CHAPTER 164: AN ATTEMPT

Aelin

The dungeon was colder than I remembered.

Even with the sunlight pouring in from the largest cell—beams cutting through the dark like god-spears—it couldn’t chase away the damp. The air still smelled like stone, iron, and old blood. But that light... it was bright enough to touch every corner now. Even the shadows had nowhere left to hide.

I walked slowly through the corridor, my boots echoing against the floor. The guards straightened at my approach, one of them stepping forward with a questioning glance.

"Open one of the smaller containment cells," I said, voice firm. "Bring out one of them. Gently."

The hesitation was brief. He bowed once and obeyed, disappearing through a gate of rusted iron.

I waited in the silence, hands clenched loosely at my sides. The sunlight from the colosseum-sized cell stretched long down the hallway like golden veins across the floor, glowing with a warmth that didn’t quite reach my skin. It illuminated everything now. Even the broken things.

I heard the dragging first.

Shuffling feet. The slow scrape of limbs against stone.

When the guard returned, he was guiding one of the lost causes. A woman, I thought—though the features had wasted into something vague. Her hair hung in greasy ropes, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her mouth was parted slightly, but no sound came from her. She moved forward because her body remembered how. Not her mind.

It pained me to look at her like that

I swallowed down the tightness in my throat.

"Release her," I said.

The guard blinked at me. "Here?"

"Yes. In the light."

He hesitated, then let her go. She swayed where she stood, then slowly—haltingly—stepped forward. Toward the sunlit center of the corridor.

I watched her enter it.

Her skin, sallow and pale, looked almost silver in the light. For a moment, it almost seemed like she paused—like something inside her recognized warmth again. But it was only an illusion. She kept walking, slowly turning in place, unseeing, uncaring.

A hollow thing. Moving. Breathing. But not living.

And yet...

I couldn’t look away.

Because somewhere, deep beneath whatever rot had claimed her, I wanted to believe something was left. A spark. A memory. A soul not yet extinguished.

I stepped forward slowly, into the light with her. My fingers curled, and I felt the hum of my magic stir low in my chest, warm and flickering like a heartbeat.

I raised my hand, and the light gathered there—soft, golden, pulsing like breath. It fluttered across my fingers like wings.

The woman didn’t flinch.

I stepped closer and placed my palm lightly over her heart—or where it should have been. There was no resistance. She swayed slightly beneath the touch, vacant eyes staring just past my shoulder. Like I wasn’t even there.

I breathed in, focused, and released the magic into her.

The light flowed into her chest.

...

And nothing happened.

I stared at her, tried looking into her eyes even though she kept moving them.

No spark of life. No softening in her gaze. Not even a tremble in her limbs. She simply stood there, staring forward, still swaying slightly like a puppet waiting for a command that would never come.

My stomach twisted.

Okay, I’ll try another spell.

I tried again.

Another spell—this one older, deeper. From the ending pages, the ones that spoke of flesh and bone regeneration. I whispered the words slowly, carefully, channeling it straight into her core.

Still nothing.

No reaction. No change. She blinked once, but even that felt mechanical. There was no comprehension in her face, no flicker of pain or relief. Just that horrible, mindless stillness.

I gritted my teeth and moved on. One after another, I whispered every healing spell I’d spent months deciphering from the ancient texts. I poured them into her like water into a cracked vessel, watching as the light sank in and vanished without leaving so much as a trace.

But...

She remained.

Silent. Hollow. Unchanged.

By the time I reached the final spell in the book’s healing Chapter, I felt helpless, and my heart felt like it was folding in on itself.

Nothing worked.

Nothing.

I stepped away from her and groaned before I turned to look at her again from a distance.

She blinked.

Not fast, not sharp—just a slow, uncertain flutter of her eyelids. Her vacant gaze, dull and unfocused, suddenly shifted.

And then she looked at me.

It was the first time she properly looked at me.

Not with recognition. Not with understanding. But with something fragile.

Something broken.

Her brows drew together, slow and shallow, like a child waking from a fever-dream. Her mouth twitched open slightly—lips cracked, jaw trembling—as if she were trying to speak but couldn’t remember how.

Her expression was... lost.

Like someone who knew she was supposed to feel something but couldn’t name it. Couldn’t hold onto it. It wasn’t the emptiness I’d seen before. It was worse.

It was confusion.

A kind of haunted confusion that didn’t belong on any face. Her body swayed once, then twice, before one bare foot stepped forward.

Then another.

She began to walk toward me.

!!!

Not like someone who knew where she was going—but like a newborn fawn learning how to move. Her limbs stiff and unsure, her shoulders twitching as if even gravity confused her. The stride of a new toddler, wobbling and reaching and so painfully slow.

My heart trembled at the sight.

And I—

I couldn’t take it.

Something inside me cracked.

Clean down the middle.

I had tried everything. Every spell, every light, every word I knew. And this broken, beautiful scrap of a woman was still wandering toward me like she thought I could save her. Like she hoped I could. Like something inside her recognized that I was trying—and still, there was nothing left to reach.

Her eyes were too far gone.

The guard moved quickly, stepping forward and gently gripping her arm. "That’s enough," he said softly, already beginning to guide her back toward the containment cell.

She didn’t resist. Just let herself be turned, her head still tilted toward me even as she was led away. Her gaze didn’t hold anger. Or fear.

Just confusion. A silent, aching why that would follow me for days.

I turned away, tears welling up in my eyes.

And then I ran.