PENNY POV
The hatch did not open like a door.
This thing breathed.
When they’d said it was biometric, I expected something techy. Something sleek. Something Perse would have hacked in thirty seconds while insulting the security protocol under her breath.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The metal circle embedded into the ridge shuddered beneath Marcellus’s hand, and the lake beside us trembled as if something enormous had shifted under the water and disturbed the bones of the earth. The three runes burned around the rim pulsed once, black light spilling through the cracks like oil catching fire, and then the hatch exhaled.
Cold air rolled out first.
The kind of cold that had never seen sunlight and had grown resentful about it. It slid over my skin, under my jacket, beneath the coll
