The first thing I changed was my hair.
The sky above Hallowmere had stopped pretending to be normal. It bled in slow pulses now—blue turning pink, pink turning red, red veined with black—and every time the color shifted, the world shivered. Birds no longer sang. The fields outside the village had the dull, stunned look of something waiting to be hit.
So I tied my hair back.
It was a small thing. Pointless, really. But rituals don't have to matter to be comforting.
My fingers moved through the long golden-orange strands, weaving them into a loose tail that fell between my shoulders. In the polished steel plate someone had nailed to the guest house wall as a makeshift mirror, I watched the reflection shift: the same face, the same black eyes with floating red crosses, wrapped in a new frame.
New world, new look.
"We're really doing the hair thing now?" Kaen's voice drifted from the doorway.
"You didn't complain when you burned your shirt," I said.
He leaned against the frame, bare arms crossed over a simple dark vest, skin steaming faintly in the cool morning air. "That's different," he said. "Fire is art. Hair is vanity."
"Everything we do is vanity," Veyra said from the table, where she was braiding small white flowers into her own hair. The petals browned and then regenerated as she touched them, caught in a loop between decay and bloom. "That's what makes it fun."
Lyra sat on the floor, needle in hand, stitching faint, shimmering lines into the hem of her new coat. The fabric was Hallowmere wool, but where her thread passed the material turned slick and glossy, like mirror-skin. "If we're staying long enough to watch a world suffocate," she said, "we might as well look good for it."
Cirel lay on her back on the bench, arms folded under her head, dark hair spilling over the wood. "The villagers already think we're angels," she said. "We should at least dress appropriately for their disappointment."
Alinor sat cross-legged on the windowsill, bare feet tucked under her, watching the sky through half-lidded eyes. She wore loose, pale clothes now—shades of gray and white that looked like someone had tried to pin down fog and failed. "The cracks are louder this morning," she murmured.
Sareth adjusted the cloak around his shoulders. It was darker than before, threads of shadow from the demon realm woven into Hallowmere cloth, the Graveveil Chains wrapped neatly along his forearms. "The lower world is almost gone," he said. "When it breaks, it will look for somewhere to fall."
My new hair tie—a simple band of leather that hadn't existed yesterday—pulled tight. I turned from the mirror.
"Then we should pick our pet," I said.
Veyra's eyes lit up immediately. "The priestess," she said. "Please."
Lyra smiled. "We haven't even voted."
"We don't need to," Kaen said. "She's the only one here interesting enough."
Cirel rolled off the bench and landed lightly on her feet. "She stared at us like she was trying to memorize the end of the world," she said. "That earns points."
Alinor slid down from the windowsill. "She dreams loudly," she added. "Last night she saw the sun split. She blamed herself. It was cute."
Sareth nodded once. "The world doesn't care who she is," he said. "That makes her perfect."
I picked up Eclipsera from where it rested against the wall. The scythe vibrated faintly in my hand, as if eager. The orange metal gleamed in the bloody morning light; the black miasma leaking from its blade curled and blended with the shadows on the floor.
"Then it's decided," I said. "In this world…"
"A vote of seven," Lyra said gently, "is still a vote. Or do we pretend to care?"
They looked at me.
I shrugged. "All in favor of Lysa as this realm's pet?" I asked.
Six hands rose without hesitation. Mine made seven.
"Done," I said.
Veyra clapped quietly, delighted.
Outside, the sky cracked again.
—
Lysa had not changed her clothes.
Priest robes were apparently not fashion items you swapped out when the heavens tore open. White linen, silver cord, dark hair tied back in a single braid—she stood at the base of the temple steps with Master Den, staring up at the sun as it flickered between white and red.
The villagers huddled in the square. Some knelt. Some clutched charms. Some stared blankly at nothing, already emptied out.
The bell tower that had lost its bells still stood like a broken finger. The well was cracked but not yet dry. The air tasted of iron and stone dust and fear.
We walked out of the guest house and into the square.
The villagers saw us and flinched, as if we'd caused the light to change by opening the door. Maybe they were right.
Lysa's jaw tightened. She lowered her gaze from the sky and fixed it on us. Tired eyes, sleepless, rimmed red.
"You look different," she said to me.
"We felt underdressed for the apocalypse," I said.
Her gaze flicked to my tied-back hair, my dark, cleaner coat, the subtle changes in the others—the burn-mark patterns on Kaen's vest, the mirrored edges of Lyra's sleeves, the fresh white flowers in Veyra's braids, the reversed colors of Cirel's shirt, the way Alinor's clothes seemed to blur at the edges, the new shadows stitched into Sareth's cloak.
"You change like it's nothing," she whispered. "Like none of this matters."
"It matters," Sareth said. "Just not to us."
She took a step toward me, silver staff biting into the cracked stone. "The sky is ripping," she said. "The ground is shaking. The Flame is silent. You said it was because of your world—because of whatever you did to it. If that's true, then—"
"If?" Kaen interrupted. "She still says if."
"It's true," I said.
Her throat worked. "Then this bleed—this… infection—can be stopped."
"No," Alinor said.
Lysa turned on her. "Why not?"
Alinor tilted her head. "Because you're already part of it," she said softly. "You can't unspill blood. You can't unfall worlds. You can only… watch."
Lysa's grip tightened on her staff. For a moment I thought she might swing it at Alinor's face. She didn't. She turned back to me instead.
"You said last night I should say goodbye," she said.
I remembered. The dim temple. The guttering brazier. Her stubborn eyes. You should say goodbye to them tonight.
"I don't want to," she said. "But I think you're right. And I hate that."
"We're right about a lot of things," Veyra said helpfully.
The sky pulsed again.
This time the sunlight stuttered.
For a few seconds, daylight vanished entirely. The world went dim, then dark, then blazed back red. A distant, low rumble rolled across the fields, like the echo of a mountain falling.
Den made the sign of the Veiled Flame with trembling fingers. "The temple said nothing about this," he whispered.
"Temples don't like being wrong," Cirel said.
"They should be used to it," Lyra added.
Lysa ignored them. She looked at me with something new in her eyes—not just fear now, but calculation.
"You're leaving," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"When?"
"When it becomes interesting," I said.
Lightning spidered through the clouds.
Not white. Dark. Black veins of nothingness, splitting the sky and revealing glimpses of something red behind it. A smell like burnt stone flooded the air. The villagers began to panic in earnest now—screaming, shoving, grabbing children, pressing against the edges of the square as if walls would save them.
Lysa's shoulders squared.
"Take me with you," she said.
Behind me, I felt the group's attention sharpen.
Veyra's eyes widened, then narrowed into delighted crescents. "She asked," she whispered. "Oh, that makes it better."
Den stared at her, betrayed. "Lysa—"
She didn't look at him. "If staying means watching Hallowmere die with no way to stop it," she said, voice steady with effort, "then I won't stay. If the world breaks because of you, I want to see what comes after. I want to see where you go. I want to know why all of this is happening. I… I don't want to die having never understood."
"That's a terrible reason," Cirel said, amused. "And a perfect one."
Kaen crossed his arms. "We don't need her," he said. "We already broke her world."
"We don't need any of them," Lyra said. "That's the point."
Alinor watched Lysa like she was a bird with a broken wing. "She dreams loudly," she repeated. "I like loud dreams."
Sareth's gaze drifted to the villagers crowding the square's edges. "Leaving her here won't save them," he said. "Taking her won't doom them. Their fate's already written. She's the only line that can still be moved."
Veyra stepped closer to Lysa, smiling with all her teeth. "You really want this?" she asked. "To leave everything?"
Lysa's lips trembled. "No," she admitted. "But I want to live more."
Veyra's smile softened into something worse than cruelty: fondness. "I like her honesty," she said.
They all looked at me.
Eclipsera vibrated in my grip, miasma thickening around the blade, reaching for the cracks in the stone. The Shattered Crown mark over my heart burned a little hotter.
"You understand what we are," I said. "As much as you can. You've already seen one world begin to break. You heard the sky tear. You smelled another realm bleed through. You still want to follow?"
"Yes," she said. No hesitation this time.
"Then you're our pet," I said.
The word hung in the air. It didn't sound like what it was. It sounded almost gentle.
The villagers hissed. Den made a choking sound. Lysa flinched, but her chin lifted.
"I'm not a dog," she said.
"No," I agreed. "Dogs are easier."
Veyra laughed and clapped her hands once, delighted.
Lyra flicked her fingers. Thin silver threads spun out and wrapped lightly around Lysa's wrists—not binding, just marking. The Spiral Needle symbol along Lyra's arm glowed faintly.
"You can walk," Lyra said. "But now we don't lose you."
Lysa looked down at the threads, then back up at me. "And them?" she asked, gesturing toward the villagers. "What happens to them?"
The ground shook again, hard enough that several people fell. A faint roar rolled across the sky.
"They die," Sareth said.
She flinched like he'd struck her.
"There's still time," she insisted, staring up at the sky. "If we strengthen the wards, if we pray harder, if we—"
"The world doesn't listen," Cirel said. "It's busy tearing."
"Come with us or stay with them," Kaen said. "Those are your choices. You don't get a third one."
Den limped forward, grabbing Lysa's arm. "Don't go," he begged. "If you leave us now—"
She turned to him, eyes shining. "If I stay, I watch you die," she whispered. "If I go, I… I might…"
"Live?" he asked.
"Learn," she said.
His hand fell from her arm.
Lightning cracked again, closer now. The sky above the village split a little wider. Through the gap, for a split second, Lysa saw something impossible: a tower burning in sideways gravity, a river flowing upward, a city of black stone crumbling into a red, starless void.
She had never seen the demon world. She saw it now, in flashes.
Her knees buckled. I caught her elbow before she fell.
"Careful," I said. "We haven't even left yet."
She looked up at me. In the shifting light, the red crosses in my eyes reflected the fractured sun.
"What do you get out of this?" she asked quietly. "Taking me."
"Entertainment," Veyra said.
"Observation," Lyra said.
"Noise," Kaen said.
"A witness," Sareth murmured.
"A dream," Alinor whispered.
"A toy," Cirel added.
I smiled. "Perspective," I said. "It's fun to see the end of a world through the eyes of someone who thought it mattered."
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. When she spoke next, her voice didn't shake.
"Then let's go," she said.
The sky obliged.
—
The first crack opened above the village.
It wasn't large. Not compared to what came later. Just a jagged tear slicing through the clouds, edges glowing white-hot. Behind it, something red moved—a rolling, boiling mass of light like the surface of a dying star.
The air screamed.
Everyone in the square dropped, hands to their ears. The sound vibrated through teeth and bone, an ugly, grinding shriek that had nothing to do with sound waves and everything to do with space forgetting how to hold itself together.
The temple's roof split down the middle. Stones tumbled. The Veiled Flame, which had already gone out once, flickered back on for a single, panicked heartbeat, then snuffed itself, smoke sucked upward into the forming rift.
The crack widened.
"Time to go," Kaen said.
We stood as the only ones still upright.
The villagers crawled, whimpered, clutched each other. Den threw himself over a child, shielding him with his frail body. The smith clung to his doorframe. Someone screamed Lysa's name; she didn't look back.
The miasma from Eclipsera rose, swirling around my knees, drawn upward by the rift's pull.
"It's hungry," Veyra said, watching the tear with bright eyes.
"Worlds always are at the end," Sareth replied.
Lyra's threads around Lysa's wrists glowed brighter. "Stay close," she said.
Lysa swallowed and nodded. Her hand, clenching the broken stump of her staff, shook once, then steadied.
The square buckled.
Stones lifted, floated, then shattered. The well's remaining wall crumbled. The bell-less tower finally toppled, falling sideways in slow motion, then dissolving into ash before it hit the ground.
"Is this how it felt in your last world?" Lysa asked, voice thin.
"No," Alinor said. "That one begged louder."
Lightning lanced down from the crack.
Not toward us.
Toward the village.
It struck the farthest house first, spearing through roof and floor like the structure wasn't there. The house folded in on itself, vanishing in a blink, leaving only a scorch mark on the stone—and then even that was gone, as if it had never been built.
The villagers screamed.
"Interesting," Lyra murmured. "It's not burning. It's… erasing."
"The lower realm is tearing chunks off this one as it falls," Sareth said. "It's stealing room to die in."
Cirel laughed softly. "Borrowed grave."
Lightning struck again. Another house. Another absence.
Lysa made a choked sound. "We have to help them," she said. "We can't just—"
"We can," Kaen said.
The crack overhead flared, widening so fast the clouds blurred. The red beyond grew brighter, closer. Now we could all see it clearly: the demon world, or what was left of it—floating islands of obsidian, rivers of molten stone freezing mid-air, citadel spires breaking apart in slow, stately arcs.
The Third Infernal Court, mid-death.
"It's beautiful," Veyra whispered.
The rift descended.
That's what it felt like, anyway. One moment it was high in the sky, a split far away. The next it was… closer. Not just wider. Lower. The clouds parted around its edges as if making room.
The village square tilted toward it like a bowl being emptied.
Lysa lost her footing. The ground sloped under us at an impossible angle. People slid, scrabbling for purchase, fingers clawing at stone that no longer cared about friction.
I planted the end of Eclipsera's shaft into the cracking cobbles. The miasma smoothed the angle under my feet, reality reshaping itself slightly around me.
"Hold on," I told Lysa.
She grabbed my arm with both hands. Lyra's threads pulled taut around her wrists, binding her to us even more firmly.
Kaen dug his fingers into the stone like it was soft clay. Veyra balanced on the balls of her feet, laughing breathlessly. Cirel leaned into the tilt like a child on a hill. Alinor simply lifted her feet off the ground and let herself drift, skirts fluttering. Sareth stood perfectly still—gravity never seemed to remember him properly.
The rift yawned open above us, a vertical sea of red and black and white. From the depths of that light, I saw a city I recognized—shattered towers, broken bridges, a palace cracking along its spine.
The Demon Capital.
"Home," Cirel murmured ironically.
Lightning wrapped around us.
Not heat-lightning. Not electricity. Lines of tearing reality snapped down from the rift, encircling the square, isolating us in a cage of sharp brightness. The villagers on the periphery screamed as the light brushed them and erased their feet, their legs, half their bodies.
They didn't bleed.
They simply ceased.
Lysa saw it happen. She gagged.
"You said if I came with you, I'd live," she choked.
"I said you'd see what comes next," I corrected. "Living was your assumption."
The ground vanished.
Not slowly. Not dramatically. One moment we stood on cracked stone amid frantic villagers in a broken square under a bleeding sky. The next there was nothing under us but light and falling.
We dropped.
—
Falling between worlds is a strange thing.
You don't feel air. There's no wind. There's no sense of up or down, left or right. There's only direction—not spatial, but… inevitable.
Lysa screamed for the first few seconds. Then her voice was ripped away—not cut off, just peeled from her like sound had grown tired of clinging to her throat and left.
She clung to my arm. Her eyes leaked tears that floated upward, downward, sideways, then burned to mist.
Around us, the others fell with varying levels of enthusiasm.
Veyra spread her arms and spun. "Better than flying," she called, though the words felt like thoughts more than sound.
Kaen laughed, lava-bright cracks flickering along his skin, the void around him rippling with heat.
Lyra held one hand out, fingers splayed, catching threads of passing light, twining them into something only she understood.
Cirel fell on her back, staring up at what we'd left. Hallowmere was already smaller, its green and gray washed in red tint, its edges fraying.
Alinor twirled a lock of her hair and watched nonexistent stars blink in and out around us.
Sareth simply fell, cloak wrapped around him, chains drifting weightless.
I held Eclipsera loose at my side. The scythe sang in a frequency that wasn't sound. The Shattered Crown mark over my heart burned hot, then cold, then both.
Ahead—below—whatever direction it was—something grew.
The Demon world surged up to meet us.
—
Third-person eyes saw them first.
In the ruins of the Third Infernal Court's capital, the sky had been screaming for hours.
Lord Vaedros stood on his cracked throne platform, sword buried in the stone at his feet. The palace behind him was half-collapsed, its bone pillars snapped like twigs. The courtyard below was filled with demons—soldiers, nobles, civilians—huddled together, eyes turned upward.
The red sky, once a familiar blanket, now yawned open in a jagged wound.
Through it, Vaedros could see another realm—flickers of blue, then green, then ash as the bleed intensified. Lightning of nothingness lashed between the worlds, pulling chunks of his sky away.
And now—
Now he saw seven falling shapes.
They descended from the tear—not flailing, not helpless, but poised, stretched in clean lines. For a moment they were black silhouettes against the blinding rift, featureless, their outlines haloed in red.
Then the light adjusted.
Vaedros recognized them.
His jaw clenched. His hands tightened on the hilt of his sword.
Beside him, a small hand clutched his cloak. "Father," a child's voice whispered, high and trembling. "Those are the ones Seraphine told us about."
His younger daughter.
Not a warrior. Not a princess who led hunts through the Demonwood. A girl with tiny horns and too-bright eyes, who hid in shadows and listened at doors. Her cloak was too big for her. Her hands shook as she pointed at the sky.
"Yes," Vaedros said.
The Eclipsed Seven fell toward them.
—
We hit the ground like we owned it.
Not with a crash. Not with a crater. Just—impact. A ripple through cracked stone. The energy bled off into the dying realm instead of exploding. The Demon Capital took the blow like it had expected it.
I landed standing.
Eclipsera's blade kissed the shattered courtyard, sending a thin wave of black miasma rolling outward in a slow circle. It passed through ash, blood, broken banners, the trembling feet of demons.
Veyra touched down lightly beside me, braids swinging, Hallowmere flowers already browning in this harsher air.
Kaen hit harder, knees bending, cracks splitting outward from his boots, lava-glow leaking through.
Lyra's feet barely disturbed the dust. Her coat had shifted; the mirrored edges now reflected broken pillars and red sky.
Cirel landed lying down, because of course she did, then rolled lazily onto her knees.
Alinor stepped softly, as if descending a staircase only she could see.
Sareth didn't seem to land at all. One moment he was above; the next he was simply standing, cloak settling around him.
Lysa arrived last, half-falling, half yanked by Lyra's glowing threads. She stumbled, knees hitting the stone. The air knocked out of her lungs. She coughed once, twice, sucking in the Demon realm's heat and ash.
She looked up.
The world that met her eyes was a nightmare.
The proud spires of black stone she had glimpsed through the crack were now broken teeth jutting from a bleeding gum. Buildings leaned at impossible angles, held together by stubbornness rather than physics. Rivers of molten rock flowed in mid-air, occasionally turning solid before crashing down in chunks. The sky was torn open in several places, each wound showing glimpses of other collapsing layers.
And in the center of it all, on the raised throne platform, stood the Demon King.
Lord Vaedros.
He looked worse than when we'd left him.
Armor cracked. Horns chipped. One eye swollen, bruised. Blood soaked the edge of his jaw. His sword's runes flickered weakly instead of blazing. Beside him stood his consort, silver-eyed and pale. On his other side clung a small girl—seven, maybe eight in human years—with short, budding horns and eyes like coals that had never seen a hearth.
The child stared at us with naked shock and a thin thread of something else.
Awe.
The courtyard was full. Demons packed shoulder to shoulder, wings folded tight, weapons drawn but pointed at the ground. There was nowhere left to run, no higher ground to seek; the palace was the last intact structure for miles.
No one spoke at first.
They all just… watched.
This is how legends feel, I thought. Heavy and stupid.
Then Vaedros found his voice.
"You came back," he said.
His voice was hoarse, shredded by shouting, cracked by power half-spent. But it carried.
I smiled up at him.
"We missed the end of your party," I said. "We thought we'd drop in."
Beside me, Lysa stared between Vaedros and the crowd. "Demons," she whispered. For her, that word had always been something abstract. Distant. Now it was thousands of faces, horns, eyes, teeth, all turned toward her.
"You," the consort hissed, stepping forward, eyes fixed on us. "You did this."
I tilted my head. "We helped," I said.
Kaen laughed once, low. "You did some of it yourselves," he added.
Vaedros' gaze dropped to Lysa, then rose back to me. "You brought a mortal," he said.
"A pet," Veyra corrected cheerfully.
The demon king's jaw tightened. His younger daughter pressed closer to him, eyes wide.
"Seraphine was right," the girl whispered, voice trembling. "They're… pretty."
Pretty.
I heard the word. Felt it settle in the air like ash.
Vaedros closed his eyes briefly. Regret flickered across his features. When he opened them again, the light in them was different. Not just anger. Not just pride.
Recognition.
"We thought you were weapons I could point," he said slowly. "We thought you were demons without court, power without allegiance. We thought—"
"You thought you were above us," Cirel said softly. "It's adorable that you still sort things into above and below."
He ignored her. His gaze never left mine.
"I should have killed you when you first arrived," he said.
"You couldn't," Sareth said.
"I should have tried," Vaedros snapped.
"Yes," I agreed. "You probably should have."
His hands tightened on the sword. The runes along its blade flared weakly.
"We invited you to our table," he said. "We offered you food, beds, a path out of our lands. We let you walk away. And still the sky tears and the ground dies."
"Yes," I said.
He laughed then. It was not a happy sound. It wasn't even angry. It was… broken. "We were fools," he said. "We thought we could treat storms as guests."
The child at his side tugged his cloak. "Father," she whispered. "Can they fix it?"
Her eyes—large, round, hopeful—met mine.
It was almost painful.
"No," I said.
The hope died. Quickly. Quietly.
Something hardened in her.
"You see?" Lyra murmured. "We don't even have to kill them. They do it to themselves."
The cracks in the sky widened.
Another chunk of world fell away at the horizon—an entire mountain range, crumbling into red mist as it dropped.
The palace platform shuddered.
Vaedros looked up at his dying realm, then back down at us.
"I should have worshiped you," he said.
The words were soft but carried across the courtyard like a spell.
The demons around him stirred, confusion and horror flickering across their faces.
His consort turned to him, eyes wide. "My lord—"
"We should have," he continued, louder now. "From the moment you stepped through the Demonwood. From the moment you stood in my hall and refused to kneel. We should have bowed then, not from fear, but from understanding. You weren't guests. You weren't enemies. You weren't allies. You were—"
"Wrong," Cirel supplied.
"Above," Sareth said.
"Beyond," Alinor whispered.
"Endings," Vaedros finished. "You were the shape of what comes after."
Lysa stared up at him, stunned. This was not the speech she'd expected from a demon lord.
The little girl at his side tugged his cloak again. "Father, don't say that," she pleaded. "If you call them gods, they'll—"
"They already are," he said.
He met my gaze again.
"I would beg," he said evenly. "But it's too late, isn't it?"
I considered lying. Just to see his face.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded once. Acceptance. A king's dignity at the end. "Then if my world must die," he said, "let it die with clarity."
He stepped back from the edge of the platform, drawing his sword fully from the stone. The runes flared brighter, feeding on the last of his strength. He lifted the blade in a salute—not to us, but to the realm around him.
Then he spoke, not to me, not to us, but to the demons packed into the courtyard, to the city, to the broken sky.
"Look at them," he commanded. His voice boomed across the ruins. "All of you. Don't avert your eyes. Don't hide. Don't pray. Look."
Reluctantly, fearfully, they lifted their faces.
Thousands of eyes.
On us.
On me.
"In my arrogance," Vaedros said, "I treated them as bargaining chips. I tried to make deals with storms. I thought power could be measured. I thought everything that bleeds can be killed."
He laughed once, bitter. "I was wrong."
The ground shook again.
Behind us, the rift we'd fallen through remained open. Above us, more cracks fanned out, bleeding light. The demon realm wheezed.
Vaedros spread his free hand toward us.
"Remember them," he said. "Not as neighbors. Not as conquerors. As the ones we should have feared rightly. As the ones we should have bowed to while there was still something left to bow from."
His daughter stared at us.
The awe in her eyes did not die, even as tears gathered at their corners.
"They're beautiful," she whispered again, voice breaking.
Veyra's smile softened. "She gets it," she said.
Lysa looked from Vaedros to me, horror and understanding warring on her face. "He's… surrendering," she said. "He's not even asking you to spare them."
"He knows better," Sareth said.
"He knows there's only one thing left to see," Cirel added.
Lysa swallowed. "What?"
I lifted Eclipsera from the stone.
The miasma thickened, rising in swirling columns. The Shattered Crown burned hot against my chest. Around me, I felt the others' symbols stir—Spiral Needle, Smiling Tear, Broken Frame, Crumbling Triangle, Fractured Eye, Looping Flame—all flaring at once.
The world's pulse hitched.
Overhead, something flickered.
A ring of light formed in the torn sky.
Not part of the demon realm.
Not part of Hallowmere.
Something new.
Thin at first, like the outline of a circle drawn by a shaking hand. Then thicker. Sharper. White-gold at one edge, black-red at the other. It rotated slowly, shedding sparks of unreality.
A Crown.
The first true one this realm had ever formed for us.
Veyra inhaled sharply. "Oh," she breathed. "It's pretty."
Lyra's eyes gleamed. "It's early."
Alinor smiled, distant. "It's right."
Kaen's grin showed teeth. "There's our king piece."
Cirel laughed. "The world finally understands the game."
Sareth bowed his head slightly. "It chooses."
Lysa stared up at the forming Crown, then at us. "What is that?" she whispered.
"Our turn," I said.
The Crown hung above us, spinning slowly, fragments of bone, fire, stone, and ash woven into its halo. It pulsed in time with the demon realm's dying heartbeat.
This wasn't the moment we would reach for it.
Not yet.
But it was the first crack in something bigger than a world.
I rested Eclipsera on my shoulder.
"Watch closely," I told Lysa, the Demon King, his wide-eyed child, and every trembling demon in that courtyard.
"This is only the beginning of how wrong we can be."
The realm shuddered.
The Crown brightened.
And somewhere, beneath the collapsing layers of creation, the universe leaned in to watch with them.