Outside, the House's guards waited with crossbows and bladed nets. Eryndor didn't hesitate. Power ripped from him in violet arcs that splintered walls, sent marble fountains crashing.
Seris fought at his side, blades a whirl of flashing steel. When it ended, bodies lay strewn across the mosaic street red slick on blue tile. Eryndor clutched Seris against his chest.
"Are you still with me?"
"Always. Even if it damns me," she whispered.
They hid that night in a half-collapsed shrine. Rain beat down, cold and merciless. Eryndor lay awake, tracing patterns in Seris's hair.
"What aren't you telling me?" he asked finally. Seris's eyes were dark pools. "That you frighten me sometimes, Eryndor. The way you laugh when you kill. The way that shard inside you glows brighter each time."
He rolled onto his back, staring at the leaking ceiling. "Maybe one day it won't be me you love just the power."
Seris pressed her face to his chest so he wouldn't see her cry. When sleep finally came, the Astra Mourn dragged him deeper.
He stood before a thousand thrones, each stranger than the last wrought of flame, of living vines, of screaming stone. Each throne waited, empty, yet somehow expectant.
From behind one, a figure rose. It wore a mask of mirrors. When it spoke, his own voice came from it.
"When you choose a throne, all others will fall. Remember that." He woke drenched in sweat, lungs burning as if he'd drowned.
They left Oras-Thel by dawn, stealing away on a barque headed for uncharted southern isles. As gulls wheeled overhead, Eryndor wrapped an arm around Seris.
"No more lies," he said. "No more," she agreed, though her pulse fluttered under his fingers.
The Astra Mourn felt almost amused, a warm pulse echoing like laughter in his chest. Ahead lay seas that swallowed entire fleets and secrets even this power had yet to unveil.
Together, they faced the sunrise. Lovers, fugitives, would-be sovereigns bound by something deeper than any contract. Or so they hoped.
The sea voyage was cruel. Waves clawed at the hull, storms howled for days. Yet finally they glimpsed land the Atra Isles, spoken of only in half-terrified whispers.
Here, the very air shimmered, thick with silvery mist that sometimes formed almost-human faces, whispering in languages neither Eryndor nor Seris knew.
Villagers wore necklaces of tiny hourglasses, said to measure the time they had left to live.
"Why would anyone stay here?" Seris breathed. "Some debts are too large to flee. Or too tangled," Eryndor murmured.
In the main port, men auctioned off years of their lives to pay old family obligations. Each transaction sealed by placing a bloody thumbprint on a slate held by priests whose eyes were milk-white with blindness.
The Astra Mourn pulsed as if offended by such small mortal bargains.
They ventured into the Candle Market, where rows of lanterns held captured moments: a child's first laugh, the scent of home after rain, a lover's trembling gasp. Each could be bought, snuffed, or stolen.
A merchant tried to sell Seris a vial holding her own laughter stolen in sleep by dream-thieves. Eryndor crushed the vial in his fist, eyes blazing.
"Steal from her again, and I'll burn your entire stall."
The merchant merely smiled, teeth filed to points. "All flames die. Even the brightest."
They climbed steep cliffs to a shrine carved from living coral, its halls echoing with water that dripped from nowhere.
Inside waited the Oracle of Salt, a woman with skin cracked like drought land, voice rough as broken shells. Her eyes wept constant brine.
"You carry the Astra Mourn. A throne beyond this realm seeks to grow upon your bones." Eryndor scowled. "What does that mean for us?"
The oracle turned her gaze to Seris. "Love always costs. Yours will cost nations. Perhaps more."
That night on the cliffs, the dragon they freed in Valmira returned greater now, scales burnished gold. It landed with a quake, its breath a furnace.
"You broke my chains. I owe you one flight, one war, or one secret. Choose."
Eryndor exchanged a glance with Seris, then said carefully. "A secret. About what I am becoming." The dragon's laugh rolled like thunder.
"Foolish mortal. Very well: The Astra Mourn is not just power it is bait. A lure cast across worlds to find the one willing to bear the weight of countless fallen realms."
It leapt skyward, vanishing into stars, leaving silence behind that felt impossibly heavy.
As they descended back to the harbor, shadowed figures attacked. Swords gleamed; cloaks marked with the twin thrones of Erastai Seris's ancestral dynasty.
"Your family hunts us now?" Eryndor snarled, parrying a blow so hard sparks flew.
"I didn't send them!" Seris cried, slicing a man across the thigh. Blood slicked the stones. When the last attacker fell, Seris knelt, tearing the signet from his throat.
"They're… my mother's personal guard," she whispered. Her hands shook. The Astra Mourn warmed in Eryndor's chest, oddly gentle, as if trying to soothe his roiling fury.
They made camp at the isle's edge, winds cold enough to bite. Eryndor sat apart, eyes on the dark water.
Seris approached slowly. "You believe I betrayed you."
"No. Not yet." His voice was rough. "But every time your old world reaches for us, I wonder how far you'd go to keep it."
She knelt before him, resting her cheek to his knee. "I chose you over palaces. Over armies. Over my mother's pride. Don't make me beg for your trust again."
He cupped her face finally, kissing her hair.
"I don't want to lose us, Seris. Not to kings. Not even to thrones waiting in the dark."
That night the Astra Mourn seized him in sleep, dragging him into a vision of an infinite hall. Thrones stretched forever. Each was occupied by a twisted version of himself: one with eyes of flame, another cloaked in living serpents, another crowned by bones.
At the far end, a throne larger than cities waited empty. From it poured whispers like a thousand dying gods.
"Choose us, bear us, rule us… or drown with your fragile love." He awoke gasping, clutching his chest. Seris's arms wrapped around him, grounding him in warmth.
The next day, desperate to flee the Atra Isles before more assassins came, they struck a deal with Captain Veyren, a corsair lord whose ship was armed with cannons that spat blue fire.
"You'll pay double my usual price," Veyren sneered, gold rings glittering in his beard.
"And you'll get double a corpse if you cross us," Eryndor shot back, letting a flicker of Astra light dance across his palm.
Veyren laughed, clapped him on the shoulder. "I like you already, boy." Days aboard the Storm's Teeth were tense. Eryndor spent hours at the prow, studying charts, learning how Veyren commanded with just glances.
Seris, meanwhile, grew quiet, watching seagulls wheel overhead with haunted eyes.
One night she whispered,
"If you ever decide all of this me, these oceans, the crowns isn't worth it... tell me. Let me go before the Astra Mourn does."
He pulled her against him fiercely.
"You don't get to leave, Seris. We started this together. We finish it together.
But far inside, the Astra Mourn coiled, neither agreeing nor denying. On the seventh night, sails appeared on the horizon dark, tattered, marked by the serpent sigil of the House of Veins. War galleons bristling with spell engines.
Veyren shouted orders. Cannons roared. Eryndor stood at the bow, the Astra Mourn a brilliant sunburst in his chest. Beams of violet fire lanced from his hands, slicing enemy decks in half.
Seris fought at his side, blades gleaming with sea spray and blood. When the last enemy sank, Eryndor sagged to his knees. Seris cradled him, whispering,
"You're more than any throne. You're still mine. Promise me that stays true."
He pressed his forehead to hers."So long as I breathe." But the Astra Mourn pulsed deep within, as if murmuring other plans entirely.
Their corsair ship finally anchored at Aranthor, a continent that was once the seat of a thousand rival kings now reduced to ruins draped in ivy and fog.
Eryndor stood on a broken quay, Seris at his side. Ahead, skeletal towers pierced low clouds. Statues lay decapitated in courtyards littered with rusted crowns.
"Imagine all the power that once lived here," Seris whispered. "Imagine why it all died," Eryndor answered grimly. The Astra Mourn pulsed, almost greedily, as if feasting on echoes of old thrones.
In a crumbling library beneath an overgrown palace, they found tomes bound in what felt eerily like skin. Glyphs crawled across the pages when Eryndor touched them, whispering in languages long lost.
One passage read:
"The Bearer of the Astra Mourn shall forge a throne not upon land, nor in the void between stars, but within the marrow of all realms. And by this, either remake creation… or end it."
Seris closed the book sharply. "If these texts are true, Eryndor… your throne might mean the death of countless worlds."
They were not alone. Hired blades of the House of Veins tracked them to the library, drawn by the Astra Mourn's radiance.
Swords rang in dusty halls. Seris danced among columns, her twin daggers slick with red. Eryndor stood at the heart of a shattered mosaic, hands glowing with searing violet arcs.
When the last foe fell, the mosaic cracked completely, revealing a pit beneath. From it drifted cold air that smelled of centuries, promising both secrets and dangers below.
They descended by torchlight into vast caverns stacked with thrones thousands, toppled and broken, made from jade, glass, bones, even still-squirming roots.
The Astra Mourn brightened until it nearly burst from Eryndor's chest. He staggered, clutching at the pain. In his mind, voices clamored.
"Choose us… Rule through us… Be our sovereign, Bearer…"
Seris wrapped her arms around him, grounding him. The voices dimmed. But not entirely. They never truly left.
At the cavern's deepest edge lay a coiled beast. a colossal serpent with scales that shimmered like onyx poured over quicksilver. Its eyes opened, twin pools of black starlight.
"I was crowned before your oldest mountains were born," it hissed.
"I can grant you dominion beyond mortal imagining if you feed me one secret, stolen from her heart." Seris tightened her grip on Eryndor's arm. He snarled, "Get your throne from some other fool."
The serpent laughed, a sound like mountains breaking. "So be it. But remember the greatest crowns demand the deepest betrayals." It slithered back into darkness, leaving only the echo of its promise.