Elara The Throne isn’t a seat. It’s a wound. A jagged monument of black crystal, veins of molten silver pulsing through it like a living heart torn from the chest of some primordial god. It rises at the center of the void, spires hooked like talons toward a sky that isn’t sky—just an endless chasm of stars swirling like an open eye. And Kael stands at its base. His back to me. Shadows curl from his skin like smoke from burning silk, streaming toward the Throne as if gravity itself bends to him. The raw force rolling off him is a tide that steals breath, thought, everything. It shakes the spires around us like they’re nothing more than brittle glass. And then—he moves. Slow. Deliberate. One step toward the Throne. The bond lashes through me so violently I stagger, Seris’ grip the only thing keeping me upright. “Elara—” Her voice is a knife at my ear. “If he sits—” “I know.” Gods, I know. Because this isn’t just Kael taking a seat. This is Kael becoming what the world has
Elara My feet hit the Ashen Road like it isn’t shattering beneath me. Like I’m not walking into the jaws of something that will swallow everything. Because Kael said my name. And the bond—gods, the bond is no longer a whisper or a hum. It’s a storm inside me, a tidal pull that drags me forward even as Seris’ fingers claw into my arm, anchoring me like a hook in my flesh. “Elara!” Her voice is jagged steel. “Don’t you dare—” I wrench free. I don’t even feel myself doing it. Shadows coil around my ankles, wrapping like vines, slick and alive. They’re gentle on me—terrifyingly gentle—while the rest of the world screams. Because Kael isn’t a man anymore. He’s becoming. The Throne answers him, pulses with him, like it’s always been waiting for his voice. Spires of black crystal bloom upward, splitting the Ashen Road like ribs tearing from the body of a god. Silver light veins through them—Kael’s veins, Kael’s blood made architecture—and the air bends, warps, like gravity is breakin
Elara Time fractures. Not like glass this time—like bone. Painful. Irreversible. Every second grinds like teeth, gnashing reality down to splinters as three pairs of eyes pin me where I stand. Kael. Lucious. Seris. Waiting. Bleeding power into the air until the Ashen Road groans beneath us, fissures splitting in veins of black fire and molten gold. The Throne behind Kael pulses with hunger, a heartbeat of the void—each throb louder than mine, louder than thought, louder than prayer. “Choose.” Kael’s voice is calm, and that terrifies me more than rage ever could. Calm means certainty. Calm means the storm already belongs to him. Lucious’s jaw clenches, his blade trembling under Kael’s grip, light leaking from his knuckles like it’s trying to burn through his own flesh to reach me. “Elara…” His voice is raw, breaking at the edges. “Don’t.” Seris doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. Her silence is a blade sharper than both of theirs, cutting through the roaring bond with a single
Elara Lucious’s roar splits the silence like a blade through glass—jagged and merciless. I spin, heart lurching against my ribs—and there he is. Tearing across the Ashen Road like a storm on fire, his wings blaze molten gold, every feather burning as if the sun itself bleeds through him. Light pours from him in torrents, searing the dark beneath my skin, pushing it back for one fragile heartbeat. Behind him, Seris runs silent and swift, cloak a shredded shadow, her blade naked in her hand, her eyes fixed on Kael with the calm of a predator stalking its kill. And Kael? Kael doesn’t move. He stands like a god carved from ruin—still, unshakable—one hand outstretched toward me, the Throne burning behind him like a black sun. A second, shattered dawn. Its light is wrong, too bright and too deep all at once, a radiance that stains everything it touches. “Elara!” Lucious’s voice rakes across my bones, raw and commanding. “Get away from him!” The bond snarls in response, wild and viol
Elara The Ashen Road bleeds under my feet. Not with blood, but with memory. Every step I take grinds the bones of what was into dust—fragments of cities, echoes of voices, scraps of myself I didn’t know I could lose. It’s quiet here. Too quiet. No roar of void, no screams of worlds unraveling. Just the sound of my breath and the slow, steady unraveling of everything I thought I was. And then— The visions begin. At first, they’re thin as smoke. My mother’s laugh. The taste of summer fruit on my tongue. A child’s voice—mine—singing some long-forgotten lullaby. I reach for them, but they dissolve like mist. Then Kael. Not the Kael I left bleeding in the shadows, not the Kael whose hunger I feel in my marrow now—but Kael as he was that night under the obsidian sky, firelight curling across his jaw, his hand warm against mine. “Elara,” he whispers, and I almost fall to my knees. Because it’s not the Throne’s voice. Not yet. It’s his. But when I blink, the image splits—Kael at the
Elara The silence after the Weavers’ words is not silence at all. It’s a void full of echoes, threads whispering in my blood, Kael’s voice tangled through every breath like smoke. Lucious moves first. His light flares sharp and hard, burning white against the black. He points his blade at the veiled figures. “You knew this. You’ve known all along.” “We are what remains of knowing,” they answer in that braided chorus, calm as the grave. “But the weave has knotted. The pattern strains.” “Speak plain,” Seris snaps, steel singing as she bares her teeth at them like a wolf. “What do you mean by hers?” They do not turn to her. They do not turn to Lucious. They turn to me. “The bond was forged in blood and breath. It threads through what you were and what you will become.” One steps forward, its voice unraveling into something soft, something almost human. “You can end him. Or you can join him.” The air drops cold, like the void itself is listening. “No.” Lucious’s voice is a blade