The sky over Myrhaal burned red as dawn broke, though no sun pierced the clouds.
The city groaned beneath her boots as Liora walked alone through its corpse-strewn streets. Shadows clung to the ruins like forgotten memories, whispering things she dared not listen to. She carried the Codex Mortuum against her hip, its pages humming with restless hunger. It had tasted her pain during the Trial, and now it demanded more.
Her heart felt like glass held together by force of will alone.
Tessa was gone.
Lienne too.
All that remained was the echo of their loyalty — loyalty she'd buried under her own survival.
She hated herself for it. But hatred wasn't enough to stop her.
The White Circle was still out there. Still scheming. And she would tear them down, stone by stone, soul by soul, until nothing remained of the empire that had broken her life apart.
At the outskirts of Myrhaal, the Black River cut through the land like a bleeding wound. A single boat waited for her there — black as pitch, no oarsman, no light.
The price of passage was simple: memory.
Liora stepped aboard without hesitation.
As the boat drifted across the black waters, visions flickered on the surface. Her mother's face — gentle, broken, proud. Alric's smile — that rare, human one, before guilt hardened him into something cruel.
Dareth's hand reaching for hers in the dark.
She let them slip away one by one.
Love.
Safety.
Hope.
She had no use for those things anymore.
When the boat touched the far shore, she stepped off lighter, hollower. More weapon than woman.
Waiting for her was a man draped in deep crimson robes. His face was hidden beneath a silver mask etched with runes of mourning.
"You have awakened the Codex," he said, voice smooth as oil. "The Circle fears you now."
"They should," Liora replied.
The man chuckled — a dry, rasping sound.
"Fear makes men desperate. Desperation births monsters."
He tilted his head, studying her.
"Will you be their end… or their mirror?"
Liora said nothing.
Because deep inside, she wasn't sure anymore.
The man, who called himself the Mourner, led her across the Shattered Plains to a hidden sanctuary buried beneath the roots of the world.
There, behind a door sealed by ancient blood, lay a tomb filled with relics — artifacts left behind by those who had tried, and failed, to topple the White Circle before her.
There was no grandeur here. No polished marble, no shining altars.
Only rusted weapons, cracked grimoires, shattered bones.
"This is your inheritance," the Mourner said, gesturing to the ruin.
"Their failure?" Liora asked.
"Their warning."
She ran her fingers along the hilt of a sword etched with forgotten runes. The blade was broken — snapped in half by time or betrayal.
Good intentions meant nothing if you weren't willing to see them through to the ugly end.
"What must I do?" she asked.
The Mourner smiled beneath his mask.
"Become what they feared most."
He pressed a small black stone into her hand. It pulsed faintly, like a dying heartbeat.
"This will lead you to the Circle's Heart. To the Founders' Bloodline."
Liora tightened her grip around the stone.
Founders.
Those who had created the Circle in the first place. The ones who had hidden themselves behind false names and puppet kings, bleeding the world dry from the shadows.
If she could sever the bloodline… the Circle would wither and die.
But power like that was never left undefended.
That night, camped among the dead relics, Liora felt the Codex thrum beneath her hand.
It whispered promises — power beyond imagining, magic so potent it could warp reality itself.
All she had to do was surrender.
A part of her — the raw, broken thing left after losing Tessa and Lienne — almost wanted to.
But then she heard another whisper, low and soft, almost lost beneath the Codex's greed:
Her mother's voice.
"The ash in your blood will bloom in fire, my little flame."
Not submission.
Rebirth.
She opened the Codex carefully. Blood from her cracked knuckles dripped onto the first page, and the book greedily absorbed it.
Spells bloomed across the parchment in jagged, living script.
Not just necromancy anymore.
This was something older.
Soulforging.
The art of reshaping life and death itself.
"You're mine now," she whispered to the Codex.
And it purred in her hands.
At dawn, she set out toward the south, where the stone's pulse grew hotter with every step.
The Circle's Heart waited.
And Liora was no longer coming to bargain.
She was coming to burn them all.
Far away, in a tower of black glass overlooking a dying sea, Mavrek stood before a gathering of the White Circle's inner council.
Only seven remained now.
Old men and women, hollowed out by centuries of dark magic, their flesh clinging to bones more out of spite than life.
"She passed the Trial," Mavrek said, his voice calm. "The Codex is hers now."
The council muttered among themselves — fear, disbelief, rage.
"We must act," spat one, her mouth crumbling into ash as she spoke. "Before she reaches the Heart."
"You will not," Mavrek said smoothly. "You will do nothing."
They turned on him as one.
"You dare—"
Mavrek smiled thinly.
"You shaped her into what she is. You forged the hammer. Now you will feel its blow."
"Traitor!" another councilor shrieked.
Mavrek tilted his head.
"No. I am evolution."
And with a flick of his hand, the oldest among them — the First Voice of the Circle — crumpled to the floor, his soul ripped clean from his body, screaming as it burned to ash.
The others fell silent, trembling.
"Prepare yourselves," Mavrek said. "The era of the White Circle ends not with a coronation… but a funeral."
Outside the black tower, the skies began to bleed.