The east tower library had become a cage of amber light and accelerating shadows.
Toddd stared at the fresh black droplet beside the original TODDD brand. It sat on her skin like a tear that refused to fall—perfect, motionless, waiting.
Lysander's voice cut through the silence, low and urgent. "We don't have long. The second triad has started forming. If it completes—"
"I die again," Toddd said. Her voice sounded distant, almost amused. "Death really loves keeping a schedule around here."
He snatched a dark cloak from the back of a chair and draped it over her shoulders. "The old catacombs under the chapel. There's a blood-ward circle there. It might buy time."
"Might," she repeated.
"I'm not promising miracles." His green eyes held hers—raw, almost desperate. "I'm barely staying ahead of whatever is already inside you."
She searched his face for lies and found only fear wearing a crown.
"Lead the way."
They descended quickly—behind a tapestry of weeping willows, through servants' passages that smelled of damp stone and forgotten incense, then deeper still into the underbelly of the palace. Torchlight flickered, stretching their shadows into claws that reached for her hem.
Halfway along a narrow corridor lined with crumbling sarcophagi, Lysander froze.
"Listen."
Nothing.
Then—soft, deliberate tapping. Fingernails on stone. Coming closer.
He drew a thin dagger from inside his sleeve. The blade drank the torchlight and gave back silver menace.
"Behind me."
Toddd almost smiled. "I'm already wearing death like jewelry. Hiding feels pointless."
Still, she let him go first.
They stepped into the chapel catacombs.
Marble ancestors watched from their stone coffins with empty eyes. In the center of the chamber lay a wide circle carved into the floor—crimson runes faded to the color of old blood, yet still faintly glowing, like coals someone had forgotten to drown.
Lysander dropped to one knee at the edge and began whispering in the twisting vine-script of forbidden books.
Toddd crossed the boundary.
The instant both feet touched the inner stone, sound vanished. Light bled violet. The world narrowed to a sick heartbeat.
The tapping resolved into footsteps.
From the opposite archway stepped Cassian.
His silver-streaked hair hung loose, framing a face that looked carved from moonlight and spite. The scar along his jaw gleamed wetter than it should. In his right hand he held a jagged shard of the tower's broken silver mirror.
He smiled.
It was the smile of someone who had already won.
"You're quicker than she was," he said. His voice carried an impossible double-tone—one his, one older, softer, grieving. "And you brought the prince. How poetic."
Lysander rose, dagger steady. "Step away, Cassian. You don't know what you're waking."
"I know exactly what I'm waking." Cassian's gaze slid to Toddd. "She's the lock. The Triad was never a curse—it was always a key. And keys need pressure to turn."
Pain bloomed under Toddd's collarbone.
The new droplet sprouted thin black tendrils, creeping outward like frost on glass.
She gasped, staggering.
Cassian advanced another step.
"The second death can be gentle," he murmured. "Let me guide you through it. You'll barely feel the transition. And when the third rises… we'll finally be complete. All three of us."
Lysander moved—swift, lethal.
Cassian was faster.
He caught the prince's wrist, twisted, sent the dagger spinning into shadow.
Then he turned fully to Toddd.
Vision blurring, she forced herself upright.
In the violet glow of the circle she saw the truth the shard revealed:
Cassian's reflection did not match him.
The reflection wept black tears.
The reflection's lips moved while Cassian's remained still.
"Sister… it's time to come home."
Memories not entirely hers crashed through her:
Three cradles in a candlelit nursery.
One infant crying.
Two silent, blue-lipped.
A father's hissed command: "Bury them deep. No one can know."
A midwife's hands shaking as she wrapped the small, still bodies.
They had not stayed buried.
They waited.
In mirrors.
In marks.
In blood.
The pain sharpened to a white-hot point.
Toddd's knees buckled.
Cassian—or the thing wearing him—reached out.
Lysander slammed into him from the side.
They crashed against a sarcophagus. Stone splintered. Dust choked the air.
Toddd crawled to the circle's heart.
She slammed both palms against the cold stone.
"No more waiting," she hissed.
Violet power—wild, hungry, half hers—exploded upward through her arms.
The runes ignited.
Light detonated.
Cassian screamed—a sound torn between human throat and ancient starvation.
When the glare died, he knelt clutching his face. Blood seeped between his fingers.
The mirror shard lay in pieces at his feet.
The black tendrils on Toddd's skin shrank back, retreating into the single droplet with obvious reluctance.
She was still breathing.
The second death had been interrupted.
Lysander pushed himself upright, blood trickling from his split lip.
"You… forced it back."
Toddd looked down.
The droplet remained.
It pulsed now—slow, deliberate—like a second heart beating under her skin.
She lifted her gaze to Cassian.
He laughed, a wet, broken sound.
"You only postponed it, little triplet. The third has been awake for years."
He raised his blood-smeared hand.
In the center of his palm: three tiny black marks.
T O D
Incomplete.
Waiting.
Toddd felt ice slide down her spine.
The Triad was not only inside her.
It lived in him too.
To be continued…