The ruins weren't ruins.
Sunrei realized the truth as the blackened structures rose from the receding tide this was no city. The jagged spires were ribs, the archways the curve of a spine half-buried in the sand. They stood on the corpse of something vast, something old, its bones fossilized into towers.
Kaelis kicked a curved bone the size of her forearm. Please tell me this isn't another Maw.
Velyn ran his fingers along the nearest structure, his blackened nails leaving trails in the damp surface. Older, he murmured. Hungrier.
Liri pressed her palm to the ground. The sand trembled beneath her touch. It's waking.
Sunrei's scar burned in time with the pulse beneath their feet.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a drum.
Like something answering.
The first brand lay at the corpse-city's heart.
Not a weapon.
A lock.
Sunrei recognized the design immediately the same jagged edges as his scar, the same faint glow. But where his mark had burned gold, this one pulsed violet-black, its light eating at the air around it.
Velyn circled it like a starving man at a feast. They made it from his heart, he whispered. The first prisoner. The first sin.
Ryna's tattoos flared. We need to destroy it.
Liri grabbed her wrist. No. It's the only thing holding him back.
Sunrei stepped forward. The brand called to him, its voice a whisper in his bones. He knew what it wanted.
What he'd always done.
Kaelis's knife pressed against his ribs. Don't you dare.
Sunrei met her gaze. It's why I exist.
Then he moved.
The brand seared into his palm with the sound of cracking bone.
Pain.
Then
Power.
Violet light exploded outward, tearing through the corpse-city like wildfire. The ground split, revealing glimpses of something moving in the depths something with too many eyes and teeth like shattered mountains.
Velyn laughed as the first tendril emerged. At last!
The voice that answered wasn't a voice at all. It was the sound of the world unmaking, of stars going dark, of time itself fraying at the edges.
WARDEN.
Sunrei's knees hit the ground. The brand in his palm fused, its edges digging deeper, changing him. He felt it in his teeth, in his blood the truth of what he was.
What he'd always been.
A cage.
A lock.
A sacrifice.
Kaelis screamed his name.
Liri began to sing.
And the prisoner rose.
The battle lasted seconds.
Or centuries.
Time meant nothing here.
Sunrei fought with more than flesh he wielded the brand's power like a blade, carving into the thing that called itself prisoner. It howled, its form unraveling, its essence spilling into the cracks between worlds.
But it wasn't enough.
The prisoner was too vast. Too ancient.
And Sunrei was just one man.
One warden.
One failure.
Then
A hand on his shoulder.
Liri, her silver-gold hair whipping in the unnatural wind. You're not alone.
Her fingers dug into his scar.
And the world shifted.
They stood in a field of white flowers.
The prisoner loomed above them, its form flickering between shadow and something almost human.
Liri's voice was calm. You remember this place.
Sunrei did.
The field from his dreams.
The place between deaths.
The place where it always began.
The prisoner hissed. TRICKSTER.
Liri smiled. No.
She pressed her palm to Sunrei's chest.
Just a better liar.
Then she pushed
and the field burned.
Sunrei woke on the shore.
The corpse-city was gone. The sea had returned, calm and endless under a dawn-streaked sky.
His hand ached.
The brand was gone, leaving only a fresh scar in its place a twin to the one on his wrist.
Kaelis crouched beside him, her knives bloody. Velyn?
Gone. Ryna's voice came from behind them. Her tattoos were dark again. For now.
Liri sat at the water's edge, her back to them. When Sunrei touched her shoulder, she turned
and he staggered.
Her eyes were black.
Not like Velyn's.
Darker.
Older.
She smiled, and for a heartbeat, Sunrei saw the truth.
Then it was just Liri again, her silver-gold hair catching the morning light.
Don't look so surprised, she murmured. You didn't think you were the only warden, did you?