There was no mark. No key. No way in.

He was about to turn back, to search for another passage, when something changed.

The stone grew warm beneath his hands. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to glow.

Lysander stepped back. The glow spread across the surface of the black stone, faint at first, then brighter, until the entire door was alive with light. It was not firelight. It was not the light of his lamp. It was something else—something older, deeper, that came from within the stone itself.

The door began to open.

It did not swing on hinges. It did not slide. It simply... vanished, dissolving into the light like mist before the sun.

And beyond it, Lysander saw something that made him forget how to breathe.

He stood there, frozen, staring. The light from the door spilled into the chamber beyond, illuminating something that his mind could not fully comprehend. It was vast. It was ancient. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, in this world or the other one he had left behind.

The light grew brighter. The chamber revealed itself piece by piece, detail by detail. And Lysander stood at the threshold, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do anything except stare at the thing that had been waiting for him for a very long time.

His lamp flickered. The light from the chamber swallowed the darkness.

Oh God, he thought. I don’t believe what I’m seeing.

And he stood there, at the edge of everything he had ever known, staring into the light.

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