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I’m not sure which would be worse.

Elias sidles closer to Luna, like he’s going to whisper something important, something useful. He opens his mouth.

Then closes it.

Then says, “So… hypothetically… if I heroically passed out in the next ten minutes, would you carry me?”

Luna doesn’t look at him. “No.”

He nods solemnly. “That’s fair. I wouldn’t carry me either.”

Silas snorts behind us. “I would. But only if you promised to wake up screaming.”

“Noted.”

Their voices echo too long. The walls catch sound and hold it. Twist it. I hear Elias’ voice bounce back half a beat behind us, but it’s wrong—slurred and slightly deeper. Like it belongs to someone else.

Caspian moves closer to the left side of the hall, his hand brushing over the wall’s etched surface like it might bite.

“She built this place like a reliquary,” he says quietly, more to himself than us. “Not a fortress. A shrine.”

“To what?” Luna asks, finally speaking.

He looks at her, and for once, the smile he gives isn’t sharp or broken. Just tired.

“To whatever was left of her after she lost everything.”

Silas hums low behind us. “That’s not creepy atall.Definitely not walking through a haunted echo chamber designed by a dead megalomaniac who still might be alive in some horrifying, semi-divine, blood-drenched way.”

Orin’s head tilts slightly, and he speaks for the first time since the hall shifted.

“She is not alive.”

His tone is final. But not comforting.

Elias glances at him. “But?”

“She left herwillhere.”

That shuts everyone up. Because we all understand what that means. Branwen didn’t build this to protect herself. She built it topreserve her intent.A fortress sealed in blood and magic, not to survive—but torememberher purpose and keep enacting it, long after her body turned to dust.

A necrotheurgic stronghold. A living memory.

We reach the atrium. It spirals out suddenly, like a mouth unhinged. The ceiling yawns high overhead, an endless vault of black glass and bone-white marble. At the center of the room, suspended by chains that vanish into shadow, is a throne made of antlers and ash.

No one sits in it. But we all feel it watching. Below it, carved into the floor, is a circle I recognize. Old empire. One of the original binding seals.

Luna steps forward first, as if drawn by something quieter than language. Her boots stop just at the edge of the ring. Her magic pulses once—faint, then sharp, like a heartbeat echoing off the stone. And then the glyphs ignite. Silver fire, identical to the torches, races through the carvings in the floor. The seal pulses with light—thenstabilizes.Not in warning.

Inrecognition.

“She’s keyed into it,” Riven murmurs, stepping beside her, voice low.

“Of course she is,” Lucien says, voice flat, unreadable.

“She’s not just part of the pattern,” I say slowly. “She’s the anchor point now.”

The ring on the floor isn’t just reacting to Luna’s presence—it’s responding. As if it has been waiting. As if it already knows she’s the one who can finish what Branwen started. Luna doesn’t move, but every line of her body holds that taut stillness that comes not from hesitation, but from calculation. She’s measuring something. Consequences. Distance. How many of us will bleed if she takes another step.