The figure on the throne did not rise. It did not need to.
Its presence alone was a weight upon the air, thick enough to choke on. The crown upon its brow shimmered with the same twisted silver as the amulet binding Elara and Kael—except where their marks pulsed with life, this metal was dead, cold as a blade left in snow.
Elara's instincts screamed at her to run. Her magic recoiled, silver vines withering before they could even sprout.
Kael, however, did not falter. He stepped forward, his blackfire dagger held loose at his side. "We're not here by choice."
The figure tilted its head. When it spoke, its voice was not a sound, but a sensation—like fingers dragging down the spine.
"Choice?" It laughed. "You bound yourselves willingly. Blood for blood. Life for life."
Elara's breath hitched. The amulet's chain around her wrist burned suddenly, viciously, as if in response.
Kael's jaw tightened. "What do you want?"
The figure leaned forward, its shadowy form resolving into something almost human—a man, or the memory of one. His eyes were voids, his smile a gash of light.
"I want you to remember," he said. "Remember what you are."
Then he snapped his fingers.
The world split.
Elara had died before.
Not truly, not permanently, but close enough—when the High Priest's blade had grazed her throat, when the poison of a rival house had stopped her heart for three terrible seconds.
This was nothing like that.
This was unmaking.
She was no longer in the city. She was nowhere. She was nothing. A consciousness adrift in a sea of screaming stars, each one a fragment of a life she had never lived.
A woman with her eyes ruling over a kingdom of thorns.
A girl with Kael's smile burning at the stake.
A child with both their faces drowning in black water.
"These are the threads you severed," the god-king's voice whispered. "The lives you could have had."
Elara tried to scream. She had no mouth.
Then—pain.
A hand grasping hers, real and solid and warm.
Kael.
She clung to him like a lifeline, and the void spat them back into reality.
They collapsed onto the white stones of the city, gasping. Elara's skin was slick with sweat, her veins burning as if filled with acid. Across from her, Kael wasn't faring much better—his nose was bleeding, his blackfire flickering weakly around his fingers.
The god-king watched, amused.
"You see now," he murmured. "The amulet does not bind you to each other. It binds you to me."
Elara forced herself to stand. "Why?"
"Because you are thieves." His smile widened. "You stole from death. And death wants repayment."
Kael wiped the blood from his lip. "We've never met you before today."
"Haven't you?" The god-king rose at last, his shadow stretching endlessly behind him. "Little prince. Little thief. You took lives that belonged to me. A father's last breath. A mother's dying scream."
Elara's blood ran cold.
The High Priest.
The experiments.
Oh gods.
The amulet wasn't just a curse.
It was a reckoning.
The god-king lifted his hand. The silver crown floated from his brow, hovering between them.
"Take it," he said. "Wear it. And I will forgive your debts."
Elara knew a trap when she saw one. "What's the catch?"
"No catch." His void eyes gleamed. "Only truth. The crown reveals what lies beneath. Will you bear it?"
Kael's voice was a blade. "We don't need your forgiveness."
"No?" The god-king laughed. "Then you will die as you lived—fighting, screaming, alone."
The city trembled. The sky cracked.
And the dead began to rise.
They came from the ruins—figures of bone and memory, their hollow eyes fixed on Elara and Kael. Some wore the robes of the High Priest's coven. Others bore the insignia of Kael's fallen kingdom.
All of them whispered the same word:
"Thieves."
Elara reached for her magic. The vines came, but sluggishly, their silver dulled.
Kael's blackfire was little better—a sputtering ember compared to its usual inferno.
The god-king watched from his throne, his smile serene.
"Run," he suggested. "It will make no difference. But it amuses me."
The first of the dead lunged.
Elara met it with a dagger to the throat.
Kael burned the second to ash.
But there were hundreds more.
Thousands.
And the crown still hung in the air, waiting.