The Forgotten King stirred from his place atop a mountain of bone and ash. The air in his decaying stronghold pulsed with a disturbance....not his, but close.
His rotting lip curled.
"What are you doing, little siren whore…"
He lifted a hand, talon tipped fingers slicing through the veil between realms like tissue. Through the tear, he watched Lorelei writhing in blood and smoke, trying to rip the soul seed from her chest and give it form.
Foolish.
Delicious.
"Ah, so the vessel rejects him," he whispered, eyes gleaming with sick amusement. "Even the parasite's rot has limits."
He leaned back in his throne of jagged blackstone, one foot resting on the cracked skull of a long dead demigod. Thoughts churned like smoke.
He could leave her to burn out. Let the Entity destroy her from the inside.
Or…
He could use her.
Just like he had used the Bone Seers....twisting desperate women into prophets of ruin.
She wasn't stable. She wasn't pure. But she was powerful. And she hated the Entity nearly as much as he did.
"Desperation makes fine kindling," he murmured, stepping through the rift.
The ritual chamber stank of death and betrayal. Lorelei was curled on the floor, coughing blood, her veins lit up with cursed magic.
She didn't even look up when the room turned cold.
"Come to laugh?" she rasped.
The Forgotten King knelt beside her, his voice like silk dipped in venom.
"No, darling. I came to offer you a deal."
Her head snapped toward him, eyes burning.
"What kind of deal?"
"The same I gave the Bone Seers. Power beyond comprehension. Revenge on the one who enslaved you. And in return…"
He cupped her jaw with skeletal fingers, forcing her to meet his black, soulless eyes.
"You serve me."
Lorelei stared, trembling, then grinned, teeth bloodstained and wild.
"Deal."
He dragged a claw down her spine and marked her with a rune so old the stone beneath her cracked.
The deal was sealed.
And in the depths of the Entity's prison, a distant, enraged scream echoed through the void.
The scream that left Lorelei's throat was unholy, more beast than woman.....as the transformation began.
Bones cracked.
Skin shimmered.
Hair that had dulled to lifeless straw burst into silver white flame, cascading in thick waves down her back. Her sunken eyes lit up, glowing with runes as old as the Realms themselves, carved in pain and sealed in blood.
Her body arched, levitating off the ritual floor as a crown of bone and ember formed above her head, spinning like a halo of war. The dark deal she'd just struck pulsed in her veins like wildfire.
She wasn't dying.
She was ascending.
"What is… happening to me?" she gasped, breath hitching as her feet touched the stone again....lighter, stronger, divine.
The Forgotten King stood before her, a pleased grin curving his mouth into something monstrous.
"You are becoming what you were always meant to be," he whispered. "A Bone Seer. My oracle. My weapon."
Lorelei looked down at her arms. Her pale skin was etched now with crimson latticework, living wards of power that pulsed with raw magic. Her fingertips shimmered with bone white flame, and when she stepped forward, her bare feet left behind molten prints on the stone.
And then, without ceremony, the Forgotten King plunged a clawed hand into her chest.
"You don't need this anymore," he growled.
Lorelei choked but did not scream.
With a violent pull, he ripped the seed of the Entity's soul from her heart. It came out hissing, writhing, trying to take shape....and screaming in every tongue that had ever existed.
"You ungrateful wretches! YOU DARE!?"
The Forgotten King snapped his fingers.
An ancient black cage, carved from the bones of god killers and etched with blood magic older than creation, slammed shut around the seed. It hissed and howled, but there was no escape.
"You belong to no one now," the Forgotten King said coldly. "And you will rot in silence."
He turned to Lorelei, who now stood tall and ethereal, her features hauntingly beautiful....serene and deadly.
She looked like vengeance dressed in moonlight and madness.
"We just clipped the Entity's wings," she purred, tilting her head. "And I feel fucking fabulous."
They laughed together....bone deep and bloodthirsty.
The Entity had gambled on her pain. But pain, in Lorelei's hands now?
Was a fucking weapon.
The air crackled.
Rhiannan shot up in bed, drenched in sweat, her breath ragged and shallow. Her mates stirred beside her, but it wasn't them that woke her.
It was something else.
"Goddess, you felt that too?" Sasha's voice cut through the comms, sharp and shaken. "That was not normal. That was not good."
Rhiannan clutched her belly, feeling the divine swell ripple through her bones like icy fire. The triplets kicked in response, as if even they knew something evil had just twisted itself deeper into the realms.
"What the fuck was that?" she whispered into the darkness.
"Something ancient just reawakened," Sasha answered, her tone flat and cold, which only made it more terrifying. "It was like… blood magic being reborn. Bone seer level shit. But the signature's unfamiliar. It's not Veltherion, at least not directly."
Rhiannan rubbed her eyes, heart still hammering.
"Can you trace it?"
"No. It's veiled. Hidden. Whatever the fuck just rose from the dirt doesn't want to be found."
She stood, pulling on a robe, but her hands trembled.
"Sasha, wake the guardians, but keep the wards quiet. No full lockdown. Let's not freak the castle out tonight."
"Copy. You want to brief the others?"
"No," Rhiannan said, her voice steel. "Let them sleep. We'll deal with this thing in the morning."
Sasha didn't argue.
The rune comm went silent, but Rhiannan didn't sit back down.
She just stood there, eyes on the darkened sky beyond the tower window, the moon watching like a silent omen.
"Whatever the hell that was… we're not ready for it. Not yet."
And deep in the night, something laughed.
Just once.
Just loud enough to make the gods shiver.