Chapter 157: Three Must Choose
---
CELESTE'S POV
The bone spoke.
Not in language — but in memory.
The moment my palm pressed against the curved surface of the Queen's rib, heat surged beneath my skin, spreading through nerves and blood until I wasn't standing in the Hollow anymore. I was floating inside a current of magic so old it didn't recognize time.
It recognized me.
A tide of names poured through my body like ice through fire. None of them mine, and yet — all of them mine.
Not voices. Not faces. Just weight.
Queens. Witches. Oracles. Monsters.
Each had touched this bone. Each had carried the Queen. Each had come to this same place, at this same moment — and each had been forced to choose.
"You must choose," the magic whispered, threading through the hollows of my bones. "Light, ruin, or the grave."
It wasn't a riddle.
It was a sentence.
A spell. A command. A law written in blood and sealed in bone. The Queen hadn't left a memory behind.
She'd left a weapon.
