The explosion of light faded into a silence so profound it seemed to swallow sound itself. The heir's ears popped violently as the sudden pressure change forced blood to trickle from their left eardrum, warm and thick.
They blinked rapidly against the afterimages burned across their vision, jagged streaks of silver and black that pulsed in time with their hammering heartbeat. When their sight finally cleared, they found themselves standing at the center of an impossibility.
The ground beneath their boots was neither stone nor flesh, but something unsettlingly in between. Warm and yielding like living tissue when they shifted their weight, yet firm enough to bear their steps without sinking. With each movement, bioluminescent patterns rippled outward in concentric circles, illuminating their path in pulses of eerie blue-green light that cast long, wavering shadows.
The air hung heavy with the scent of ozone and something deeper, the metallic tang of fresh blood mixed with the earthy musk of ancient parchment. It reminded the heir of the Scriptorium's deepest archives, where the oldest and most dangerous tomes were kept under lock and celestial seal.
Before them stretched a corridor that defied all mortal understanding of space and geometry. The walls breathed, there was no other word for it, their surfaces shifting fluidly between polished obsidian slick with condensation and raw, exposed musculature threaded with pulsating veins. Silver light coursed through those veins in rhythmic waves, perfectly synchronized with the pounding in the heir's temples. Doors floated at impossible angles throughout the space, some hanging sideways as if suspended by invisible wires, others embedded in the floor or ceiling at angles that made the heir's eyes water to contemplate. Each bore a sigil carved deep into its surface, symbols that hurt to look at not because of their brightness but because they seemed to drink in the surrounding light, creating pockets of absolute darkness that swam at the edges of vision.
The heir's shadow, now more substance than absence, uncoiled itself from their feet with liquid grace. Where once it had been a flat silhouette, it now possessed depth and texture, the edges of its form frayed into countless silver threads that shimmered like spider silk in moonlight. It moved with purpose, winding around the heir's ankles in a way that was almost possessive.
"She's waiting," it whispered, its voice a discordant harmony of rustling parchment and shattering glass that resonated in the hollow spaces between the heir's ribs.
A drop of crimson splashed onto the worn leather of their boot. Then another. The sound each droplet made as it struck was impossibly loud in the absolute silence, like a hammer striking an anvil in some distant forge.
The sister stood three paces ahead, her back turned to them. Blood dripped steadily from her fingertips, each perfect crimson sphere hanging suspended in the air for the briefest moment before shattering into mist with a sound like breaking crystal. When she turned, the heir saw that her eyes were no longer the familiar Arcanthus violet, but the same impossible black as the sigils on the floating doors, voids that stretched endlessly inward, event horizons that threatened to swallow the heir's sanity if they stared too long. For one vertiginous moment, the heir felt themselves teetering on the edge of those voids, their sense of self unraveling at the edges.
"You're late," the sister said. Fresh blood trickled from her nose, her ears, the corners of her mouth. Not the spectral ichor of a ghost, but real, physical blood that carried the iron-salt scent of living flesh. "But you always were the slow one." There was no malice in her words, only a weary fondness that cut deeper than any insult.
Behind her, one of the floating doors groaned open on unseen hinges, the sound like a dying man's last breath.
Through the widening gap, the heir saw,
Themself kneeling in the ruins of Mount Scripture, both hands wrapped around the broken quill as they drove it deep into the prison's heart, face contorted in an expression that hovered between agony and ecstasy, their mouth stretched wide in a silent scream,
Themself standing over Kaelion's lifeless body, fingers tangled in his silver hair as the Hollow Crown melted like wax into their own skull, molten metal dripping down their temples in rivulets that smoked where they touched skin,
And a version of themself they didn't recognize, head thrown back in laughter as the stars winked out one by one behind them, each extinction accompanied by a sound like an entire universe sighing its last.
The sister wiped blood from her lips with the back of her hand, leaving a crimson smear across her cheek. "Time folds differently here," she explained, watching the heir's reaction with those fathomless black eyes. "Those haven't happened yet. Or have they?" She tilted her head, considering. "The problem with being outside time is that tenses become... flexible."
The heir opened their mouth to respond, but before they could form words, their shadow detached itself and slithered across the strange ground toward the sister. As it moved, it reshaped itself with fluid, unsettling grace, stretching, warping, bones and features emerging from the darkness until it stood as the heir's perfect mirror image. The doppelganger's silver-threaded hand plunged into its own chest, fingers passing through shadowstuff as easily as water, and withdrew a scroll sealed with wax the color of dried blood.
The heir recognized their own handwriting on the exposed edge of parchment, the familiar slant and pressure of the letters sending a jolt of recognition through them.
"Sign," the shadow said, unfurling the contract with a flourish that sent ripples through the surrounding air, as if reality itself were parchment being disturbed. "And we'll show you what Kaelion couldn't bear to know."
The words burned with the same black light as the sigils on the doors, searing themselves into the heir's vision with painful clarity.
"I accept the price of remembrance."
Another drop of blood fell from the sister's fingertips, splashing onto the parchment with a sound like a bell tolling in some distant cathedral. The heir didn't remember moving, but their silver hand was already outstretched, the fused quill-tip hovering millimeters above the signature line. Their pulse roared in their ears, a staccato rhythm that matched the prison's steady, organic thrumming.
The sister smiled, her void-black eyes gleaming with something that might have been pride or pity. "All prisons are classrooms."
The shadow finished the thought, its voice dropping to a whisper that resonated in the hollow spaces of the heir's bones. "The question is, who's the student?"
The quill touched parchment. The heir signed.
For one perfect, infinite moment, nothing happened. The world held its breath.
Then the silence shattered as the prison came apart at the seams, reality unraveling like a poorly woven tapestry, and the heir fell screaming into the spaces between.