The warmth from their union still lingered, a quiet heat running through the tether around their wrists. Sylvia buttoned her silk shirt and pulled her armor straps tight, while Kaelen buckled his broad dark belt and secured his blade. The floating line of golden light and shadow between them was calm now, pulsing with a slow, steady rhythm.

“The air is changing,” Kaelen observed, stepping toward a high archway at the far end of the cavern. “It smells of ancient stone and old magic.”

Sylvia walked alongside him, no longer fighting his pace. “If this ruin was built during the First Age, the central sanctum should hold the main conduit....