The darkness was alive.
It pressed against Seraphina's skin like a second layer of flesh, warm and damp, pulsing in time with some distant, monstrous heartbeat. She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The strands of hair from the throne had woven themselves around her limbs, their grip tightening with every panicked twitch of her muscles. Through the gaps in the writhing mass, she caught glimpses of the First Queen's face - that terrible, beautiful mask of triumph, her too-many eyes gleaming like polished coins in the dim light.
Lysandra lay motionless at the Queen's feet, her body a canvas of silver scars. The threads connecting her to the First Queen thrummed with stolen energy, pulsing like veins carrying blood away from a wound. With each pulse, Lysandra's breathing grew shallower, her skin taking on the pallor of old parchment.
"You see now, don't you?" The First Queen's voice was honey poured over broken glass. "This is how it was always meant to be. The strong feed on the weak. The hungry consume the full." She ran a finger along one of Lysandra's silver threads, making it vibrate like a plucked harp string. "Your sister walked into my arms willingly. She wanted to be special. To be chosen."
Seraphina strained against her bonds, the hair cutting deeper into her skin. Warm blood trickled down her wrists. "You're lying."
The Queen smiled, revealing teeth too sharp, too numerous. "Am I? Then why did she follow the threads? Why did she kneel before me without a fight?" She leaned closer, her breath smelling of old blood and older magic. "Because some hungers run deeper than loyalty. Deeper than love."
A sound cut through the chamber then - a wet, tearing noise from above. The First Queen's head snapped up, her many eyes narrowing.
The ceiling was bleeding.
Great gouts of black fluid poured from between the rib-like arches, splattering across the fleshy floor. Where it landed, the ground hissed and bubbled, the membrane recoiling as if burned. The hair-throne loosened its grip just enough for Seraphina to twist her head and see -
The king.
Or what was left of him.
He emerged from the bleeding ceiling like a corpse rising from a bog, his royal robes hanging in tatters, his skin marbled with black veins. His eyes were gone - in their sockets swirled twin pools of that same inky darkness that had swallowed him in the crypt.
"Father?" The word left Seraphina's lips before she could stop it.
The thing that had been the king turned its head toward her with a sickening crack of vertebrae. When it spoke, the voice was wrong - layered, echoing, as if something much larger was speaking through him.
"You were warned."
The First Queen rose from her throne, the silver threads attached to Lysandra pulling taut. "This is not your domain," she hissed.
The king's body jerked forward, his movements puppet-like. "Nor is it yours. Not anymore."
Cha erupted.
The hair-throne unravelled around Seraphina as the First Queen redirected its strands toward the intruder. They lashed through the air like whips, slicing into the king's corrupted flesh - but the wounds didn't bleed. They gaped, revealing not bone or muscle, but yawning voids that seemed to stretch infinitely inward.
Seraphina hit the ground hard, gasping as air rushed back into her lungs. Her dagger lay just out of reach, its blade reflecting the chaotic dance of shadows and silver light. She scrambled for it, her fingers brushing cold steel - When Lysandra screamed. Not a scream of pain. A scream of awakening.
The silver threads connecting her to the First Queen blazed white-hot, the light travelling backwards along their lengths to engulf the First Queen herself. The ancient monarch threw back her head and howled as the power she'd been siphoning from Lysandra suddenly reversed course, flooding back into her vessel with terrifying force.
Lysandra rose.
Not the hesitant, broken girl who had knelt moments before - but something else entirely. Her silver scars had spread, covering nearly every inch of visible skin, giving her an almost metallic sheen. When she opened her eyes, they were no longer human - just pools of liquid mercury, swirling with unseen currents.
"You're right," Lysandra said, her voice layered with harmonics that didn't belong to her. "Some hungers do run deep."
She clenched her fist.
The First Queen buckled, her body folding in on itself as the silver light consumed her from within. The chamber shook, fleshy walls spasming, teeth-like protrusions shattering and raining down like broken glass.
Seraphina grabbed her dagger and lunged for her sister, but the ground gave way beneath her, the fleshy floor dissolving into a sea of writhing tendrils. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was Lysandra-no, not Lysandra, the thing wearing her sister's face-turning toward the hollowed-out shell of their father with a smile that held too many teeth.
Then - Falling.
Spinning.
The sense of being unravelled, thread by thread.
Until - Light.
Real light.
Sunlight.
Seraphina gasped awake on cold stone, the dawn sky stretching endlessly and pale above her. She was back in the castle courtyard, the ruins of the throne room looming around her. Alone. Except for the crown lying at her feet. Not gold. Not silver. But woven from hair and thorns and teeth, still warm to the touch. And beating.
The crown pulsed in Seraphina's hands like a living thing, each throb sending a vibration through her bones that made her teeth ache. It was heavier than it looked—not with physical weight, but with something deeper, older. The thorns bit into her palms, drawing thin lines of blood that seeped into the braided strands of hair, disappearing as if drunk by the thing itself.
She should have dropped it.
She wanted to drop it.
But her fingers wouldn't obey.
A gust of wind tore through the ruined courtyard, carrying with it the scent of charred stone and something sweetly rotten. The sky above was too pale, too empty, as if the world itself had been drained of colour. No birds sang. No insects hummed. Even the wind died as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a silence so complete it pressed against Seraphina's eardrums like a physical force.
Then— A whisper. Not from the crown. From behind her. Seraphina turned, her body moving sluggishly, as if she were dragging herself through deep water. Lysandra stood at the edge of the courtyard. Or at least, something wearing Lysandra's shape.
Her sister's silver-scarred skin gleamed in the thin morning light, the patterns shifting like liquid mercury with every breath she took. Her eyes—gods, her eyes—were no longer the warm brown Seraphina remembered. They were pools of quicksilver, swirling with currents of something dark and fathomless.
"You're awake," Not-Lysandra said. Her voice was wrong. Layered. As if a dozen voices spoke through her at once, some whispering, some screaming, all harmonising into something that scraped against Seraphina's nerves like a blade on stone.
Seraphina's grip tightened on the crown. The thorns bit deeper. "What did you do?"
Not-Lysandra tilted her head, the motion too smooth, too precise. "I survived." She took a step forward, her bare feet leaving faint silver prints on the cracked stone. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
Another step.
Another.
Seraphina stumbled back, her shoulders hitting the remains of a shattered pillar. The crown's pulse quickened, its rhythm syncing with the frantic hammering of her heart.
Not-Lysandra smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "You don't have to be afraid, Sera. I'm still me. Mostly." She held out a hand, palm up. Silver threads danced across her skin, weaving intricate patterns that shifted too quickly to follow. "We can fix this. Together."
The crown burned in Seraphina's grasp.
A vision slammed into her—
The castle, whole and unbroken. The throne room, filled with courtiers in silks and jewels. Herself, seated on the throne, the crown resting heavy on her brow. Lysandra at her side, silver-scarred and smiling. The people are kneeling. The land is flourishing. No hunger. No pain. No war.
It was beautiful. It was wrong.
Seraphina wrenched herself free of the vision with a gasp. Her hands shook. The crown's thorns had burrowed deeper, tiny rivulets of blood tracing the paths of the braided hair.
Not-Lysandra's smile faded. "You see it, don't you? What could we be?"
Seraphina swallowed against the dryness in her throat. "That's not real."
"Of course it is." Not-Lysandra took another step. The silver in her eyes swirled faster. "All you have to do is put it on."
The words slithered into Seraphina's mind, curling around her thoughts like smoke. The crown's pulse grew stronger, its rhythm a siren song whispering of power, of peace, of an end to all her suffering.
All she had to do was— A scream shattered the silence. Not-Lysandra's head snapped toward the sound, her silver eyes narrowing. Seraphina didn't hesitate.
She ran.
The crown stayed clutched in her hands, its weight dragging at her with every step. Behind her, Not-Lysandra let out a sound that was half snarl, half sigh—then the air rippled, and Seraphina knew, without looking back, that she was being followed.
The castle ruins blurred around her as she sprinted, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She didn't know where she was going. Didn't have a plan. All she knew was that she couldn't stop. Couldn't look back.
And she couldn't let go of the crown. Not yet. Not until she understood. Not until she found a way to save what was left of her sister.
The ground sloped downward, the ruins giving way to the overgrown gardens, then to the dense treeline of the forest beyond. The trees loomed ahead, their branches twisting together like grasping fingers. Seraphina plunged into the shadows without slowing. Behind her, the whispers followed.