He turned.
It was Nareth, blood streaking her cheek, her voice ragged from song. She met his eyes. "If you sit there, Aiden, you'll become part of the structure. Part of the rules. You won't be you anymore."
Thail joined her, arms folded. "The throne doesn't just carry the stories of others. It rewrites you, too. You'll stop being a question. You'll become an answer."
Aiden looked down at the throne.
It pulsed with recognition.
And waiting.
"I know," he said softly. "But the Garden needs a center."
"And if that center becomes fixed," Elowen murmured, her gaze distant, "we start the cycle again. We stop choosing. We start deciding. That's what birthed the Amalgam in the first place."
He didn't argue.
Because they were right.
And still…
Still, he remembered the faces of those who had come screaming from the Unwritten. Not in malice, but in mourning. They had not wanted conquest. They had wanted existence.
He stepped forward.
Not to sit.
But to kneel before the throne.
