Kaelan's scream tore through the library as golden light erupted from his scar. The jagged mark split open like overripe fruit, peeling back to reveal not blood, not flesh, but something far worse—a yawning void where his skin should have been, a glimpse of the endless dark that lurked beneath the illusion of his form.
Lysandra staggered forward, her silvered wound pulsing in time with the light spilling from Kaelan's face. The ghost queens' whispers poured from her lips in a chorus of overlapping voices:
"He was the first sword."
"Forged from the last star's dying light."
"The blade that carved the world from the Sleeper's flesh."
Seraphina's branded palm burned as she reached for Kaelan. His body was rigid, his muscles locked in agony as the golden light spread, consuming him from the inside out. His dark eyes met hers—no longer human, but pools of liquid fire swirling with fragments of forgotten centuries.
"You... knew," he gasped, his voice layered with something ancient and terrible. "In the vault... the song..."
The castle groaned around them. Cracks raced up the library walls, fissures splitting the stone like parchment. From the fractures oozed thick, dark blood—not the black ichor of the Sleeper, but rich, royal crimson that smelled of roses and rust.
The blood remembered.
And it was waking.
Lysandra collapsed as the silver light consumed her.
Her body arched off the floor, suspended in a web of glowing veins that pulsed beneath her skin. The wound at her side had opened like a mouth, whispering secrets in a language older than the castle stones:
"The feast was never for the darkness."
"It was for the light."
"To make the world forget the cost."
Seraphina's vision doubled. She saw the library—broken, bleeding—and superimposed over it, the cavern of flesh, the bone-throne, Valeria's golden eyes watching from the dark.
Kaelan's hand found hers. His fingers were no longer flesh, but living flame wrapped in the illusion of skin. "The seals are breaking," he said, his voice no longer entirely his own. "You have to choose."
The ghost queens' whispers rose to a deafening roar. The blood from the walls formed rivulets in the air, weaving a tapestry of memories—
A babe in a cradle, its skin stitched with golden light.
A sword plunged into living stone, its hilt carved from a queen's femur.
The first lie, spoken in a throne room drenched in blood: "This is peace."
Seraphina understood now.
To remember was to destroy.
To forget was to continue the feast.
And the castle's hunger was endless.
The world fractured at its seams.
Seraphina's knees buckled as the library dissolved around her, the very air vibrating with the weight of unraveling centuries. The blood from the walls hung suspended in crimson droplets, each one reflecting a different moment in Valemont's cursed history. She saw queens kneeling before altars of bone, their mouths sewn shut with threads of gold. She saw knights with hollow eyes, their armor filled with nothing but smoke and forgotten oaths. And always, always—the castle's foundations pulsing like a living heart beneath it all.
Kaelan's burning hand tightened around hers. His human form flickered like a candle in the wind, revealing glimpses of what lay beneath—a being of molten gold and starlight, his edges bleeding into the air like ink in water. The scar on his face had become a gaping chasm, through which Seraphina could see the endless void where his memories had been stored.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice layered with echoes of every warrior who had ever died for Valemont's lie. "Really look."
The vision struck like lightning—
Kaelan standing beside the first queen as she plunged her hands into the living stone. Kaelan's sword—her sword, forged from her own rib—flaring white-hot as it carved the first seal. Kaelan weeping golden tears as the forgetting took hold, as his true name slipped away like sand through fingers.
Lysandra's body floated inches above the ground, her silver wound now a gaping portal through which ghostly hands reached. The queens' whispers had become a screaming chorus:
"We fed ourselves to the dark to keep the world bright!"
"We let our names be erased!"
"Choose, daughter, CHOOSE!"
The castle's stones shrieked as the final seal cracked. From every fissure poured not just blood, but memories—centuries of royal sacrifices flooding the library in a wave of crimson light. Seraphina saw it all:
The first binding.
The thousand small betrayals that followed.
The terrible, simple truth—the Sleeper had never been the enemy. It was the first queen's heart, torn from her chest and buried beneath the throne to power the spell that made the world forget magic required payment.
The ghost queens' hands seized Seraphina, their icy fingers pressing against her brow where the circlet had been. Their voices became one:
"Break the cycle."
"Remember us."
"Let the world see the cost."
Kaelan's true form blazed brighter, his edges unraveling. "There's no more time," he gasped. "The forgetting is—"
The library doors exploded inward.
And the Sleeper stepped through.