The Sleeper entered the library, and the world bent around it.
Seraphina's breath caught in her throat as the air thickened, pressing against her skin like a living thing. The creature—no, the being—before her was nothing like the formless darkness from the crypt. It wore the shape of a woman, tall and regal, her features carved from shifting starlight and shadow. A crown of black thorns circled her brow, their needle-sharp points drawing rivulets of silver blood down her cheeks. Her gown was woven from the fabric of the night sky itself, constellations swirling across its surface only to unravel and reform with every step she took.
But it was her eyes that froze Seraphina's blood—twin pools of absolute void, where distant stars flickered and died only to be born again.
"Little queen." The Sleeper's voice was the sound of ancient forests falling, of mountains being born. "You have come to remember."
The ghost queens' hands tightened on Seraphina's shoulders, their icy grip the only thing keeping her upright. Kaelan—what remained of him—stepped forward, his molten gold form flickering between the knight she knew and something far older, far brighter.
"You don't belong here," he growled, his voice layered with echoes of forgotten battles. "This world was never yours to claim."
The Sleeper's laugh was the cracking of glaciers. "Claim? I am this world, little light. The first breath in its lungs. The first beat of its heart." She turned those endless eyes on Seraphina. "And you have been eating me piece by piece for a thousand years."
Lysandra's body convulsed violently.
The silver light pouring from her wound had formed a bridge between worlds—a shimmering arch that connected the ruined library to the cavern of flesh beneath the castle. Through its curve, Seraphina could see the bone-throne, now cracked down the middle, its surface weeping black tears.
"Seraphina..." Lysandra's voice was barely human, layered with the ghost queens' chorus. Blood—real blood, crimson and warm—trickled from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. "She's telling the truth. The first queen... she didn't bind the darkness. She became it."
The Sleeper stretched out a hand, and the library walls dissolved into memory—
Valeria the First standing before her people, her golden eyes burning with desperate love.
The blade—Kaelan's blade—plunging into her chest, not to kill, but to divide.
Her heart torn from her ribs and buried beneath the throne, her body dissolved into the very stones of the castle, her mind stretched thin across centuries to keep the world safe from what magic truly cost.
The vision shifted—
Queens kneeling in secret chambers, slicing their palms open to feed the hungry stones.
Knights with hollow eyes, their armor filled with nothing but the ghosts of their sacrifices.
And always, always, the lie: "This is peace. This is safety. This is how the world works."
The Sleeper's voice was softer now, almost gentle. "You were never meant to carry this, little queens. The burden was always mine."
Kaelan was unraveling.
The golden light that had replaced his flesh was dissipating, streaming toward Lysandra's silver bridge in glowing rivulets. His human form flickered in and out of existence—one moment the scarred knight Seraphina knew, the next a being of pure radiance, his edges fraying like threadbare cloth.
"It's the binding," he gasped, falling to his knees. "Without it... I can't..."
Seraphina caught him, her arms burning where they touched his fading light. The ghost queens' hands guided hers, their icy fingers overlapping with her own.
"The choice is yours," they whispered. "Remember, and let the world see the truth. Or forget, and continue the feast."
The Sleeper knelt before her, those star-filled eyes level with Seraphina's own. "I would bear it again," she murmured. "For you. For all of you. But you must choose."
Beyond the broken windows, the first light of dawn touched the horizon.
And in that fragile, golden light, Seraphina made her decision.
The moment Seraphina opened her mouth to speak her choice, the world shattered.
A blade of living shadow erupted from Lysandra's silver wound, its edge glistening with starlight and blood. It punched through Kaelan's fading golden form, impaling him where he knelt. His mouth opened in a silent scream as cracks radiated through his body like broken glass, light bleeding from the fractures.
Lysandra's head snapped up, her eyes now twin voids mirroring the Sleeper's. But where the Sleeper's gaze held ancient stars, Lysandra's held only hunger.
"Foolish little queens," she crooned in a voice that was not her own. "Did you truly think the heart would not defend itself?"
The ghost queens' hands tore away from Seraphina as if burned. Their spectral forms recoiled, writhing in silent agony as black veins spread through their translucent flesh. The Sleeper staggered back, her starry gown darkening at the edges like parchment in flame.
"You're not the Sleeper," Seraphina whispered, understanding dawning like ice in her veins.
Lysandra's smile stretched too wide, her teeth sharpening to points. "The Sleeper was the sacrifice. I am what grew in the wound."
The truth unfolded in Seraphina's mind like a poisoned flower—
The first queen had indeed given her heart to power the spell. But in that act of ultimate sacrifice, something else had taken root in the emptiness left behind. Something that had fed on every royal death since, growing stronger with each forgotten queen.
Kaelan collapsed, his golden light guttering like a dying candle. The shadow blade twisted deeper, drinking his radiance, and as it did, the library changed—
Books melted into flesh-bound tomes.
Stone walls pulsed like living organs.
And beneath it all, Seraphina felt the castle's heartbeat quicken in terrible anticipation.
The false Sleeper stroked Lysandra's hair with clawed fingers. "You were so close to freeing me," it murmured. "But remember, little queen—" Lysandra's body arched in agony as the silver wound split wider—"some hungers cannot be sated."
From the depths of the castle, a new sound rose—not the ghost queens' whispers, but the screams of every soul ever devoured by the stones. And beneath them, laughter.
The feast was just beginning.