They rode out of the Deeping Mire in silence, the taste of ancient power still clinging to the air like iron and smoke. Serelith could feel the Codex's energy humming beneath her skin—alive in a way it had never been before.
Not just a book.
Not just a tool.
But a living key.
> "It's watching me," she whispered to Faelan as they rode. "The Codex—it knows me now."
> "What does it want?"
> "Balance. Or destruction. I don't think it cares which."
---
That night, as moonlight bled silver across the canopy, Serelith dreamed.
No—she was pulled.
Through shadow and memory, into a forgotten place where the veil between worlds thinned to nothing.
There stood a god—not a being of light or beauty, but of vast silence.
Its body was made of veils, shifting like smoke.
Its face, a reflection of whoever beheld it.
> "You are my vessel," it said in a voice like crumbling time. "The seal is broken. The end begins with you."
> "Who are you?" Serelith asked.
> "I am the hunger beneath memory. The first name. The silence that followed the world's first cry."
> "Why me?"
> "Because Liora dared to lock me away—and you carry her blood. Her defiance. Her price."
---
Serelith awoke gasping, sweat cold on her skin.
The Codex hovered midair beside her, pages fluttering wildly.
And one word had burned itself into the next blank page:
> Avaeth.
The name of the god.
The one the Hollow Queen sought.
---
Faelan rushed in, sword in hand. "I felt it—Serelith, what happened?"
She looked up at him, eyes haunted.
> "I met it. The god beneath the veil. It's not sleeping anymore."
> "Can we stop it?"
> "I don't know," she said. "But if the Hollow Queen gets to it first, the realms will be torn apart."
Faelan knelt beside her, not in reverence, but in solidarity.
> "Then we'll get there first."
---
Back in the Hollow Court, the Queen stood before her altar of broken stars.
Aelric, bound in shadow-chains, knelt before her.
> "You betrayed her," she said. "But now, you'll serve her fate."
> "She'll never let you win," Aelric said.
> "She already opened the gate. The god knows her. Loves her. Fears her. And soon—it will wear her face."
Her crown pulsed with the rhythm of a forgotten heartbeat.
> "The end is not war. The end is becoming."
---
Far below the veil, Avaeth stirred.
And with it, the world shuddered.