Zareth's POV
I throw myself in front of Lyra as Cassian raises his hand.
Silver light erupts from his palm—not attacking, but pulling. I feel the marks on my arms respond, dragging me toward him like I'm attached to invisible chains.
"No!" I dig my heels in, but it doesn't matter. The marks are his. I'm his.
I slide across the library floor toward certain death.
Then Lyra screams a word in a language I don't know, and golden light explodes between us and Cassian. The pulling stops. I crash to the ground, gasping.
"Impossible," Cassian hisses. "You're barely trained. You shouldn't be able to—"
"Lysander taught me more than you know." Lyra grabs my arm and hauls me up. Her eyes glow silver-gold, just like mine. "And unlike you, he actually wanted me to survive."
She slams her staff into the ground. The library floor cracks open, revealing a pit of swirling darkness.
"Jump!" she shouts.
"Are you insane?"
"Do you trust me?"
I look at her face—my sister's face, so like my own but with hope where I have only scars. I don't remember her. Don't remember loving her. But something deep in my chest says yes.
We jump together into the darkness.
The fall lasts forever and no time at all. When we hit bottom, it's not hard stone but something soft, like landing on clouds made of starlight.
We're in a different chamber. Smaller. Older. The walls are covered in symbols that glow and shift, telling stories in pictures.
"Where are we?" I gasp.
"The real Archive of Anchors." Lyra helps me stand. "The library upstairs was a decoy. Lysander knew Cassian might find it someday, so he hid the truth deeper." She points to the glowing walls. "This is where the real history is kept. Everything Cassian tried to erase."
Above us, I hear Reapers searching. Cassian shouting orders. They'll find the pit eventually.
"How long do we have?" I ask.
"Minutes. Maybe." Lyra touches the wall, and the symbols rearrange themselves into readable text. "So let's make them count."
She's right. No time for fear. No time for doubt.
I step closer and start reading.
Three thousand years ago, the sky cracked open.
The text glows brighter as I read, and the symbols animate, showing what happened. I see a beautiful world—cities of crystal and light, forests that sing, people who shape magic like artists shape clay.
Then I see the crack. A tear in reality itself, spreading like a wound across the heavens. And through it, I see nothing. Not darkness. Not emptiness. Something worse—the void that exists before creation, hungry to unmake everything.
The Stellar Collapse, we called it. Reality itself was tearing apart. Scientists said we had months before total annihilation. Weeks before cities started vanishing into nothing.
The images show people panicking. Running. Praying. Dying as void-cracks spread across the world.
Seven of us volunteered to become anchors. We were scholars, healers, warriors, artists—ordinary people who loved the world enough to save it. We knew what it meant. Eternal life. Eternal duty. Eternal loneliness. But someone had to do it.
The seven figures appear in the glowing text. I recognize Lysander immediately—younger, less sad, holding hands with a woman who looks like starlight given form.
And next to him stands my mother.
She's beautiful. Not just her face, but the way she glows with purpose and love. Her silver marks aren't prisons like mine—they're badges of honor, proof of her sacrifice.
Reverie the Undying, Third Anchor, Guardian of Dreams and Memory.
"I volunteer," she said, "because if we survive this, someone needs to remember. Someone needs to make sure future generations know what we did and why. Someone needs to protect the dreams that make life worth living."
My throat closes up. I can't breathe.
"Keep reading," Lyra says softly. "There's more."
I force myself to continue.
The ritual worked. We bound our life force to reality itself, becoming living anchors that held the void-cracks closed. The world was saved. But the cost...
The images show the seven anchors over centuries. Watching civilizations rise and fall. Watching everyone they loved grow old and die. Watching the world forget them, then fear them, then hunt them.
After a thousand years, most humans forgot why we existed. They only saw that we didn't age, didn't die, and mistakenly believed we were stealing magic to sustain ourselves. Fear turned to hatred. Hatred turned to violence.
I see Reapers—not the Empire's Reapers, but older versions from different civilizations—hunting the anchors. Killing some. Forcing others to hide.
We tried to explain. Tried to teach the truth. But every generation forgets. Every empire decides we're monsters. And we can't fight back, because the people hunting us are the same people we swore to protect.
The text shifts. Shows a man I don't recognize—cold, calculating, hungry.
Thirty years ago, a scholar named Cassian Voidwhisper discovered the truth about anchors. But instead of protecting us, he saw opportunity. Immortal essence is powerful. Harvesting it grants near-immortality, immense magic, and control over reality itself.
I watch in horror as the images show Cassian hunting anchors one by one. Draining their essence. Growing stronger with each kill.
He created the modern Reaper program as cover. Convinced the Empire that anchors were parasites. Trained weapons to do his killing while he presented himself as humanity's savior.
The images show children being taken. Marked. Broken. Turned into perfect killers.
I see myself. Six years old. Screaming as silver marks are carved into my skin.
"I can't—" I gasp. "I can't look at this—"
"You have to." Lyra's voice is firm but kind. "You have to see what he did. To you. To all of us."
I force myself to keep reading.
Reverie was the third anchor Cassian killed. She had fallen in love with a mortal scholar and done the impossible—had children. Two daughters. Half-mortal, half-immortal. The first of their kind.
Images of us. Me and Lyra. Playing in crystal gardens. Laughing. Loved.
Cassian saw opportunity. If he could control a half-immortal child, he could create the perfect weapon. One with anchor powers but mortal vulnerability to his manipulation.
I watch my mother die again. Watch Cassian take me. Watch him erase everything I was and rebuild me as his tool.
Tears stream down my face. I don't try to stop them.
"He killed six of us," Lyra says quietly. "Six anchors over thirty years. Lysander is the last one. And when he dies..." She doesn't finish. Doesn't need to.
"The world ends," I whisper.
"In three years, yeah." She touches the wall, and new text appears. "But Mom found a way. Before she died, she discovered something. A way to pass anchor powers to the next generation without requiring eternal life. A way to let anchors finally rest."
Hope flares in my chest. "How?"
"It requires trust. The anchor has to willingly transfer their power to someone with both mortal and immortal blood. Someone like you." Lyra meets my eyes. "The ritual is complicated. Dangerous. And it requires the anchor to die—really die, not just fake it like Lysander did in the valley."
"So I have to kill him."
"You have to release him. There's a difference." She pulls a small book from her pocket—the silver one from the library upstairs. "Mom left instructions. It's all here. But Zareth..." She hesitates. "If you do this ritual, you won't be fully human anymore. You'll age slower. Live longer. Have powers you can't imagine. You'll be different."
"Will I turn into what Cassian made me?"
"No. You'll become what Mom hoped you could be. A bridge between mortal and immortal. Someone who can protect the world without losing themselves to eternity."
I take the book with shaking hands. "And if I refuse?"
"Then Lysander dies naturally in about a year. The anchors fail. Reality collapses. Everyone dies." She says it matter-of-factly, but I hear the fear underneath. "No pressure or anything."
A laugh bubbles out of me. It's slightly hysterical, but it's real. My first genuine laugh in years.
"You sound just like Mom," I say without thinking.
Lyra grins. "You're remembering."
I am. Little flashes. Her teasing me. Me chasing her. Both of us hiding from tutors to play in forbidden places.
We were happy once.
"I'm sorry I forgot you," I whisper.
"You're remembering now. That's what matters." She pulls me into another hug. "And I'm going to help you remember everything. Starting with—"
The ceiling explodes.
Reapers rain down like silver hail. Cassian floats down after them, surrounded by stolen power.
"Touching reunion," he says coldly. "But playtime's over. Zareth, come here. Now."
The marks on my arms burn. I feel them trying to control me, trying to drag me to him.
But something's different. The memories I've recovered, the truth I've learned—they're fighting back. The marks crack wider. Light bleeds brighter.
"No," I say.
Cassian's expression darkens. "Excuse me?"
"I said no." I pull Silverbane—wait, I don't have Silverbane anymore. I threw it at Seraphine.
But my hand closes around something anyway. I look down and gasp.
A sword made of silver and gold light, solid in my grip. Not Cassian's weapon. Not the Empire's. Mine.
"Impossible," Cassian breathes. "You shouldn't be able to manifest—"
"Guess I'm full of surprises." I raise my new blade. Beside me, Lyra raises her staff. "You took everything from me. My mother. My sister. My memories. My choice. But I'm taking it all back."
"You can't fight me, child. I made you. I own you. You're my perfect—"
"I was never perfect." I step forward, and the marks on my arms crack so wide they start falling off like broken glass. "I was broken. Scared. Lost. But I'm finding myself again. And the person I'm becoming?" I smile, fierce and free. "She's done being your weapon."
Cassian snarls and attacks.
But before his magic reaches us, golden light erupts from the floor. Lysander rises from it, reformed, furious, magnificent.
"You forgot something, Cassian," he says, placing himself between us and the High Luminary. "She's not alone anymore."
The three of us stand together—two sisters and the immortal who kept his promise.
Cassian laughs. It's a terrible sound. "Three against one hundred? You've already lost."
"Then we'll lose fighting," Lyra says.
"Together," I add.
Lysander smiles. "As it should be."
The Reapers charge.
And for the first time in my life, I fight not because I was ordered to.
But because I choose to.