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KAZIMIR

The Heirloom pulsed on its makeshift pedestal—a dull, rhythmic glow that grazed my senses like the slow pound of battle drums. I’d chosen this cramped, mostly forgotten antechamber in our tower to hide the circlet until Arabella and I were ready.

Now, though, its power flooded the space with dancing gold light and shadow, the two energies swirling together in an almost sentient conversation.

I circled the pedestal, trying to ignore the slow churn of dread and excitement in my chest. “It’s stronger than it’s ever been,” I murmured. Dust motes trembled in the artifact’s glow. “The resonance changed again after the Lifeweave.”

Arabella lingered near the door, arms locked tight around herself. Her shoulders looked tense enough to snap. “Are you sure,” she asked quietly, “that pushing straight into another ritual is a good idea? Especially after all of this?”

I stopped my prowl and faced her. The flickering light carved stark angles into her face, creating hollows beneath her cheekbones. She didn’t look simply cautious—she looked haunted in a way I rarely saw, even in her darkest moods.

“Having second thoughts, Lady Blackrose?” I tried for a light tone. “Or have I worn you out with our more physical activities?”

A faint pink flush warmed her collarbone, and I felt a familiar surge of satisfaction at stirring her. Yet her eyes stayed on the circlet, shadowed with worry. “No jokes, Kazimir. Something about the Heirloom feels off this time.”

She wasn’t wrong. I could feel the difference too. After the Lifeweave ritual, she and I had linked ourselves so tightly to the crown that its energy had practically become an extension of our souls. But hearing her admit she felt that ominous shift made my pulse spike in a way I loathed to show.

I stepped closer. When I took her hands, they were cold. “We’ve survived a siege, a spy, your father’s manipulations, and that fiasco at Morana’s estate—naturally, you might be on edge.”

She lifted her gaze to mine, searching my face for a moment. “You’re not? You look like it’s all just a standard Tuesday of villainy.”

I tried for a dismissive grin. “Let’s just say chaos is my default setting. Maybe you’ll learn to enjoy the adrenaline rush.”

Her answering attempt at a smile was small and fleeting. “What does that make me, if I’m enjoying it?” she asked, voice hushed.

“My queen,” I said simply, raising one of her hands to my lips. “My co-conspirator in all forthcoming war crimes.”

She didn’t smile this time. Concern pooled in her eyes, a tension I recognized far too well. “Kaz,” she repeated, more insistently, “I’m serious. Something?—”

“I know,” I cut in, lowering our hands. “So am I. But we can’t avoid it forever—the Heirloom is ready, and waiting only makes it more dangerous. This is what we’ve built everything toward.”

I felt her squeeze my fingers, the defiance creeping back into her posture as she straightened. “All right. Let’s do it.”

So we positioned ourselves, the crown at the center, its restless light flickering like some hungry beast waiting to be fed.

I brought my palms close to it, letting my magic skim its surface until I felt the runes in my bones stir to life.

Arabella mirrored me from the other side.

In that moment, my awareness of her was painfully tangible: the pale line of her throat, the determined set of her jaw, the exhausted fear she was valiantly pushing down.

“Focus on the ley lines,” I reminded her, locking my gaze on hers across the artifact. “They’re there, right beneath us. Raw power we can funnel wherever we want.”

She nodded, placed her hands near the gold-and-shadow circlet, and exhaled.

I matched her breath, the air thickening with tension as we began the incantation.

The words were older than most living languages, half-lost to time until I dug them up from forbidden texts.

Our voices entwined in the cramped room, pouring the syllables into the artifact, coaxing a response.

It didn’t take long. The Heirloom flared, gold and shadow twisting violently, merging in an almost hypnotic pattern.

My runes burned under my skin as I unleashed more of my dominion magic, channeling it toward the circlet.

There was that wild, reckless surge I craved.

I felt unstoppable, primed to devour entire realms if I wanted to.

Arabella’s power joined mine with a ferocious jolt, bright and pure. She’d once been all about healing; now, she wielded a lethal mix of creation and destruction. Our combined might pounded against the artifact.

Then came the psychic scream—like the crown unleashed every ounce of tension I’d ever felt in my entire life and hurled it back at me. The air throbbed with a high-pitched ringing, the kind that made my teeth ache.

“It’s working,” I managed to choke out. My heart pounded with brutal excitement. This was it. A lifetime of searching and scheming, and I was seconds away from absolute dominion.

Before Arabella could respond, everything fractured.

In one blink, I was no longer in the tower chamber. Instead, I stood on a stark plain under a sky devoid of stars. The ground looked like cracked obsidian, and the air felt saturated with old magic that prickled deep, right in the marrow of my bones. An echo of something I knew .

A massive shadow spread across the plain—impossible to map in shape or scope, more a devouring void than a tangible creature. But the most jarring part was my own sense of recognition. I didn’t just see the darkness. I felt its hunger. Its rage. Its crushing loneliness. Because they were mine .

I was the darkness.

Then the vision whipped me to a different scene. A man stood in front of me, his expression carved from something stoic and annoyingly noble. He held a golden rose, shining painfully bright.

“This ends now,” he said, voice ringing with authority. “You’ve devoured enough, Shadow King.”

I felt a harsh laugh tear from my lungs, but it was foreign, unlike my usual cynicism. More chaotic and brutal. “You think you can stop me, Soriven? I am eternal. I am the void that remains when all else fades.”

He lifted the rose. Its radiance ripped through me, an explosion of agony that tore my essence to ribbons. There were binding chains next—golden light twisting around me, forcing me into a prison. I screamed without a mouth, raged without form. Torn asunder, remade, sealed away.

But not destroyed. Never destroyed.

Ages blurred. I slept. Dreamed. Occasionally, a shard of consciousness broke free. Sometimes I latched onto a child born under unlucky stars, brimming with the right shade of darkness.

Always the same cycle. Growth. Awareness. The slow dawning of ancient memory. And then—death. Swift, violent ends snapping me back to the void. Again. And again.

Until my mother, her hands slick with my blood as she carved runes into me, unknowingly unraveling a portion of the chains that contained the Shadow King.

I understood now that each cut was part of a monstrous puzzle, forging me into a more perfect vessel.

They didn’t break my golden chains, but cracked them just enough.

Skyspire rose in my mind. My seat of power before Soriven and his cursed rose. Always mine, across countless attempts to reclaim it.

The knowledge scalded me. I was the Shadow King. Reborn countless times, inching closer to remembering, to reclaiming what was stolen. The Heirloom itself was the artifact Soriven made to contain my darkness. And now, ironically, I was about to unleash it.

I felt something stir inside—an ancient presence, uncoiling with lethal fascination. It peered through my eyes and saw her . Arabella… Soriven’s descendant . The rightful inheritor of that rose magic, the bloodline that bound me. The enemy.

Hatred, immediate and inhuman, roared through my veins.

Destroy her. Consume her with your vengeance.

But I forced that voice aside—hard. I pictured Arabella’s face, her feral grin when she bested me at golf, her quiet vulnerability when she’d told me she wouldn’t leave my side. My Arabella. Not Soriven.

She isn’t my enemy—she’s… everything. She’s my ...

The word surfaced, shocking in its raw unfamiliarity. Love .

The Shadow King hammered back, protesting that attachment as a pathetic weakness.

My skull felt like it would split. Ribbons of darkness scythed through the air, gold fragments of heroic magic entangled with them.

I heard Arabella shouting my name, though I couldn’t say if it was in the vision or in real life.

Then everything snapped to black.

When clarity returned, I was on the stone floor of that cramped tower space, the tang of raw power still stinging my mouth. Groaning, I blinked up at Arabella. She knelt next to me, her hand pressed firmly over my heart. Her eyes were big, her lips parted in anxious relief.

“Kaz,” she breathed, voice frayed with worry. “Are you alright? Do you remember… anything?”

I swallowed, pushing myself upright. My head throbbed—an echo of something enormous. “I—” My words caught in my throat. “The Heirloom started the process. Then I blacked out. Did… did we succeed?”

She didn’t answer right away. She studied my face, a swirl of thoughts behind her steady gaze. “You honestly don’t recall any of it?”

Bits of memory hung just out of reach. “I remember light. A surge. Then a storm of shadows. Why? What did I?—?”

“See for yourself.” Her voice sounded too careful.

I turned my head to discover the Heirloom glowing with a perfect union of gold and shadow. The hum it gave off vibrated through the floor, up my spine, making me feel both electric and slightly nauseous.

“It’s… fully activated,” I realized, staggering to my feet. Arabella moved to steady me, but I waved a hand, too hyped on raw adrenaline to care about any weakness. “Look at it. It’s—this is what we wanted.”