The scream wasn't sound. It was reality tearing.
Information, sensation, and a terrible, hollow knowing flooded into me through my hand. I saw—no, I comprehended—the sphere's nature. It was not an object. It was a concept, given form. A tiny, perfected knot of the fundamental law the door had proclaimed: All is Consumption.
It was a seed of the void.
The cold in my arm exploded into my chest, a silent detonation that stopped my heart for one endless, weightless second. When it kicked back in, the beat was different. Slower. Deeper. A drum in a cavern that had never known light.
The poison clouding my thoughts, weakening my limbs—it was still there. But now it was data. I could feel its intricate, vile structure, a malicious lattice woven through my tissues. To the Star-Eater's perception, it was not an illness. It was… matter. Arranged in an undesirable pattern.
The shouts from above grew closer. Torchlight flickered at the top of the chute.
I had no time to understand. Only to act.
The sphere in my hand felt both heavier than a mountain and lighter than a thought. I focused on the poison, on the concept of its removal. I didn't know how to command the power. I simply held the need, the desperate will to survive, and pushed it into the sphere.
The sphere's surface rippled. A tiny, pinprick dot of absolute black appeared in the air before me.
A Void Pin.
It was minuscule, a fragment of a fragment of what had erased Corvin. It hovered for a millisecond, then shot toward me. I flinched, but it didn't strike my body. It passed into my chest, a sensation of ice-cold needles.
And it ate.
Not my flesh. The poison.
It was a targeted, microscopic deletion. I felt the malicious latticework unravel at a specific point in my gut, the bonds holding the toxin together simply ceasing to exist. A tiny, specific patch of the poison was gone, converted into… nothing. A clean, empty space in the fabric of my body where the sickness had been.
The relief was so acute it was a new kind of pain. A gasp tore from my lips. A warmth, my own natural warmth, bloomed in that one small spot for the first time in weeks.
But the cost was immediate.
A wave of soul-deep exhaustion followed. It wasn't physical fatigue. It was as if a part of my will had been consumed to fuel the deletion. The sphere in my hand dimmed slightly, its swirling nebulae slowing.
I understood. This was the balance. To Hold the Star-Eater is to Balance on the Edge of the End. I could unmake things, but it took a piece of my own essence to do it. The void gave nothing for free.
A head appeared at the chute opening, silhouetted by torchlight. "Down here! I see light!"
I couldn't fight. I couldn't erase them all—the effort would consume me before I finished the first guard. I had to run. I had to hide.
The sphere was now a part of me, an extension of my nervous system. I willed it to… change. To become less. The shifting surface stilled, hardening into a dull, matte black stone. It shrunk, compressing until it was a smooth, cool bead, no larger than a pea. A loop of void-matter, fine as a spider's thread, extruded from it. Instinctively, I looped it around my neck. The bead settled against my sternum, invisible beneath my tunic. A secret weight.
The door behind me began to close, the seam of anti-light vanishing, the metal sealing with a final, soft thud that echoed with finality. The handprint was gone, the surface perfectly smooth once more.
I was just a boy in a cavern again. But I was a boy with one clean spot inside him, and a black sun resting over his heart.
The first guard started down the chute.
I moved. Not toward the chute, but along the cavern wall, into the deepest pool of shadow behind a tumble of fallen rock. My body, even with a fraction of poison removed, was still feeble. But my mind was terrifyingly clear.
Two more guards descended, blades drawn. They found the cavern empty save for the black pool and the strange, sealed door.
"Where is he?" one growled, shining his torch around. The light passed over my hiding spot. I held my breath, pressing into the cold stone.
"Corvin's not here either," the second said, voice uneasy. "The girl said he came down after the prince."
They searched, their boots scuffing near my rock pile. One knelt by the pool, then jerked back. "Gods… look."
In the beam of his torch, the black water was no longer still. Where Corvin had been erased, the surface swirled with faint, silver filaments—the residual energy of an unnatural dissolution, reacting with the spring's minor magical properties.
"Something's not right," the first guard whispered, superstitious fear taking hold. "This place is cursed. Always was."
They didn't search thoroughly. The eerie silence, the strange door, the missing man, and the shimmering water were spooking them. After a few more minutes, they retreated back up the chute, calling for more men and lanterns.
I waited in the dark, counting the beats of my strange, deep heart. The bead against my chest was a constant, chilling reminder.
I had power now. But it was a starving man's power. Every use would eat a piece of me. I needed to learn its rules, its efficiencies. I needed to remove the rest of the poison, but doing it all at once might unmoor my own soul.
First, I needed to get back to my room unseen. The key was still in my pocket. I needed to be the weak, dying prince who never left his bed. The prince who couldn't possibly be responsible for a missing guard.
When the cavern had been silent for a long time, I crept out. Using the last of my strength, I climbed the slick chute, my new, slow heart steady against the strain.
The ruined kitchen was empty, twilight casting long shadows through the broken roof. I became a ghost in the corridors again, using every scrap of Kieran's memory and Liam's caution.
Reaching my wing, I listened at my own door. Silence from within. I slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and slid inside, locking it behind me.
The room was as I'd left it, reeking of my staged illness. I quickly scattered the straw from my mattress a little more, smudged the "vomit" on the floor, and collapsed onto the bed, arranging myself in a pose of pathetic collapse.
Minutes later, I heard the commotion in the halls. Running boots. Sharp orders. A search had been launched—for Corvin, and for me.
My door burst open. A captain of the guard stood there, flanked by two men, and behind them, the pale, terrified face of Elara.
The captain's eyes swept the room, then landed on me. I blinked up at him, feigning disorientation, a weak cough shaking my frame.
"The prince?" the captain asked, his voice hard.
Elara's gaze met mine. I saw the conflict there—terror, guilt, the memory of Corvin's silent annihilation. She had seen the door open. She had seen the darkness pour forth. But she had not seen me touch the sphere. She had seen me cornered, about to die.
She looked at the captain, then back at my feeble, trembling form on the bed. The prince who couldn't walk. The prince who was dying by inches.
"He… he has not left," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I brought his evening tray not an hour ago. He was as you see him now. Worse, perhaps."
The captain scrutinized me, his eyes narrow with suspicion but unable to bridge the gap between this pitiful creature and a boy who could make a full-grown guard vanish without a trace. "Corvin is missing. Did you see anything? Hear anything?"
I let my lower lip tremble. "I… I slept. I dreamt of my mother." I turned my face into the pillow, a picture of exhausted misery.
With a frustrated grunt, the captain turned away. "Search elsewhere. Question the other servants. Tear the north wing apart if you have to."
They left, Elara casting one last, inscrutable look over her shoulder before the door shut.
Alone again, I let the act drop. I sat up slowly, the cold bead a comfort against my skin.
I had survived the day. I had gained a weapon of unimaginable, costly power. And I had an ally—or at least, a compromised witness—in Elara.
But I also had a new, pressing problem. The guard captain wasn't convinced. The mystery would draw more eyes. And the poison was still in my veins, a clock ticking down.
I needed to get smarter. I needed resources. I needed to understand the rules of my new power before I was forced to break them.
And I needed to find out who ordered my mother's death, and mine. Because now, I wasn't just a prince seeking revenge.
I was a void with a target.
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