Vessaria did not answer right away. The last note of the ceremony still trembled somewhere in her bones, but it was not fear that lingered — it was knowing. Her breath left her in a slow, measured rhythm as her gaze remained on him, studying the subtle shift of his body as he stepped from the circle and the shadows reclaimed him like old lovers.

She did not move, though the space between them lengthened. The word wife still echoed faintly in the air, laced with something too old to be jest, and too heavy to be ignored. Was that humor in his voice?

“I would rather not begin our union by watching you march into the depths of a place even your gods refuse to name,” she said at last, her tone quiet but pointed, carrying none of the courtly sweetness of reassurance. “But if you are going, then you’re not going alone.”

At that, she descended from the altar’s edge, silk skirts whispering like wind over deep water, her steps steady. The silver chain at her throat glinted once — the crescent moon charm now warmer than before, as though echoing her resolve.

“You said dreams and visions wouldn’t suffice,” she continued, pausing before him. “Then take something real. Take me.”

The words were not offered as plea, nor defiance, but as truth — plain and shaped from something immovable. Like her spine. Like her will. Like the vow that had just been sealed in blood and stars, whether the heavens were ready or not. “I’ve already survived one ceremony that should’ve broken me,” she added, voice lower now. “Let’s see what your Hallow does.” Vessaria stood before him now, framed in the residual glow of the ceremony, but utterly unbowed. Her chin tilted slightly upward, not in arrogance, but in assertion — the quiet kind that did not need thunder to be heard. Her gaze, clear and glacial, didn’t flinch from his.

“If the castle listens to me now,” she said, softer, almost musing, “then it should listen when I say I will not be left behind.”

Her fingers brushed along the edge of her sleeve, a small gesture to steady the weight coiling beneath her ribs — not fear, but something older. Some instinct rising like embers stirred by wind. She had no illusions about the place he named. The Hallow. Even the word tasted like ruin.

But she was tired of being told where she could not go.

“I was not chosen just to stand behind you,” she went on, voice tightening. “You said it yourself — Umbrythar is already shifting. That means it’s begun. The tether has formed.” She exhaled. “You might not like it. I might not even like it. But you and I… we are no longer just two separate things.”

The pause that followed was heavy, laced with memory and omen. “So if you intend to descend into the dark… then I do too.” Reaching out she grabbed his hand briefly, before letting go and turning around- "But first- I must change. I doubt this dress will do much good there." She hummed, trying to brace herself for the trials they were surely to endure there. She took another step toward him, closer, though she did not touch him. “Whatever is waiting in the Hallow, it’s not just waiting for you. I can feel that, too.” Her voice had lowered again, thoughtful now. “Something shifted in the sky when we spoke our vows. It wasn’t just spectacle. It wasn’t for show.” She shook her head, curls brushing her shoulders. “That was a warning. Or maybe a promise.” She hesitated, not because she doubted the next words, but because they felt too large to release all at once. “I’ve been alone long enough.” There it was. A quiet confession wrapped in steel. “Maybe I can’t wield the things you do,” she admitted, eyes flicking briefly to the shadows still coiled around him like loyal hounds, “but I wasn’t brought here for nothing." Vessaria’s voice gentled then, but the fire beneath it did not dim. “You asked what I wished to do, husband,” she murmured, the word not mockery, but a tether. “I wish to walk where you walk. To see what you see. To learn what it is you fear, and to meet it with my own eyes. Not just as your bride — but as your equal.”

The silence that followed was not empty. The chamber itself seemed to hold its breath — as if Umbrythar, ancient and watchful, was weighing her words the same way its king was. Then, with a strange sort of finality, Vessaria added, “If the Hallow devours us, then it does. But I will not be left behind. Not when the end begins.” And with that final claim she walked away; back to her chambers to prepare herself for what surely was and could be her very last day here; Alive.

"Well, I'll let you dress privately." Ciaran did not follow her right away, though he figured he ought to change into something else as well. He remained rooted where he stood, staring after her with a stillness of indecision. It was not as simple as refusing her. Even before the vow, he had known there was something in her that would not yield to locks or walls or well-meant protections. She did not ask to be spared, nor did not beg for safety. Perhaps the cruelest bit of all was that she meant every word.

She would follow him to the Hallow, not out of recklessness, but resolve. And if he barred her path, she would find another. She would knock once, politely, and then burn the door down. His hand flexed at his side, tension coiling tight in his jaw.

He could lie to her. Say yes. Let her think he agreed. Then, when she turned away to change, seal her chambers with the old magic -- bind the stone, anchor the doors, speak the palace's original tongue into the heart of the walls and make them listen. She would likely rage, but he could survive her anger. He had endured worse.

There was a glaring flaw, however -- an unknown variable -- the castle would listen to her now, too.

Umbrythar, ancient and half-sentient, had always known its master. But after the rite -- after her words, after the stars responded -- it was no longer only his voice it heeded. She had changed something, or perhaps awakened something, and he could no longer predict how this place would respond. Would it obey him or her if their commands opposed? Would it lock her in, or open the walls like a mouth to let her pass?

He didn’t know. That uncertainty alone made his chest tighten, though he showed none of it on the surface. He moved slowly now, his steps measured as he turned from the edge of the circle and crossed to the window slit that stared down into the cliffs beyond. Far below, the forest trembled. Shadows moved there, not alive, but not entirely dead either. The Hallow breathed beneath the roots, its entrance marked by a faint veil over a garden sepulcher. He could almost hear it.

And, frankly, he feared it. For the first time in centuries, he had someone else's wellbeing to worry about. The princess had barely survived its touch through a vision. She had not crossed its threshold, had not stepped into the mouth of the wound carved into the world -- but still, it had reached for her. The unwelcome image of the blood from her nose, her skin gone pale and slick with cold sweat, and a curled-in body sprang to the forefront of his mind. For the thousandth time that week, he found himself thinking again on how she shouldn’t have survived that.

Now, she was asking -- no, declaring -- that she would go to it again. In person. Awake. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and felt the weight of the decision pressing at his ribs. There had been a time when he walked alone by necessity. There had been no one to worry about. No one to lose. He’d wandered the broken edge of the sky without tether or consequence. And now… Well, there were consequences, and the primary one had a voice. And a name. And eyes that looked at him not with fear, but expectation.

He could not tell her no. Not because he lacked the will -- but she would not accept 'no' as an answer. And worse, because part of him didn’t want to stop her. Gods curse him, some part of him wanted her there. It had always been a more bearable trip with the knowledge that he wasn't totally alone, but such thoughts were selfish and pathetic. Useless, in fact.

Besides, there was always the chance of the Hallow reaching for her again. It could unravel something inside her he didn’t know how to mend. He still didn’t know what that first touch had done to her, what lingering mark it might’ve left, subtle or otherwise. If it had cracked something in her soul, awakened something, or planted a seed that only now, with their vow, had begun to bloom, he was none the wiser to it.

Ciaran exhaled through his nose, the sound barely audible, and turned away from the window at last. He would not lie to her. When she returned -- and after he had dressed in something more suited for the path ahead -- he would tell her the truth. Ciaran would try reason first, and if negotiations failed, he would test the loyalty of his castle.

First, he would tell her what he feared, of what a second trip might do to her so soon after the first one, which had been comparably quite tame. And if she still insisted, then so be it. He would find a way to keep her standing beside him, even if that meant locking her away for a few hours. Nodding slightly, he disappeared into the shadows, and emerged in his own chambers. The man slid out of the thick ensemble and reached for the light armor that awaited him in the wardrobe.

"Time to dress for the weather," he muttered.

Vessaria stood before the long silvered mirror in the corner of her chambers, still stripped of her ceremonial gown. The white silk lay folded across a low divan like a fallen ghost, faint stardust still lingering in the fine weave from the rite. She did not look at it now. Instead, her eyes were focused on her own reflection — bare shoulders kissed by the pale light slanting in through the high arched window, the shape of her collarbones etched like fragile wings above her heart.

The pendant at her throat gleamed softly, shifting each time she moved — not with light, but with something deeper. A hum. A resonance. She felt it even now, faint but constant, as though the vow had left a thread inside her and pulled taut. Her fingers brushed against it briefly, and then she dropped her hand and stepped back.

There was no fear in her gaze. Not anymore.

The fear had burned off during the rite. Had burned off in the dreams before it, the visions that had left her half-drowned in her own bed, reaching for a sky that wasn’t there. The Hallow had already marked her once — she knew this — had pressed its breath against her soul and found her still breathing. It would not be the last time.

She moved across the chamber with precise purpose now, brushing aside the light linen dressing robe that clung to her form and reaching for the garments prepared by the handmaidens — or perhaps by the castle itself, for she had not asked for them. Laid out neatly across a bench were pieces that did not belong to any tradition she knew, but which felt strangely… correct. The tunic was a deep, smoky gray, woven from some weightless material that clung warm against her skin. Over that came the mantle — long and layered, the outer folds of it clasped with a crescent pin that shimmered with something other than metal.

The boots were made of something too soft to be leather, yet clearly durable, lined inside with dense fur from a creature she did not recognize. Her fingers paused there — at the top buckle — and she found herself whispering beneath her breath. Not a prayer, but a tethering. A promise to her own reflection.

You are not afraid.

The castle said nothing, but she felt something settle behind the walls. A murmur. An approval.

Once dressed, she stepped into the center of the chamber and fastened her hair back from her face. It had fallen in long waves since the rite — heavy curls freed from the intricate ceremonial crown, now threaded with small wisps of starlight that hadn’t quite faded. She did not braid them. She left the strands loose, like a banner, like something that should be seen.

As she reached for her gloves — thin, rune-stitched, fingerless — her thoughts moved again to Ciaran.

Would he try to stop her?

Probably. But not out of cruelty. No, she understood him more than he realized. He didn’t hide his fears as well as he believed. When he had stared at her during the rite — after the priests had vanished and the stars had screamed their ancient agreement — she had seen it in him. Not confusion. Not awe. But calculation. And beneath that, concern. Real and terrible.

l It hadn’t unnerved her. It had made her curious. She had not been raised to cower. She had not endured the loss of her mother, the silence of her father, the isolation of court and country, only to be treated like a figurehead wrapped in prophecy. There was a reason the Hallow had reached for her first. It had not chosen wrong.

And neither had he.

She moved to the door then, not rushing, but not hesitating either. The weight of her new garments was strange, but not unwelcome. She felt clothed in something older than silk, older than armor. Like a shadow made tangible, wrapped around bone and will. She didn’t know where he would be waiting — perhaps still in the ceremonial hall, perhaps already readying the path below — but she didn’t slow her stride as the door opened for her on its own.

The castle had already answered. It let her through with no resistance.

The corridors were colder now, though she suspected it was not simply temperature but presence. Umbrythar was watching again. Not in the way a place watches a guest, but the way a body reacts to a change in its blood. She was part of it now, and it was adjusting.

As she passed a tall mirror near the end of the corridor, Vessaria caught her reflection again — tall, cloaked in charcoal gray, the gleam of her pendant at the center of her throat like a third eye. The castle flickered in the mirror behind her, as if unsure what it was seeing. “I’m going with him,” she said aloud, voice calm but resolute. The stones did not tremble. The lights in the sconces did not flicker. But a distant door unlatched, far below.

She made her way down through the eastern stair, not taking the direct path to the throne corridor but instead the older one — a curve that wrapped around a descending tower edge and opened out into the side cloister garden overlooking the cliffs. There, she paused again, the wind catching at her cloak as she turned toward the western edge. Far below, the veil shimmered — faint, almost invisible — but she saw it. The same sepulcher she had seen in dreams, its gate blackened and blooming with dark ivy. The Hallow.

She felt the pull. And she did not look away.

Behind her, a shadow stirred — not threatening, not foreign — and she knew, without needing to turn, that he had found her again. She said nothing at first, only lifted her chin slightly toward the wind. “I’ve dressed,” she said, her voice neither smug nor defiant. “And the castle didn’t stop me.” A pause. “You shouldn’t either.”She turned then, fully, to face him. Her expression was unreadable — not challenging, but ready. Steady. Expectant.

“I know what I’m asking,” she added, quieter now. “And I know what it might cost. But I would rather walk into the dark with you than wait behind wondering if you’ll come back changed — or worse, not at all.”

A breath.

“I don’t want your protection, Ciaran,” she finished. “I want your trust.”

Ciaran had seen too much silver blood on white stone to forget what the Hallow's silence could mean. Even now, as he moved through the garden’s twilight hush, the scent of blooming night-thorn carried ghosts with it -- sharp iron tangs from a different battlefield, where the darkness had watched impassively as its defenders bled out. He could still feel the weight of a dying god's fingers clenched in his own, the rasping whisper of a plea to seal the gates. Apparently, he hadn't done as good a job as he had intended.

Memories curled at the edges of his awareness like taunts, unbidden and unwelcome, and he shoved them back down, past the quiet hum of old oaths and older regrets. The dark leather armor shifted with him as he walked, nearly silent, save for the slight crunch of gravel beneath his boots as he reached the sepulcher entrance.

She was already there. Vessaria stood framed by the wind and the ivy-laced mouth of the Hallow's first gate, her cloak snapping once in a sudden gust. The sky behind her held the color of darkened wine, and though the stars had not yet risen, the garden lights cast a silver sheen along the stone. The pendant at her throat pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat of its own. Perhaps it did, now that he thought about it.

He exhaled through his nose, quietly, a sharp breath of frustration that didn’t quite become a sigh. He had hoped -- in vain, it seemed -- that the castle might keep her within its walls a little longer. She was no longer just a guest here and certainly not a mortal held by his command. The ancient agreements had shifted, and she walked through the keep now with the same weight he did, the same terrible permission. Of course.

She turned at the sound of his approach, her words already waiting for him. He said nothing as she spoke, simply standing a few paces back, his hands clasped behind his back, expression unreadable. The pale strands of his hair moved slightly in the breeze, silver glinting where the garden lanterns touched it.

She finished, quiet but firm, and her eyes didn’t flinch from his. She wanted trust, not protection, she said. He studied her in silence, the moments stretching long. His calculating gaze moved over her, unblinking, reading the set of her shoulders, the steadiness in her jaw. She was not bluffing or pleading. She was telling him what was and what would be, unless he made her stop. Ciaran tilted his head slightly to the side, eyes narrowing a fraction as the wind played again with his hair.

“It will take me more than a week of knowing you to trust you,” he said finally. “I require your patience on that matter, I'm afraid.”

He paused again, all the words forbidding her to accompany him dying on his tongue. His tone did not warm, but it did not harden either when he added, “But you may come.”

His gaze dropped for a beat to the gate behind her, then returned. “On one condition.”

He took a step forward, body and voice now suggesting control rather than invitation or relenting. “If I tell you to leave, you leave.” A flicker of steel passed behind his words. “Without question. Without hesitation.”

Despite his mild exasperation, there was no anger in his voice, but there was gravity. He did not want to frighten her, but he could already feel the Hallow stirring beyond the sepulcher gate -- pulling at the edges of his will, testing the seams of his being as it did every time. There were things down there that even he did not understand fully. Things that remembered him in ways he did not always wish to be remembered.

He would not argue with her about bravery. He would not call her foolish. But the moment she slowed him down -- hesitated, tried to save him, or worse, questioned his judgment -- could very well be the moment that got her killed, possessed, or otherwise destroyed.

His eyes lingered on her one moment longer, taking in the starlight that hadn’t quite left her hair. Then he turned, walking past her toward the blackened mouth of the sepulcher. The dark ivy trembled as he neared it, shifting as if to make way for the both of them. Ciaran did not look back.

“I’ll not carry you out,” he said, quiet and final. "This is the first gate. The second is at a river; don't touch the water. The third is the gate to the Hallow itself."

Vessaria did not flinch when he stepped forward.

She did not lower her gaze, did not shift her weight, did not speak. She watched him—his expression, the subtle tension in his shoulders, the wind-touched strands of silver that whispered across his brow. Her chest rose with a slow breath, though she made no attempt to speak over him or interject. The pause he left was deliberate. The steel in his voice, too. But she did not shrink from it.

Instead, her eyes glinted—not with defiance, but with something far quieter. A vow, perhaps. An understanding accepted in silence.

“I understand,” she said softly when he finished, her voice low as the ivy rustled in response to his nearness. “If you tell me to leave, I will.”

There was no sarcasm in her tone, no needling edge. It wasn’t submission, either—it was agreement. Not because he demanded it, but because she chose it. And that was the difference with her, always. She obeyed no one blindly. She offered her will like a blade laid across open palms: not surrendered, but shared.

She turned after him as he passed, her hand briefly brushing the edge of her cloak as she followed him toward the sepulcher gate. Her steps were soundless. Not out of caution, but from habit. The stones beneath her were slick with moisture, their black surfaces veined with a strange silvery sheen—like the bones of something long buried beneath the ground now grown cold.

The ivy parted for her as it had for him, trembling in anticipation, or perhaps recognition.

She felt it too—that pull.

It was faint at first, like a thread tugging at the back of her mind, but already the air changed the closer she stepped toward the opening. The scent was different here: older, darker. Something like petrichor and blood and forgotten prayers. It crept into her lungs, thickened in her chest. But she did not slow.

The moment her foot crossed the shadow of the archway, the temperature dropped sharply. It was not merely cold—it was hollow, as if something inside the stone had been stripped away. Vessaria let her fingers brush the edge of the wall as she passed, and a shiver flickered up her spine.

Inside, the sepulcher opened downward—wide stone steps descending into blackness, though a strange, silver-dusk light glimmered faintly along the walls, guiding the path ahead. Not torches. Not even mage-light. She didn’t know what made it, but it pulsed slowly, in time with some rhythm deeper than breath or blood.

Ciaran walked ahead of her. She could see only his silhouette now, framed by the unnatural light. Regal, still. And yet she could tell already: whatever waited for them beyond this first threshold was something even he approached with caution.

She reached the bottom step.

The air shifted again, and Vessaria inhaled without meaning to. Something stirred beyond the corridor—too far to see, but not too far to feel. She paused, eyes narrowing slightly, the muscles in her jaw tightening. Her breath steamed slightly in front of her, though no frost lined the walls.

Something unseen had noticed them.

She glanced to Ciaran then. “Tell me what I need to know,” she said quietly. “What to watch for. What not to speak to. What not to believe.”

There was no tremor in her voice. No false courage either. Just steadiness. Preparation.

Because she knew. Already she knew this was no temple and no tomb. It was something far more dangerous than that.

When no answer came immediately, she did not press. Instead, she began to walk again, keeping a careful pace behind him. She did not touch the wall again. She did not whisper, did not hum to herself the way she sometimes did in eerie places to keep her balance. No. This was not a place that welcomed song. This was a place that listened.

As they passed the first bend in the corridor, she saw shapes begin to emerge. Carvings. No, not carvings—impressions, like something had pressed through the very fabric of stone itself. Like fossils, but alive. Memory rendered into architecture. She saw outlines of faces—some stretched in silence, others weeping. A few looked far too like her.

She did not stop. But her fingers twitched at her side.

The corridor widened, then opened into a cavernous chamber. Pillars jutted from the floor like ribs, crooked and spiraled. A black river cut through the middle of the space—wide, utterly still, and shining like a mirror of obsidian ink. She recognized it immediately.

The second gate is at a river; don’t touch the water.

Vessaria stepped to the edge of the stone path and gazed down at the dark surface. She saw her reflection there—but it did not move in time with her breath. It stared back, starlight in its hair, eyes hollowed. It smiled.

She stepped back immediately.

Her voice came quiet. “It’s watching.”

Not the river. Not the shadow. The place. This whole place knew her now.

The path continued across a narrow bridge, no wider than two feet across. On either side, the black water rippled faintly—though there was no breeze here, no tremor of earth.

Vessaria walked it without pause, her arms at her sides. She kept her gaze forward, not down. But as she reached the center of the bridge, something pulled at her again.

A voice. No. A memory.

Her mother’s laugh, soft and sudden, impossible.

Her step nearly faltered.

Ciaran’s warning roared back in her thoughts: Don’t touch the water.

She grit her teeth, exhaled a tight breath, and walked faster.

On the other side of the bridge, the stone darkened further. The silver light was fading. Something ahead of them loomed.

The third gate.

The air was different here—heavier, thicker, and yet faintly humming, as though the very veil of the world had thinned. Vessaria stopped beside him as they reached the threshold. Her eyes lifted to the gate.

It was not made of stone or wood. It was shadow. Wrought shadow. Like something had torn a hole through the world and held it open with bone and fire.

Vessaria stood still before it.

And slowly, her hand went to her necklace—just lightly, the pad of her finger brushing over the surface of the stone. A memory again, but her own this time. A tether. She let it pass through her like breath.

Then she looked at him, her voice soft. “You said not to slow you down,” she said. “I won’t.”

And she meant it.

Not because she had no fear, but because she did—and would not let it rule her. Not here. Not before the Hallow.

Her chin lifted slightly.

The descent swallowed sound, and yet the silence pressed thicker with every step she took behind him. Vessaria kept her hands steady at her sides, fingers brushing against the rough weave of her cloak as if its texture could tether her to herself. The stair curled downward endlessly, carrying them into a place where distance itself felt unmoored. She could feel Ciaran ahead of her without needing to lift her gaze to his back—his presence was like a constant gravity, a weight that drew every nerve taut.

Her voice had broken the silence once, though part of her wished she had kept it swallowed. Tell me what I need to know. What to watch for. What not to believe. His reply had not soothed—it had sharpened the shadows instead. And yet, even his warning grounded her, gave the descent a shape beyond the endless coil of steps.

She did not trust the walls. She did not trust the faces that bulged outward from the stone, their features caught between agony and prayer. They leaned toward her with mouths that seemed frozen mid-scream, yet she swore she heard them sigh when her shoulders brushed close to them. She angled her body away, refusing to look too long into the hollow eyes that followed.

When the stair opened into the cavern, she drew her first sharp breath in minutes. The river was not water. Not truly. Its black surface gleamed as though it were glass, yet it shifted like something alive, tugging at her vision until she found herself leaning unconsciously closer. She caught movement within—reflections. A curl of pale hair that wasn’t hers, lips mouthing words she could not hear. Her own likeness stared up at her from the depths, but the eyes were wrong. Too hollow, too knowing. She felt it—an invitation. A lure. She could step forward, lean down, and touch that smooth, glasslike surface, and perhaps she would see what she most wanted. Or what she most feared.

Her pulse leapt at the thought, but Ciaran’s presence ahead cut through the pull. He did not look at her, but she knew he had seen her hesitation. His silence was a sharper warning than any word. Vessaria forced herself upright again, a faint tremor in her breath as she followed him.

Then came the figure.

It was not hers. Not her memory. She knew it from the way his jaw clenched, the faint change in the weight of his stride. A woman, waiting at the curve of the river. Dark hair falling around a soft face, eyes locked upon Ciaran like they had always belonged to him. She stood with the stillness of memory, a fragile thing, and yet her presence pressed heavy, like grief given form.

Vessaria looked at her once, only once. Enough to see how Ciaran’s gaze narrowed—not with longing, but with something harsher. Disgust. He moved past the figure as if it were smoke, and the apparition’s eyes slid to Vessaria instead. For the briefest moment, she felt the strange weight of being measured against a ghost.

She did not falter. She did not give the figure more than that glance. Whatever this woman had been—whoever she had been—it was not her. She would not waste her steps on another’s shadow.

The bridge that followed was a knife’s edge suspended above the black river. Narrow, slick with mist, it allowed no room for hesitation. Vessaria set her foot upon it and kept her gaze forward, on the unwavering line of Ciaran’s shoulders ahead of her. Yet the river beneath did not let her be. Faces swirled in the depths, voices curling like whispers pressed against her ears.

Daughter…

She stumbled, only once, at the sound. Her mother’s voice. She had never heard it, never known it—her mother had died before she ever drew her first breath—but the voice below was exactly as she had always imagined it. Gentle. Soft. A lullaby threaded through syllables.

Her fingers twitched at her sides. One slip of the hand. One look down.

“No,” she whispered aloud, the word steady enough to slice through the pull. She fixed her gaze forward and forced her feet one after another, step after step, until her boots met stone again.

On the far side, the gate loomed. A thing stitched from shadow and bone, alive with black fire and the hiss of curses that rasped against her skin. It repelled her, yet it beckoned. Her stomach turned as Ciaran lifted his hand to it, his palm pressed flat. Silver light bled from him, threads winding into the knots of shadow. She felt the power hum through the cavern, vibrating against her bones, as though the very air quivered with unease at his command.

She did not speak while he unraveled the locks. She watched instead, her lips parting slightly as each shuddering snap echoed like bone breaking. There was no struggle in him. Only inevitability, as though the gate had never been built to withstand him.

When he spoke—“Beyond here is what you saw in your vision…”—the words struck something colder in her chest.

What I saw.

The dream had burned itself into her, a vision she had not fully understood. She remembered fire without flame, faces that melted and reformed, voices that belonged to gods who should have been long buried. Five. He had said five. Her breath quickened, though she kept her face calm. She had not told him all of what she had seen—some secrets were not meant to be handed over, not even to the Night King himself.

The stench that spilled out when the final lock broke clawed at her throat. Old rot, ancient and festering, the breath of something that had slept too long. She swallowed against it, the taste bitter on her tongue, and lifted her chin.

She felt the weight of his calm as he stepped forward, unflinching, into the void. That was what unsettled her most—not the faces, not the whispers, not even the gate’s unraveling—but his calm. As though he had walked into death before and found it a familiar road.

Vessaria did not follow immediately. She lingered one heartbeat longer at the threshold, staring into that yawning dark.

She thought of his warning. Do not trust what you see. Do not touch them.

She thought of her own question. What not to believe. And she wondered, not for the first time, if even he counted among the things she should be wary of believing.

But her path was bound to his. The vow was forged, the descent already begun. And so she stepped forward, the shadows swallowing her whole.

The shadows did not part when she stepped into them. They closed around her like oil poured too thick, swallowing sound, swallowing light. Vessaria’s breath caught in her chest, her body’s first instinct to recoil, but she forced herself forward, one foot after the other, her cloak trailing in silence behind. The air was heavier here, thick with a dampness that did not taste of water so much as of decay—rot long sealed away, pressed into the marrow of this place.

It was not absence. It was suffocation.

At her side, she felt him—Ciaran, steady as stone, his stride unfaltering. He carried the darkness with him as though it recognized him. Perhaps it did. The gate had unstitched for his touch, after all. She could feel threads of his power still vibrating faintly in the air, woven into the shadow, warning it back.

Her eyes adjusted, though it was not sight in the mortal sense. The gloom here breathed with its own dim glow, an echo of the silver-dusk sheen from the stairway, but twisted now. It was as if some unseen heart pulsed beneath the stone, throbbing light in slow, uneven beats.

Shapes began to emerge.

Columns rose, bent and gnarled, like ribs of a beast that had died and fossilized into the cavern floor. They arched overhead, dripping with something that looked like pitch and smelled faintly metallic. Between them, alcoves opened—five recesses carved into the stone, each one vast enough to house a titan. Chains hung there, black iron thicker than her arm, their links threaded through the shadows themselves as if the darkness had been forged to hold. The gods.

They were not statues. They were not illusions. She could feel the weight of them before her gaze fully dared to rest on their forms. Each one distinct, each one terrible.

The first was shaped like a man but wrong in every proportion, his limbs stretched too long, his head bowed as if the chain pressed him down. His skin rippled like molten wax that never cooled, faces surfacing and sinking with each breath. When he exhaled, the cavern filled with the scent of honey soured by rot. Vessaria tightened her throat against the urge to gag.

The second was no body at all, but a lattice of bone that shifted, rearranging itself into cages, into thrones, into crosses that snapped apart again. Within the hollow shapes flickered eyes, too many eyes, all of them blinking without lids.

The third… she hesitated even to look. It was a woman’s silhouette, curled as though in sleep, her body shrouded in threads of darkness that clung like veils. But her lips moved faintly, whispering words too soft to hear. Vessaria’s ears strained anyway, against her own will. The whisper was familiar—not her mother’s voice this time, but her father’s. Clearer than it had ever been in her memories. She turned her face sharply away before she could hear what it said.

The fourth crouched low, nothing more than a heap of ash bound by chain. Yet the ash pulsed, lifting faintly as if lungs moved within, as if it dreamed of fire. And she swore it turned toward her when she looked too long, the unseen weight of its attention prickling along her skin.

And the fifth—

She froze. It was a mirror.

Or rather, it bore her likeness, bound by chains at wrists and throat. Her own face tilted toward her, eyes wide, lips curved into something too close to a smile. The chains glimmered as if slick with oil, sliding along the reflection’s skin like living things. The not-her lifted her head, and though no voice sounded in the cavern, Vessaria felt the words crawl directly into her mind.

You are already mine.

Her breath hitched. She forced her gaze down, to the stone beneath her feet, her nails biting into her palms where her fists had closed.

Ciaran had seen wars end in silence more often than in screams. The silence came later, after the battlefield had burned itself out, when the only sound was the wind combing through ash. It was that silence he carried with him now. It returned to him in moments like this, when the air was thick with rot and ancient malice, and he remembered what it was to walk among the wreckage of kin who could never rise again.

The cavern was not the field of his memories, but the scent was the same -- a rank mixture of char and decay, blood baked into stone, life soured into something too old to name. Shadows clung to the pillars and chains like carrion birds on branches, waiting. Always waiting. The air pressed low, suffocating, as though it longed to drown all who entered.

Wyddah’s presence was a thorn from the first glance, a wound the body remembered before it could see. Ciaran’s eyes narrowed, glowering at the trickster god’s form, at the stolen semblance meant to unsettle. Of course the creature would take Vessaria's form; he had always had a flair for the over-dramatic. His icy gaze cut from Wyddah to the husk of Latayel, the ashy goddess who had once burned bright in skin of orange flame, hair of fire, nails like talons of molten gold. Now she hung gray, leeched of color, her essence starved to embers. Chains swallowed her wrists, her throat, her ribs, rattling faintly with each shallow breath she managed. That, at least, was a minor comfort.

The many-limbed shape crouched beyond her marked the form of Zel’lathal, an obscene being of jointed limbs folded and unfolded upon themselves in endless motion. Each shift scraped iron against stone, as though the body could not decide on one form. Beside that writhing monstrosity lay Zel’aran, a woman sealed in perpetual sleep, shadows cocooning her figure so that only the faint outline of her body could be seen, the rise and fall of her chest a ghost of breath. And scattered bones fused into grotesque shapes made the last of the triad, Zel’idar -- ribs curving into cages, vertebrae curling into circles, skulls strung along chains like beads on a string, all shifting without pattern, reforming endlessly.

He studied them without awe, only contempt. This was not majesty. This was not divinity. It was hunger given form, ambition without end. And in the presence of hunger, one did not bow; rather, one sharpened the knife.

Ciaran’s hand rested lightly, deliberately, on Vessaria’s shoulder. It was a warning, silent and firm, telling her not to look too long at the shape Wyddah had chosen, not to give him what he wanted. Wyddah fed on attention, on belief, on the cracks of fear it stirred in the mind. He could not hear what words the trickster slithered into her ear, but he suspected well enough. Every silence carried its poison. He did not allow the suspicion to touch his face. He bent instead to the task of the chains, his gaze tracing every lock, every weld, every place rust had gnawed through the iron. Wyddah’s chains were wrong. The others gleamed black, oiled with shadow itself, but his had pitted at the edges, rust creeping like veins of rot.

It was when the trickster changed that the irritation deepened. The white-haired thing he had once glimpsed in his window after Vessaria's first visit to the garden -- the hollow-faced intruder carved of marble flesh, skin pale as grave-bone, eyes silver and bloodless -- smirked back at him, gloating. Wyddah had taken that form, recalling the first intrusion, taunting him with the trespass.

The taunts began as they always did, dripping venom sweet as wine. Did Ciaran miss him? Did he dream of the nights he had been deceived, hunted, betrayed? Wyddah’s voice carried the names of the fallen as though they were trophies, a litany of Ciaran’s kin slain beneath his clever hand. Names that once stirred fire, names that once bore laughter and song, bent now into the trickster’s tally of spoils. His siblings, who had held the line until their hearts burst; his cousins, caught in the fatal traps of the elder gods; his brothers-in-arms, bled beneath illusions too sharp to counter. They had all given their very essences to Ciaran, lending him strength enough to send their power into the night sky as the keys to thus wretched place. Every name was a blade Wyddah sought to twist. And though Ciaran ignored him, the blade scraped bone. He let none of it reach his voice, none of it crease his mask, but his stillness was brittle, his patience worn thin.

The Night King locked every flaw in the bonds into his mind while the trickster circled him with words, remaining relatively unperturbed until Wyddah leaned as close as the chains allowed, and whispered, “My masters have been eyeing that new wife of yours. I must say, this one tastes better than the others... This is the best fodder you've brought them yet!”

The world sharpened. The shadows recoiled like animals from the sudden lash of his temper. Ciaran snapped, shadows surging down his arm like black fire. He seized Wyddah’s throat just above the chain, fingers digging into that carved, pale flesh, and shoved with brutal force. The god’s form slammed against the wall of its hollowed cell, the air cracking with the impact. Shadows hissed and writhed around his hand, eager, alive, coiling like serpents as if they meant to burrow under the trickster’s skin.

“Keep your filthy mouth shut, cur,” he snarled. The word broke the silence like iron striking flint. Shadows obeyed his fury, wrapping themselves around Wyddah’s mouth, binding tight until the mockery cut off into silence. For the first time, a flicker passed over the god’s face -- not fear alone, but the peculiar, hollow delight of something that enjoyed even its own suffering. Amused fear. The gleam of it lit in those silver eyes before Ciaran loosed his grip.

He turned without another word, his cloak sweeping the stone, his stride stiff with the remnants of rage. The trickster’s voice, mercifully smothered, echoed no more. Ciaran moved toward the great gate that loomed at the cavern’s end. The air shifted as he neared it, the oppressive weight settling deeper on the shoulders, the shadows thicker, less yielding. He halted before it, his eyes narrowing.

Its vast surface rippled faintly, curses hissing in endless repetition, whispers rasping against the skin like blades of grass sharper than steel. He could feel the breath of it brushing against his palm before he had even lifted his hand. For the briefest moment, hesitation stilled him. His hand hovered half a span from the gate. He could open it. He knew it would yield. He also knew the weight of what pressed behind it.

The constellations etched into its surface glimmered faintly. Chains of stars, woven into sigils that had once been his to command, seemed to stare at him expectantly. He had stitched them himself, when war demanded sacrifice, when sealing them had been the only path left. The sight of them now burned like memory and like betrayal both.

He pressed his hand flat.

Silver light bled from his palm in thin threads, weaving into the knots of shadow, unraveling the curse-script with the inevitability of tide against sand. Power thrummed through the cavern, vibrating the marrow of stone, the very air trembling with unease at his command.

One by one, locks snapped open. Each break echoed sharp as bone cracking, the sound rolling through the cavern until it seemed the place itself flinched. The stench that spilled from the gate was far worse than that of the upper chamber, causing even Ciaran to feel nauseated. It clawed down the throat like acrid smoke, bitter and festering, the breath of something that had slept too long and too deep.

He stepped forward, calm as stone and unflinching, as though the void beyond were no more threatening than the fields of ash he had once walked. His stride carried no hesitation, only inevitability.

The shadows received him. They clung and they pressed, but they parted for him, for he was of them -- and now, so was Vessaria. The gate unstitched fully, and darkness swallowed them both.

The shadows closed like a throat swallowing them whole.

Vessaria felt the air leave her lungs in a rush, as if the darkness itself had reached inside and taken it. Her hands curled into fists against her skirts, against the trembling of her own body. Yet she did not flinch back, not even when the gate shrieked shut behind them and sealed away the faint memory of air. Ciaran moved before her like a pillar of storm, steady, inevitable, his stride unbroken. He had not looked at her once—not since Wyddah’s venom had curled into the air and named her fodder.

That silence pressed heavier than any chain.

She had heard every word. The trickster had not whispered to her directly, but she had felt it, the way his eyes—the hollow silver of that stolen face—had lingered upon her, like a predator deciding where to sink its teeth. And though Ciaran had crushed the god’s throat with fury, though shadows themselves had obeyed his temper, Vessaria knew the strike had not been enough to erase the truth: they had seen her. The others. The ones behind the gate.

Her steps carried her after him regardless, though each felt like walking deeper into a grave.

The cavern beyond was no cavern at all but a wound torn into the world. Black stone melted into blacker mist, shapes half-formed shifting where her eyes could not decide on lines or edges. There were pillars—she thought them pillars—but they leaned in strange angles, spiraling, twisting as though caught between collapse and rebirth. Strange constellations burned faint in the mist, pinpricks of red and blue that should have been stars but instead seemed like eyes, open and unblinking, fixed upon her every movement.

She hated the weight of their gaze.

Her fingers drifted briefly to the place where Ciaran’s hand had pressed against her shoulder. The warmth of it lingered, even here, in this abyss that devoured warmth as though it were an enemy. That touch had been a warning—but also a tether. Do not look too long, it had told her. Do not feed them. Do not stray.

And yet, even as she followed, she knew the truth: she was already too deep in their notice.

The stench here was unbearable, far worse than the upper chamber. It clung inside her nose and throat like oil, slick and choking. Every breath was bitter rot. She pressed her lips together tightly, willing herself not to gag, not to give any sign of weakness. Not here. Not when Ciaran’s stride never faltered. Once, she had thought him untouchable, aloof in a way that belonged more to the gods than to men. But here, in this place where every shadow whispered and every bone groaned with the memory of slaughter, she realized how wrong she had been. Ciaran belonged here because he had already given himself to this darkness. He had stitched the constellations that bound these horrors. He had sacrificed until the sky itself bore witness. He had already surrendered what little light he might once have had.

Her heart clenched at that thought, a tight and aching twist she did not welcome.

Because if he had given himself to this darkness—what would be asked of her?

Her pace quickened, the echo of her footsteps swallowed immediately by the living dark. She did not want to fall behind. She did not want to test what waited in the gaps between his shadow and hers. Already she felt it pressing at the edges of her thoughts, a cold curiosity not her own. Something stirred in the void beside her ear, brushing like silk strands, whispering in no tongue she knew. She forced her eyes straight ahead. She remembered his warning. Do not look.

But the urge was there, raw and terrible.

It wanted her gaze.

She bit the inside of her cheek until iron filled her mouth. The sharpness grounded her, gave her something that was hers. The pain was real. The shadows could not steal that.

Her thoughts tried to scatter—back to Wyddah’s grin, back to Latayel’s gray husk, back to the names Ciaran had not flinched to hear. His kin. His brothers and sisters. The ones she had never known and never would. She had seen his stillness then, brittle and close to breaking, and she had realized—perhaps too late—that Ciaran’s silence was not the silence of peace. It was the silence of ash.

What ash would she leave behind, when her name was added to their tally?

She shook her head, hard, chasing the thought away before it could root itself. No. She would not be fodder. She would not be anyone’s ash. She had not come here only to be devoured by his gods, by his shadows, by his rage. She had her own path, her own power, though it trembled quiet beneath her ribs now, as though cowed by this abyss.

Her fingers itched with the need to summon it, to let the strange pulse of her blood answer this place and tell it she was not prey. But she dared not—not yet. Not when she did not know if the shadows around them would take her defiance as strength or as invitation.

She could feel Ciaran’s power stretching ahead of her like a cord through the dark. He was her only tether. Her only anchor. Without him, she would be lost to this place, torn apart before she could even scream.

And yet…

What tether did he have?

Her eyes fell to his back, to the straight line of his shoulders, to the sweep of his cloak that seemed to merge with the floor itself. He had not faltered. Not once. Not even when Wyddah had spat his family’s names like knives. But she had seen it—the tightening of his jaw, the stillness of stone that threatened to crack. He carried that silence still, the silence of war’s end, the silence of ash.

Her chest ached. She wanted to reach for him. To remind him he was not alone in this descent. But she held her hand still. Not now. Not when shadows watched. Not when even touch might be taken as weakness, as invitation, as proof of how easily she could be used against him.

The path narrowed. She realized it not by sight but by pressure, as though the dark itself closed its throat, forcing them closer together. Her sleeve brushed his. She felt the faintest spark of warmth, enough to steady her pulse for a heartbeat.

And then the whispers came louder.

Her name.

Her breath hitched.

She bit her tongue before it could shape words, before instinct could drive her to answer. The taste of blood filled her mouth again, hot and copper. But the whisper lingered, curling against her skull like smoke. Vessaria. Vessssaria. The sound of it made her teeth ache, as if the word itself were too sharp, too old. She turned her head a fraction—only a fraction—before remembering his hand on her shoulder, his warning. Do not look.

The urge burned like fire under her skin.

Instead, she forced her gaze back to him. Only him. His stride, his shoulders, his presence like iron cutting through the void. She clung to it as though it were the only star left in a sky gone black.

Her lips shaped silent words, not to the shadows but to herself: I will not break. I will not bow.

The words steadied her.

But still, the thought lingered, bitter as poison: For how long? The dark thickened the farther they went, until she could not tell if her eyes were open or closed. The cavern had no walls, no ceiling, only endless pressure. The air felt wetter now, damp with rot, as though each breath she drew was being filtered through a drowned corpse. Her lungs ached from the heaviness of it. Every step was work, as though the ground sucked at her shoes, trying to root her here, to claim her bones.

Ciaran moved as though he had walked this road a hundred times. His cloak swept with a certainty that made the void seem solid. But Vessaria’s own body felt lighter, unmoored. If she let herself think too long, she feared her feet might lose the ground entirely and she would float away into the starless abyss.

The whispers came again.

This time not just her name.

Daughter of hollow bone…

Blood of the nameless dreamer…

The Night King brings you home.

Her pulse stuttered, sharp in her throat. She shut her eyes tight, but the words pressed from the inside of her skull, not the out. They threaded through her veins like cold liquid, making her limbs tremble. She reached for her arms, digging her nails into her own skin, desperate to feel something that was hers.

But the whispers only grew.

He does not tell you. He cannot. He binds you to him because you are key. He fears what you will unlock.

Her lips parted, but no sound came. The urge to answer, to deny, to scream her refusal—anything—was a living thing. It gnawed at her until her tongue ached.

Her eyes darted forward. Ciaran’s back, straight and resolute, carried on without falter. He had not spoken since the gate had closed behind them. He had not turned to see her struggle.

Did he hear the whispers too?

Or were they hers alone?

The thought cut sharper than she expected. Because if the shadows spoke only to her, then it was not simply the Hallow gnawing on prey. It meant they knew her. They recognized her.

And in that recognition… something answered.

A small thread of warmth, hidden beneath her breastbone, pulsed once, faint as a candle against storm. Her power—whatever had been stirring in her since the garden—flickered awake. She felt it rise at the edges of her mind like a shiver of light trying to breach through the black.

The whispers noticed.

Yes… yes. You carry it still. The shard. The forgotten flame. Let it out. Let it sing.

Her knees weakened. The chamber tilted. She pressed a hand to her stomach, then higher to her ribs, as if she could cage that pulse with touch alone. She could not let it out—not here. Not in front of him.

Because what if Ciaran already knew?

What if the whispers were right, and he had not told her because he feared it?

Her mouth went dry. The silence between them now felt dangerous, not comforting. A gulf had opened, wide as the abyss, and she did not know which side she stood on.

Her breath hitched into something ragged. The ground beneath her foot dissolved for an instant, and her step faltered. She reached out instinctively, her fingers brushing against the back of his cloak before she could stop herself. The fabric was solid, grounding. That steadiness—his steadiness—kept her from unraveling. The whispers hissed louder, angry at the tether she chose.

He is a cage. We are the key.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste fresh iron. Her power flared again, agitated, like something that wanted to claw out of her skin in answer.

Her hand dropped from his cloak. She forced her steps to match his again.

But the whispers would not relent.

Do you wonder, little bride, why you dream of flame in a kingdom of shadow? Do you wonder why the night itself reaches for you? It is because you are not his. You were never his.

Her breath broke on a soft gasp.

Her hand trembled at her side. She did not dare speak—not here, not in this place where sound itself was prey—but her thoughts clawed against the inside of her skull, wild and frantic.

Not his?

If not his, then whose?

The question spilled like a crack down her resolve.

Ahead, a shape stirred in the mist. Larger than the pillars, larger than any building she had ever seen. The ground throbbed beneath her feet, as though something vast was breathing in the dark. The whispers hushed all at once, every voice cut clean. Silence fell, heavier than before, so complete she could hear the frantic beat of her own heart echo against her ribs. Vessaria knew only that the darkness felt thicker, older, alive.

The void held its breath.

And in that silence, she felt it—an answering pull deep in her marrow, a resonance she could not deny.

The warmth in her chest surged, once, twice, as if something beyond that vast shadow had recognized her in turn. She pressed her lips together until they whitened.

Her secret throbbed beneath her ribs like a second heartbeat. The whispers had seen it. Ciaran had not.

Not yet.

And as they stepped deeper into the chamber, Vessaria realized with chilling clarity: if she answered that pull—if she let her power rise—it would not be the gods’ chains that broke first. It would be the fragile tether between herself and him.

Entering daddy issues))

His calm was his weapon. His calm was his shield. Even when his temples throbbed from the whispers that leaked like venom through the walls of this abyss, he gave no sign of faltering. In the Hallow, of all places, such show of weakness would seal a death warrant for both himself and the princess -- no, the Queen. He was brazen enough to be somewhat carefree with his own life, but he had never been one to risk others' without a very, very good cause.

Calm. He had to remain calm. Despite that, the moment he felt the shift in the shadows -- the coalescence, the pulling of scattered tendrils into a shape vaguely human -- he knew calm would be tested. A voice, low as the grinding of stone over stone, curled into his mind.

Child.

The word struck deeper than sound ought to have done, reverberating through his entire being. He did not answer, though his jaw tightened. He had known this moment would come. The essence from which he himself had been wrought -- the god of darkness, broken and bound -- was here, chained among the rest. The lord of this realm had noticed him, and it had been a foolish thought to hope for otherwise.

Ciaran kept his eyes forward, focused on the constellations carved into the black stone ahead. Threads of faint silver etched themselves like veins across the cavern wall, pulsing with an old rhythm, their glow muted but steady. Good. He let his gaze trace their order, memorizing them, building maps in silence. The gods behind him might have whispered, screamed, or taunted, but he would not feed them his attention.

You will not look at me? the voice crooned. Ah… but you feel me, do you not? You feel the truth that lives beneath your skin, son of shadow, son of mine.

Ciaran’s teeth ground together at the claim. “I am not your son.” The words were low, spoken aloud in a murmur too faint for anyone but himself to hear, yet edged with steel. The shadow-shape rippled, and he felt the amusement that oozed like tar through his mind.

Not my son? Who, then, carved you from darkness? Who else could have breathed the unbreathable into your lungs? You are mine, as surely as the stars are owned by night.

Ciaran did not answer. Silence was the stronger blade when it came to dealing with Armok. He shifted his focus to the faint imperfections in the bonds lacing the gods -- the thinning light on one, the subtle swelling of another where power strained to burst free. He memorized them, every weakness, every fracture. But the voice pressed deeper, seeping through.

She trembles beside you.

The mention of her snapped like a thorn in his gut. He did not look back -- he would not risk more of Armok's attention being directed towards the woman -- but he could feel her presence behind him. Her footsteps had faltered once, just slightly, but enough for him to know. If he turned, the god would see it and dig claws into the truth of her, and he could not risk it.

She does not belong here, the shadow-voice continued, lilting with mockery. And yet… does she not carry something you recognize? You pretend not to see it, but the truth gnaws at you. She is no longer mortal. The scent of her betrays it. Her pulse… it rings with the echoes of something more.

Ciaran’s steps faltered by half a fraction -- only half, but enough for him to know the god had noticed.

A hiss of laughter coiled through his skull. Ah. So you do suspect. Yet you do not know if the seed is mine, or Wyddah’s, or some other corruption that coils so sweetly around her veins. Perhaps you think she is still yours, your little mortal bride. But tell me, does her shadow not taste strange when it brushes yours? Does her blood not sing in a tongue you cannot name?

Ciaran’s fingers flexed against the hilt at his side, though he did not draw; swords were useless against incorporeal beings anyhow. The shadows coiled faintly around his arm, hissing in tune with his irritation. He forced himself to breathe slow and steady. This voice wanted reaction. It wanted cracks. He would not give it triumph.

He lifted his gaze higher, to the constellations strung across the cavern ceiling. His eyes narrowed. For a moment, the pattern of them blurred -- lines shifting, threads pulling into a shape he had not expected. A tree. His breath caught, just slightly.

Not just a tree—the tree. Eriovax.

The name burned through him with a clarity that unsettled. Vessaria had spoken of it once, her voice low, wary, as if the word itself might summon danger. And now he saw it, etched in starlight across the bones of this prison. Its branches stretched, not with leaves but with veins of power, interlacing from one god’s essence to the next, roots sinking into the foundation of their chains. The shadow-voice purred.

You see it too, do you not? Eriovax. A graft, a wound, a seed. Familiar, you know? The branches pulse with echoes of you, and of her. Do you wonder what you have built together? Do you wonder if the tree is the key that will lock the Hallow forever… or if it is the knife that will cut us free? You are overdue for a reckoning, child.

Ciaran’s breath was steady, but the pulse at his throat betrayed him. He narrowed his eyes, trying to read the lines more carefully, searching for some certainty. But the tree shifted as he stared, its light bending, twisting, as if mocking his attempt to decipher it. He did not know which was true.

You do not know, the god whispered, amused. And so you fear. That is why you chain yourself in silence. That is why you do not ask her what she dreams of when she shudders beside you. That is why you will not look at her now.

Ciaran closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. The words cut too close for his liking. He had noticed the tremor in her steps, and he had heard the way her breath caught. There had been a faint pull of something from Vessaria's chest, as if she carried a pulse not her own, that he could somehow feel. He did not know whether naming it would save her or damn the both of them.

The shadow-shape rippled closer, though chains dragged against the cavern’s heart, groaning like old stone.

You are mine, Night King. But she… she belongs to someone else. Wyddah may have started her rebirth, but there are more beings here that wait for what she can give them. When the truth comes, you will see. You will see her devour you as I once devoured the light that birthed me.

Ciaran’s hand curled into a fist. He forced his eyes open and turned back to the constellations and the shifting tree of light. He traced the branches again, looking for an answer, but no answer came. Only the sense that every path wound toward ruin.

He exhaled slowly to firmly regain control over his emotions and turned. Vessaria's face emerged from the gloom, pale against the abyss, her eyes fixed forward though he could sense the storm inside her. He did not let his own turmoil show.

“We should leave.”