A Vow of Vengeance and Silk

The Lost Prince's claws scraped against Seraphine's shadow blade with a shriek of sparks that illuminated the terror in its milky eyes. For a heartbeat, she saw her own reflection in those dead orbs, her face streaked with blood and sweat, lips pulled back in a snarl, but her eyes burning with a fire that refused to be extinguished. "Run!" Kaelan's voice tore through the chaos as he shoved her backward. His other hand was already moving, a dagger of pure light forming from his glowing scars to meet another wraith-like heir lunging from the darkness. The creature screamed as the blade found its heart, but three more were already scrambling over its dissolving corpse.Seraphine stumbled into Rook, who caught her with one arm while firing an arrow with the other. The shaft buried itself in a prince's throat with a wet thunk, but the creature barely slowed. It ripped the projectile free with blackened fingers, the wound sealing instantly as it continued its advance. "Move!" Brick's roar shook dust from the ceiling as his great axe carved through the horde. Each swing sent sprays of thick, tar-like blood splattering across the dungeon walls where it sizzled and ate through stone. He jerked his head toward a crumbling spiral staircase at the corridor's end. "Stairs! Now!" Kaelan's hand found Seraphine's again, their fingers intertwining instinctively. The moment their skin touched, golden light erupted from their joined palms, so bright it made the advancing heirs shriek and recoil. The light pulsed in time with their racing heartbeats, forming a protective halo around them as they sprinted for the stairs. Rook covered their retreat with a barrage of arrows, each one tipped with the strange blue fire he'd learned from the mountain shamans. "Go! I'm right behind you!" The staircase trembled underfoot, ancient stones grinding together as something massive stirred in the depths below. Seraphine's foot slipped on a step slick with moss and something darker, but Kaelan's grip kept her upright. She risked one glance over her shoulder, just in time to see the dungeon floor erupt in a geyser of black vines thicker than a man's thigh. "No!" she screamed as the tendrils lashed out, wrapping around Brick's ankles with terrifying precision. The big man swung his axe in a desperate arc, severing several vines that screamed as they fell, but it wasn't enough. The remaining tendrils yanked him down with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. "Brick!" Rook turned back, another arrow already nocked, but Kaelan caught his arm.

"He's gone." Kaelan's voice was steel wrapped in sorrow, his grip unbreakable. "And we'll join him if we stop now." They burst through a rotting wooden door into the palace throne room, or what remained of it. The once-grand chamber was now a nightmare of pulsating roots and weeping stone. Queen Lyrith waited upon her twisted root throne, the bone crown pulsing on her brow like a second heart. The jagged points had grown deeper into her skull since Seraphine last saw her, the flesh around them split and bleeding. "Took you long enough, my darlings." Lyrith's voice was honey poured over broken glass. She tilted her head, and the roots beneath their feet twitched like a spider testing its web.

Kaelan stepped forward, his free hand flexing as his scars ignited with new intensity. "It ends today, Mother." Lyrith's laugh started as a chuckle but quickly escalated into something unhinged, her body shaking with the force of it. Bloody tears streamed from her eyes as she rose from the throne, her gown of living shadows billowing around her. "Oh, my sweet, foolish son," she gasped between peals of laughter. "It's only just begun." She spread her arms wide, and the world tore apart at the seams. The throne room dissolved around them, the stones bleeding away into swirling mist that reeked of spoiled magic. Seraphine's stomach lurched as solid ground vanished beneath her feet, replaced by an endless field of corpses—each one wearing Kaelan's face, each one frozen in a silent scream. Above them, the sky burned with the cold fire of a black sun, its dark rays illuminating the true horror The bone crown wasn't a crown at all. It was a key. Embedded in the ground before them yawned a chasm so vast its edges curved with the horizon. The pit exhaled air so cold it burned Seraphine's lungs, carrying whispers in a language that made her eyes bleed. And at its center, something stirred, something with too many eyes and teeth like shattered mountains, each one inscribed with runes that throbbed in time with her pulse. Lyrith's body began to unravel, her flesh splitting into shadowy tendrils that stretched toward the abyss. "All this time," her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere, "you thought I was the monster." Her remaining eye locked onto Kaelan, brimming with something almost like pity. "But I was just the lock." The thing in the pit blinked. And the world screamed. Seraphine's knees buckled as the sound tore through her, vibrating in her bones and teeth. Kaelan collapsed beside her, his scars flashing erratically as he clutched his head. Rook was on his back, blood streaming from his nose and ears. Through the pain, Seraphine saw the first tendrils of darkness creep over the chasm's edge. And then Silence. Absolute, deafening silence.

The black sun winked out. The chasm stilled. And a new voice spoke, soft as a graveworm moving through dirt "Who disturbs the Devourer's slumber?"