Liora pressed her fingers to Ethan's throat.
Her touch pierced through layers of flesh to grab his very soul, burning like frostbite. As his vision blurred, the Keeper's laughter grew louder inside his skull.
He witnessed the First Duskheir kneeling in a bone temple and sipping starlight from the skull of a god.
He witnessed the ancestors of Mara creating chains out of darkness.
He watched as the Thirteenth Star grinned and opened its eye for the first time.
"You carry my blood," Liora muttered, her breath smelling of lightning and turned earth. "But do you have my will as well?"
Ethan caught her wrist, his tainted veins burning.
"Her legacy is with me. The woman who decided to end her life to stop this.
There was a brief, human-like flicker in Liora's emerald eyes.
Then the thorns appeared.
Liss held to Mara's chest as she ran through crumbling hallways as the ruins of Valenmoor shook. Behind her, the other kids drifted in a hideous procession, their tiny bodies encased in vines that had not been there just a moment before.
"Jarek found something north," she called out to the other healers, panting. "Something ancient. We need—"
Liss's small hand clutched her chin and made eye contact. Green fire had replaced the girl's pupils.
"Not north," spoke the thing inside her. "East. Where the Duskheir kneels before his maker."
Mara's dagger was at the child's throat before she could think.
The healers gasped.
Liss smiled.
"Act on it, Ravenscroft. See what blooms from spilled blood."
The hanging tree was now more than it was before.
Jarek stumbled backwards as black sap dripped from thorny branches that twisted themselves into a tall archway. Like a vessel, the bound boy's body broke open, exposing nothing but whirling green light.
He realized out loud, "Liora was not the first." "She was just the last."
The thorns parted the archway.
A woman walked through her skin, her eyes were two rotting hollows where fireflies danced, and her hair was falling leaves.
"Little jailer," bellowed the First Duskheir. "You resemble your grandfather exactly when he begged."
Jarek's knife hand shook.
"What are you?"
Her smile split her face.
"I am hungry."
Liora's thorns burned into Ethan's flesh, causing him to scream as the starlight and emptiness fought inside of him. Fragments of glass rose like a storm around them as the Obsidian Wastes shook.
"You're no ancestor," he choked. "You're the first parasite."
The image of Liora changed from a lovely woman with gentle eyes to a hungry looking monster.
"We gave you power!" the Keeper screamed in his head. "We made you gods!"
The molten remnants of the dagger were still lodged in Ethan's chest when his fingers touched it. Using his remaining energy, he pushed—
—deeper, not farther away.
"Then take it back."
Light exploded.
The thorns shattered.
And somewhere, a star that was and wasn't screamed.