They ran.
Through corridors breaking apart, staircases collapsing behind them, ceilings breathing smoke and light and ruin.
Alera didn't know if it was the Bone Heir's death throes or something far worse rising in his absence. But the Bone Court the prison, the palace, the parasite was dying.
Saphine clutched her arm, blood streaking her temple. Two of the Choir rebels had fallen behind. The girl with the hollow eyes and the man with the shaking hands were no longer in sight. There was no time to mourn them.
Just forward.
Always forward.
Behind them, the echoes of weeping stone filled the air.
The palace didn't just collapse.
It unwound.
Like it was never built from brick or bone but from memory. And now that memory was fading.
The hallways they'd memorized gone.
The sigils they used to guide them erased.
And the sky above? It cracked wider than ever. The false heavens had shattered completely, revealing something behind them: a silver-dark void where stars screamed instead of shimmered.
Alera looked up once.
She didn't look again.
They burst through the western artery a long-forgotten servant tunnel carved in secrecy centuries before the Bone Heir's rise.
Saphine's breath hitched as they stumbled into what should have been the outer courtyard.
But it wasn't.
It was a graveyard.
Thousands no, tens of thousands of bones lined the blackened earth, arranged in precise rows like an army buried upright. Skull upon skull. All facing the palace.
They had been watching all along.
"Where… where are we?" Saphine asked.
Alera felt the air.
Different now.
Real.
Heavy.
She stepped forward. "We're outside."
The palace behind them groaned.
A final cry.
Then collapsed inward like a dying god exhaling.
The entire structure sank into itself dragging the Bone Throne, the broken Choir halls, the memory vaults, and the mirror chamber into the depths of silence.
Gone.
Ash rained from the sky.
The only sound: wind.
And breathing.
Alera sank to her knees.
She didn't cry.
She remembered.
Her child. The older version. The warning.
He's not the greatest threat.
And now that the Bone Heir was gone…
Who was?
A shadow passed over the ground.
She looked up.
Not clouds.
Wings.
Massive. Leathered. Gliding silently across the sky.
Not one.
Not two.
A fleet.
Dozens of dark-winged beasts soaring just above the ashline riders cloaked in crimson and bronze strapped to their backs. Their weapons glowed with violet enchantments.
The bone dragons of the Eastern Wastes.
No. Worse.
The Dusk Sentinels.
A force not seen since the Fall of Embers.
They had returned.
Not to destroy.
But to claim.
Alera stood.
Saphine trembled beside her. "They're here for the throne."
"There is no throne," Alera said.
But even as she spoke the words, she felt something stir beneath her skin.
A pull.
A summoning.
As if the throne hadn't died.
It had moved.
Inside her.
The lead dragon descended.
Alera didn't flinch.
The creature landed twenty paces away, bone-claws gouging the earth. Its wings folded like ancient parchment. Upon its back, the rider dismounted slow, deliberate, regal.
A woman.
Tall. Silver-eyed. Dressed in armor woven from fallen stars.
"Alera of the Flame and Bone," the woman said.
"You know my name?"
"I know what you carry."
Alera didn't move.
"Who are you?"
The woman removed her helmet.
And Alera gasped.
Because the face beneath was her mother's.
But younger.
Stronger.
Alive.
No.
Not alive.
Not her mother.
But someone from the same bloodline.
The same origin.
"I am Lysandria," the woman said. "First Queen of the Forgotten Realm."
"That realm was sealed," Saphine breathed. "Buried after the Sundering."
"And now it rises again," Lysandria said. "Because you broke the chain. You ended the parasite. And in doing so, you've awoken the Deep Oath."
Alera narrowed her eyes. "I didn't do it for you."
"No," Lysandria said softly. "You did it for the child. But the child is part of us now."
"I won't let you take him."
Lysandria smiled faintly. "You won't have a choice."
The Sentinels began landing behind her one after another. Some beastly. Some beautiful. All cloaked in power that hummed like dying stars.
Their eyes glowed with the same silver fire.
Not enemies.
Not yet.
But not allies either.
"What do you want?" Alera asked.
"To prepare you."
"For what?"
Lysandria looked at the sky.
"It wasn't the Bone Heir who built the first throne. He was just its longest shadow."
"Then who did?"
Lysandria met her gaze.
"Your ancestor."
Night fell.
Real night.
The first Alera had seen since her coronation.
And with it came dreams.
But this time, she wasn't a prisoner.
She walked through fields of broken time, stars swirling above her like ink spilled across velvet. The child walked beside her.
Not older.
Not younger.
Just himself.
"Are you safe?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Where are you?"
He pointed to her chest.
And whispered:
"Still here."
She woke.
The stars were still above.
The Sentinels had made camp.
But they had not caged her.
They waited.
And in their waiting fear.
Because the girl who had once knelt to power…
Now held it.
And power… wanted to speak.
She rose.
Walked to the center of the field of bones.
She knelt.
And whispered:
"I'm listening."
The bones answered.