Page 129 of The Last Remaining Light

Elowynn was helpless to do anything.

The darkness behind them had deepened further. They didn't look empty but… something within him was aware of what was happening.

Was it controlling him? Was it trying to escape?

It didn't matter, because she could see the pain visibly tearing through him; but his focus remained entirely on her.

Protecting her.

Elowynn’s chest was so tight; from pain, from smoke, from screaming.

Resonance detonated again beneath the city and the tower lurched.

Stone fractured and cracked overhead, dust and debris beginning to fall atop them.

“RUN!” Alyra shouted.

They sprinted.

Scholars and attendants shoved past one another in desperate attempts to reach the lower levels, panic having stripped away rank, decorum, and reason.

Some screamed for missing family members. Others shouted conflicting instructions no one obeyed. Several people had fallen and were being trampled beneath the crush of bodies surging down the smoke-choked stairs.

The air burned Elowynn's throat. Her body wouldn’t stop shaking.

Flames had already consumed portions of the lower observatory, sending black smoke curling upward through the central shaft. Sparks floated through the stairwell like fireflies from some nightmare while chunks of burning debris occasionally tumbled from above, scattering fresh screams through the crowd.

Somewhere in the city, alarm bells continued tolling. Their relentless rhythm rolled through the stone in endless waves, joined now and then by the distant sounds of collapsing masonry, breaking glass, and agonized howls abruptly cut short.

Every glimpse through the shattered windows revealed the same terrible truth.

Veylspire was dying around them.

Elowynn nearly slipped on uneven stone as the stairwell shook again beneath another pulse of unstable resonance.

A cold hand caught her elbow.

Caelyn.

“Careful,” he said, voice rough.

Elowynn looked up at him. Standing this close made it impossible to ignore how much he had changed.

Another pain and terror filled cry tore through the air from below them.

Then the crowd surged upward in sudden chaos, shouts of “STARLESS!” following.

People shoved one another harshly, forcing their way backward and up the steps while the smoke and screams swallowed the lower corridors.

Elowynn caught only fragments through the chaos—

Ashen figures. Blood against stone. Something moved through the smoke with impossible speed.

Elowynn’s stomach dropped. It moved exactly how Caelyn had.

A scholar fell hard against the stair rail, his face smashing into it as blood and teeth sprayed. He was screaming as black-veined hands dragged him downward into the darkness.

Lora gagged again, and Alyra stepped forward, resonance blade blazing brighter. “Behind me,” she snapped with authority.