Ethan felt like he was on fire.
The ground around them was covered in broken thorns from Liora, their edges still smoking from the venom they had injected into his veins. In his skull, the Keeper's voice had become quiet—not dead, but stunned. In its absence, something worse stirred.
He looked down.
His hands were disappearing.
Not rotting.
Not withering.
Faint starlight flecked his fingers as they vanished into swirling darkness. His ribs felt too hollow and brittle, but the heat from the molten fragments of the dagger fused to his chest spread out like a living thing.
Liora stepped backwards. Her emerald eyes flickered for the first time, not with hunger or victory.
Fear.
"You fool," she whispered. "You didn't just fight it. You let it in."
Ethan exhaled. Before vanishing, his breath twisted into the shaped of the Thirteenth Star and turned into a smoke.
Then, without hesitation or thought...
He moved.
Mara's dagger remained steady.
The thing behind the child's eyes only smiled more broadly as the tip touched Liss's soft throat. The other kids floated around them, held carried by vines that had existed only a few seconds before. Their tiny bodies swayed like fruit that had been hung.
"Do it," the green fire in Liss's eyes taunted. "Spill the blood of the innocent. That is Ravenscroft's specialty, is not it?
Mara's hold became more firm. Behind her, the healers stood motionless, torn between fear and something worse.
Hope.
Then…
A whisper. Not from Liss.
From the dark.
"Bargain with me instead."
That voice was familiar to Mara.
Grandmother.
She did not look around. She did not have the courage. But the shadows grew thicker at the end of the ruined corridor, forming a familiar shape as they formed like smoke.
"The Duskheir wants worship," the shadow murmured. "Give her a martyr instead."
Mara gasped for air.
"Liss?"
"No." Grandmother's smile was a blade in the dark. "You."
Jarek had faced monsters before.
But the First Duskheir wasn't a monster.
She was a revelation.
She traced his jaw with her bark-skinned fingers, leaving traces of decay where they touched. The scent of old graves and older magic clung to her, thick enough to choke on.
"Your grandfather begged so sweetly," she mused. "Offered to spare his miserable city in exchange for his firstborn child."
Jarek's blood froze.
His father.
The Duskheir's eyes were hollow and glowed like fireflies.
"But you? You'll offer me more. since you have witnessed what will happen."
The branches of the hanging tree moaned behind her.
Something was climbing out.
Not monsters.
Martyrs.
Their hollow eyes were burning green, and their bodies were mixed from memory and thorn.
The First Duskheir spread her arms.
"Meet your family, jailer."
Ethan's new hands closed around Liora's throat.
She fought… oh, how she fought.
The earth split, thorns slashed, and the air itself screamed where her power touched it.
Ethan was no longer just Ethan, though.
He represented the empty space where stars go to die.
"You wanted a god?" His voice cracked and echoed with a terrible, vast sound. "Here I am."
Liora's body trembled. Her skin broke into roots instead of thorns, twisted, ancient things that sank into the ground like fleeing snakes.
Too late.
Ethan pulled.
And the Obsidian Wastes screamed with her.
Mara's fingers were shaking.
The dagger still pressed against Liss's throat. The healers watched, waiting for her to choose.
The shadow of Grandmother leaned closer.
"You were always the sacrifice, girl. Not her."
Mara closed her eyes.
And kneeled.
Jarek stared at the martyrs climbing out from the tree.
Their faces, his face. Over and over.
Generations of Ravenscrofts, bound by their own free will rather than by chains.
The First Duskheir smiled.
"Now you get it."