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TWENTY-NINE

SERAPHINE

C assian didn’t sleep that night.

Neither did she.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, backs against cracked obsidian, watching the embers of their fire flicker like they were afraid of the dark too.

She’d brought him back. But something had changed.

He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

She could feel it. This new weight to his presence, like stormfire wrapped in shadow. Still him… but not only him. The Hollow had touched him. Left its mark. And yet, she hadn’t let go of his hand once.

Not even when the wind began to whisper again. Or when the final shard called to him.

He turned to her just before dawn, jaw clenched, eyes glowing faintly like twilight caught behind stormclouds.

“I know where the next one is.”

She didn’t ask how. She nodded.

“Let’s finish this.”

An ancient sanctum carved from volcanic glass and bone, hidden beneath the ruins of a forgotten House. One so old its name had been scorched from the tongues of every recordkeeper.

They passed beneath an archway chiseled with jagged glyphs—half Drakar, half something older, almost fungal in shape. No banners. No light. Just walls that shimmered faintly, slick with heat and age, like the stone itself remembered suffering.

It was said the House had fallen to fire before the First Empire ever drew its first breath. Not war. Not betrayal.

Sacrifice.

Now, that sacrifice sang again.

The path opened only to those who had touched both sides of the Veil. Those who had died, and clawed their way back.

Cassian’s blood had already paid the toll.

That was why the wards didn’t pulse red when they passed. That was why the black tunnels didn’t swallow them whole.

The air felt different down here—like it was breathing. Each gust was slow and unnatural, dragging across her skin with a wetness that made her stomach churn. The walls weren’t solid. They throbbed. Trembled. As if they were stitched from old lungs that hadn’t yet realized they were dead.

very footstep echoed with something more than sound.

It was memory.

Warning.

Grief.

They walked in silence. She didn’t trust her voice not to crack. Not after what they’d been through. Not with the way the Hollowborn had moved lately—erratic, like they’d been severed from something vital. Or warned of something worse.

Since Cassian’s resurrection, the Veil had thinned. She could feel it.

Magic didn’t resist the way it used to. It bled into the world too easily. Like the balance between realms was unraveling stitch by stitch. Something on the other side was already clawing through.

The sacrifice had bought time. A breath and a beat.

But it hadn’t been enough.

Malrik had been clear when they parted ways hours ago, his eyes colder than she’d ever seen them. She had barely heard him then as Cassian took his first breath, but now it was all she could hear.

“You bought time, not safety,” he’d said, standing beneath the twin moons, wings stretched and weary. “The blade must be reforged. Or the Hollow consumes us all.”

Now they were here. At the end of breath. The edge of hope.

The final descent opened into a chamber so massive it swallowed her footsteps whole. No torches lit its walls. It glowed from within—amber light bleeding through cracks in the volcanic rock, veins pulsing like a dying heart.

In the center, an altar. Raised. Cracked. Bleeding steam. Atop it rested the shard.

Not held or buried. Embedded. Half-swallowed by petrified flame.

It pulsed—not bright, but deep, like it was breathing with the stone beneath it.

Seraphine stepped forward first.

Cassian didn’t move. His eyes were wide. His shoulders tense.

“Cass?” she asked, careful.

He didn’t answer. Just stared at the shard, like it was something he’d seen in a dream that refused to fade.

“You’ve seen this before,” she said quietly.

He exhaled, shaky. “Not in memory,” he murmured. “In death.”

A chill traced her spine.

The air around the shard began to vibrate. Softly at first. Then louder. Like it knew she was coming.

Symbols circled the altar. Glyphs she recognized from old Drakar tombs—twisted, corrupted versions. Unreadable except by instinct. Fire-blooded language. The kind only passed by blood.

The kind only she could understand.

They meant sacrifice. They meant final.

She stepped closer, ignoring the way the floor burned beneath her boots.

Cassian still didn’t move.

Her hand reached for the shard and the moment her fingers closed around it— The world split.

Not in sight. Not in sound. In soul.

Memory wasn’t supposed to be felt. Not like fire.

Seraphine dropped to her knees as the shard seared into her palm, magic crawling into her bloodstream like molten glass. Her eyes burned. Her chest heaved. Suddenly, she wasn’t Seraphine anymore.

She was Her. The First Queen of Drakar.

Fire incarnate.

Tears streaked her face as the memory tore through her. A woman crowned in flame, holding the Heartblade high as her people screamed. Shadows closed in. The Hollow had broken through. And to seal it, she had done the unthinkable.

She had killed her mate.

Not for power. Not even for peace. But to bind the blade. To feed it with something the Hollow couldn’t mimic— love willingly given up. And with that death, the Heartblade had sealed the breach. Temporarily.

Because love, even sacrificed, couldn’t last forever. Seraphine came back to herself with a cry.

Cassian was at her side in an instant.

“What did you see?” he asked, voice low.

She clutched the shard to her chest. “The truth.”

The six shards laid in a circle now—each pulsing with the blood, fire, and sacrifice that had brought them this far.

The Heartblade was more than a weapon. It was a tombstone. A promise. A curse.

Seraphine stood at its center, blade fragments ringing her feet, whispering.

“I need fire,” she said. “And shadow.”

Cassian stepped beside her, silent.

They didn’t speak as they pressed palms together—his lit with stormfire and shadow, hers glowing with Whitefire laced in blood.

The shards rose. Spinning. Singing.

The forge lit itself—a column of pure, blinding magic erupting from the circle’s heart.

When the storm cleared, the Heartblade hovered between them.

Whole. Terrible. Alive.

Seraphine reached for it. The moment her fingers touched the hilt, she saw her own face reflected in the polished edge.

But it wasn’t her. It was the First Queen. And the message in her eyes was clear:

You will pay what I paid.

The blade burned in her grip. And Seraphine clung to it like it was the only thing keeping her from falling apart. Even if the message made her realize that she couldn’t cheat fate.

“We’re not done,” she whispered to Cassian. “But we’re close.”

He nodded.

The Hollow, wherever it waited, shuddered.