Page 11

Shadow of Quietus

N yx

The scream of the seal hits me like a blade. I stagger in the shadows of Quietus, clutching the edge of the onyx marble altar as ancient power rips through the realm like a warning bell.

She’s awakened. The witch. The one from the prophecy. The one we were too slow to stop.

“Nyx?” a voice dares from the doorway.

I turn slowly, eyes glowing with firelight, my breath curling in the sulphur-rich air. She was supposed to be a pawn. A girl with borrowed blood and fading magik, groomed for obedience. But she has ascended, without the fucking ceremony. Without the final rites.

She’s bound herself to the High Leader already.

That changes everything.

“What was that pulse?” the acolyte asks, trembling.

I draw a dagger across my palm and press the blood to the black crystal mounted in the altar’s center. Visions flood the surface.

The girl glowing like starlight, the palace walls bending to her presence, and the ancestral runes igniting.

“A claiming,” I murmur. “The Fae haven’t seen one in over six thousand years.”

The acolyte gasps. “She’s the true queen?”

“No.” I smile darkly. “She’s the curse we should have buried when we had the chance.”

The prophecy had always been vague, intentionally so. A witch born under blood, forged by betrayal, destined to either bind or break the realms. But the Oracle lied. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

Because what no one told Niko is that if the witch is fully claimed before the merging ceremony, her soul doesn’t belong to one realm. It belongs to all of them. And a queen who is tethered to all three realms can destroy them.

I step back from the altar, the crystal now pulsing in rhythm with her.

“No more subtlety,” I hiss. “No more whispers. We move now.”

The acolyte bows. “And the traitor in Runic?”

“Activate him,” I say coldly. “He has one more chance to earn his place in Quietus.”