Goddess Of The Underworld (Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 119

Chapter 119

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He lifted his hand, and a circle of air a few paces away went still and bright, a polished coin waiting for a stamp. “Gate primed,” he said. “Keyed to our names.”

Noah squeezed my hip, grounding me back into my body. “We’ll make the kids lunch here after,” he said, practical as a prayer. “We keep the day ordinary where we can.”

“Ordinary,” I echoed, letting the word tame the edges of the fear. I took one last glance at Elliot’s door. The ward hummed. The vines hugged. Layah’s presence smoothed like a

hand on my back.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got a family to brief.”

Levi touched the gate and spoke the first name. The air turned, and beyond it the war room’s map table flared to life, Red Moon’s borders drawn in ink and river stone. One room, two worlds, one wall we would not let break.

Behind us, the decoy door took another soft tap. The third thread tried its new word again, hopeful as a child repeating a lesson.

“Child,” it breathed to a room that wasn’t ours. We didn’t answer. We were busy building

the language of no.

Levi’s gate hangs in the corridor like a polished coin, still, bright, waiting. He speaks the names one by one, and the surface ripples each time like a breath taken in.

“Mum, Dad.” The war room resolves on the other side: my father at the head of the map table, sleeves rolled, river stones anchoring the borders. “Xavier. Haiden. Aleisha.

Tommy.”

They look up as if we’ve stepped through, though neither side crosses the threshold. One room, two places. It’s a neat trick, and I’m grateful for the neat ones today.

“Report,” Dad says, but there’s gentleness under the command. Noah gives them the bones: the seeker–weave nosing Elliot’s ward, Levi’s mirror–snare catching a reflection,

the decoy room down the linen corridor.

“Twice now it used the same word,” I finish. “Kin. And the third thread, smaller….said child.” I look down the table, make sure it lands. “This isn’t a random swarm. It’s a

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Chapter 119

search.”

Tommy leans in, forearms braced on the wood. “Soul Eater craft?”

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Levi’s mouth pulls thin. “Close enough to call it that. It’s sympathetic magic: keyed to a soulprint, trained to trail and wait. The hands that rode the rogues used a harsher weave; this one is patient. Different casters. Same quarry.”

Haiden whistles low through his teeth. “So we’ve got more than one set of eyes in our

trees.”

“Not just eyes.” Aleisha studies the map, then me. “Ears. That ‘kin‘ isn’t for us. It’s for him. Call and response. See if the door knows the word.”

Silence settles over the map like a held breath. I can feel the moment the room tips, when possibility hardens into the thing we all already know.

Dad is first to say it aloud. “They’re not hunters,” he says quietly. “They’re kin–seekers.”

Xavier’s jaw works once. He hates the admission, not the logic. “Kin–seekers who rode rogues into our yard,” he says, but there’s less argument in it than steel. “Family or not,

they don’t get a free pass.”

the word kin is a key.”

them the rules.”

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