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RHAEGAR

A sh still clings to us as we travel—the residue of magic, war, and the choices neither of us can unmake. It seeps into the folds of my cloak, tangles in Nora’s braid, coats the fragile silence between our footsteps with a weight we don't speak of. Not yet. Not while the wind carries the scent of old blood and older betrayal.

By the time we reach the edge of the Purna stronghold, night has swallowed the horizon whole. The stars hide behind thick clouds like frightened gods, and the air carries the sharp, metallic sting of warding spells long since faded. It’s quieter than it should be. Too quiet. The kind of silence that means something is waiting. Watching.

The terrain changes without warning—forest giving way to jagged stone, like the world itself was gutted and left to rot. Ruined obelisks lean like broken teeth around a vast chasm, the shattered remains of a bridge half-sunken into shadow. This place… it was once sacred. Before the war. Before the dark elves claimed it. Before Medea carved her mark into the bones of this land and cursed everything that dared to remember her.

Now it feels cursed in a different way. Abandoned not by time, but by mercy.

Nora pauses beside me, her gaze trained on the path that winds downward into the blackened cliffs. She doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t have to. Her magic hums beneath her skin like a storm still leashed—coiled and patient, but restless. I can feel it as surely as I feel the one buried in my own bones.

“This way,” I whisper, nodding toward the crag where the old smuggler’s tunnel still exists—buried beneath centuries of stone and spell. Few remember it. Fewer have survived it. But I’ve walked it before. Alone. With blood on my hands and Medea’s voice in my head.

We slip through the crevice one at a time, cloaks brushing the damp stone, the smell of wet earth and old decay curling around us like a warning. The tunnel mouth yawns like a throat that never learned how to scream. And I feel it immediately.

The echo.

It starts as a pulse in the back of my mind. Faint. Like a memory trying to claw its way free. I bite my lips and keep walking. One step. Then another. Nora is silent behind me, her breath steady, her footsteps soft and deliberate. She trusts me to lead. But I don’t trust the ground beneath our feet.

As we descend, the light fades completely. Only the faint glow of her sigils and the shimmer in my eyes guide us, casting long, shivering shadows across the walls. The stones down here bleed memory. Not metaphorically. Literally. The deeper we go, the more the walls begin to shift—subtle, at first. Cracks that weren’t there. Patterns in the stone that seem to crawl if you stare too long.

And then come the voices.

Not audible. Not in the air. They speak inside me.

“Rhaegar,” Medea purrs in my skull, her voice all silk and rot. “Do you remember how sweet the promise was?”

I flinch. My fist curls around the hilt at my side, not to draw it—but to ground myself.

“Ignore her,” Nora says behind me. Her voice is calm. Anchored. “She’ll say anything to pull you back in.”

I nod, though I don’t look back. I can’t afford to. If I see her face, I’ll falter. And I need to be steel right now.

The tunnel opens slowly into what once was the inner sanctum—a vast antechamber now fractured by time and war. Crumbled columns. Melted sigils. Bones turned to dust. But the center still holds.

The Pact Room.

The altar is broken but not destroyed. Slabs of obsidian-veined stone lie scattered around the dais, glowing faintly with residual power. The air here is thick—oppressive. It weighs on the skin like a second body. My magic recoils. My heart begins to pound, not from fear—but recognition.

This is where I gave her my soul.

Not with ceremony. Not even with intent. It happened in a breath. In a choice. I was broken, desperate, and she was everything I needed her to be. Power. Salvation. Revenge.

And she branded me for it.

I step into the center, and the world shudders. Not around me. In me.

Flash.

I see the chamber as it was—lit in gold and crimson, runes freshly carved into stone still wet with blood.

Flash.

My knees, bruised and raw from kneeling too long. Medea’s hand cupping my chin. Her mouth curved in mockery and promise.

Flash.

“Swear to me, and I will make you a god among shadows.”

The pain surges in my chest and I nearly stagger.

Nora’s voice cuts through it like a blade. “Rhaegar.”

I breathe hard. “I remember it all.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t understand what I was giving up,” I whisper.

“No one does, until it’s too late.”

I look at her finally. Her eyes glow faintly, and in that light I see a thousand unsaid things.

This is the place where I lost myself.

This is the place where I can start taking it back.

My hand goes to the altar. It’s warm. Alive.

Still connected to her.

“I have to sever it,” I say aloud. Not just to her. To the room. To the past. “Not with magic. With choice.”

Nora’s voice is steady. “What will it cost?”

I look at the runes, feel the pull deep in my marrow. The pact isn’t just a memory. It’s a tether. To sever it… something must replace it.

“Everything,” I say.

And I draw my blade and the artifact.