The moment the sky screamed, the ground obeyed.
It cracked beneath the feet of the Dusk Sentinels, pulsing like something alive no, something waking. The stars above flared like molten eyes, and time itself seemed to slow as Alera stepped forward, sword of starlight and bone glowing in her grip.
The figure who carried the throne the Bearer of the End tilted its head, veil lifting slightly in the wind.
Its face was made of nothing.
Only void.
Behind Alera, the Unremembered queens began chanting. No words just tones, deep and rhythmic. Magic layered in sound. A battle-song forged before the first gods fell.
Lysandria raised her blade.
Saphine summoned twin axes, forged from the ash of fallen flames.
Alera's voice rose above them all.
"Do not wait for their charge."
The wind died.
"They came for the Flame let them burn."
And then the Queen struck first.
Alera raised her hand, palm glowing.
The sky split like parchment, and a pillar of white fire descended, swallowing the front ranks of the Devoured March. Silent soldiers were incinerated mid-step, their bones shattering as the fire of forgotten names scorched them out of existence.
But they didn't scream.
They simply collapsed.
Others stepped forward in perfect synchrony, as though death were part of the formation.
The Bearer of the End moved, arms unfolding like wings.
Black lightning surged from its fingertips chaos made solid, memory turned weapon. It struck the shield line of the Dusk Sentinels, ripping through two towers and splintering the earth.
Alera spun, lifting her sword.
The blade caught the lightning.
It screamed in her hands.
And shattered.
Silence fell again.
Alera stared at the broken hilt in her palm.
The Bearer lowered its arms.
Then whispered not in sound, but in her mind.
You cannot wield creation without sacrifice.
Blood poured from Alera's nose.
She dropped the hilt.
Then laughed.
Behind her, Seris appeared eyes now burning bright.
"The child wants to fight."
Alera turned.
"No. He wants to finish what I started."
Seris smiled sadly. "Then let him in."
Alera exhaled.
Closed her eyes.
And opened herself.
The world did not tilt.
It flipped.
For a single breath, everything froze. Every soldier. Every spell. Even the void above.
And then she rose.
Alera's feet no longer touched the earth.
Her body shimmered gold and onyx, wrapped in ancient fire and star-forged armor. Her hair floated behind her like threads of the cosmos. Her eyes? No longer just hers.
They were the child's.
And someone else's.
Someone far older.
"Who are you?" the Bearer asked.
Her voice came in two tones.
One, her own.
The other deep, endless, ancient.
"I am what you feared would survive."
She lifted her hand again.
And the field erupted in roots of flame snaking beneath the Devoured March, bursting from the ground like tendrils of judgment. Soldiers fell, screaming without mouths, consumed not by fire but truth.
Their bodies turned to mirrors.
Their reflections?
Empty.
Because there had never been souls in them.
Only shells.
Only shadows.
Lysandria fought beside her blade carving through three at once.
Saphine cut her way toward the Bearer, blood soaking her arms.
And Seris? She moved through the air like a dancer, blades spinning as starlight wrapped her frame.
Still, they came.
For every ten fallen, twenty more emerged.
The Bearer lifted the throne from its back and set it down.
A second veil lifted from its face.
And what sat beneath…
Was her.
Alera gasped.
Because the throne now bore her image dead, pale, cracked with shadow.
A husk.
This is the future if you falter, the Bearer intoned.
You will sit. You will rot. You will become the next cage.
Just as the Bone Heir did.
"No," Alera whispered. "That throne ends with me."
You do not choose that.
The throne chooses.
And it began to pull.
The sky churned. The stars above her head spun in reverse.
A force wrapped around her chest, dragging her toward the seat carved for her downfall.
But the child within her screamed.
Not in fear.
In resistance.
Alera screamed too.
Not because she was afraid.
Because she understood now.
The throne was never meant to be sat on.
It was meant to be destroyed.
She thrust her hand into the sky.
Pulled.
A spear of light descended not made of metal, but of pure unfiltered memory.
The first oath ever sworn.
The flame that birthed Solara's line.
And she hurled it.
Straight into the throne.
It didn't break.
It wept.
Then cracked.
Then collapsed.
The Bearer wailed its soundless voice ripping through the field.
And in that scream
The soldiers stopped moving.
They simply crumbled.
Their armor turned to dust.
Their bodies returned to silence.
The war paused.
Alera collapsed.
Lysandria caught her.
Her body glowed with burns. Her lips were cracked. Her fingers shook.
But her eyes?
Still bright.
Still burning.
Still hers.
The Bearer of the End stood alone.
No army.
No throne.
Only smoke and wind and the memory of power.
It looked at her.
You delayed it.
But the Sovereign stirs.
Then it vanished.
Not fled.
Dispersed.
The silence afterward was thicker than blood.
Saphine fell to her knees beside Alera.
"She's still breathing," she whispered.
Lysandria nodded. "But for how long?"
That night, the survivors gathered in the inner ring of the ash field.
No feast. No fire. Just silence.
Seris approached Alera's tent.
"You broke the throne."
"I broke a throne," Alera said hoarsely. "Not the last."
Seris nodded. "They'll come again."
"I'll be waiting."
The child inside her stirred.
He whispered:
"There are more thrones than stars."
"But only one crown that chooses."