Chapter 24 #3
The darkness wasn’t Halos’s proof. It wasn’t the Sanctum’s experiment. It wasn’t theirs to tear out of me simply because the Overseers had decided they were entitled to know. It belonged to me.
And if they wanted it—they could fucking wait.
I let the Shadow go quiet.
The woman in front of me frowned. Then I extinguished the Light too. Everything disappeared. The silver-blue glow. The Black mist. All of it. The battlefield went strangely still. Beyond the ward, someone shouted. Kieran, maybe, or Vareena. I didn’t look.
Shadow Lyra tilted her head. “What are you doing?”
“Changing the rules.” I bent. Picked up the Warrior’s abandoned sword. Steel. Nothing magical about it.
Perfect.
Lidia understood first. A vicious smile spread across her face. She extinguished the last ember clinging to her fingers and picked up a fallen short sword. “Oh, thank fuck.”
Emrin stared between us. Then sighed. “I hate both of you.”
She grabbed a heavy blade from the ground.
Shadow Lyra attacked. I met her. No magic.
Steel struck steel. The shadows around her lashed outward.
I ducked. Lidia came from the side. Her blade sliced through one tendril.
It dissolved. Emrin drove her shoulder into another version of me hard enough to send both of them crashing into a column.
No roots.
No green glow.
Just Emrin.
Strong as the earth she commanded even without touching it. We moved together. Lidia fought fast. Aggressive. Every strike built toward the next. Emrin fought like a wall with a sword. Nothing moved her unless she allowed it.
And me—I fought like everything I had been forced to become. Calis. The Crucible. Kieran. Edenlo. Every lesson. Every bruise. Every failure. Shadow Lyra swung for my head. I blocked. She shifted. I anticipated. Kieran’s voice lived somewhere inside the movement.
Never fight where they want you standing.
Fine. I let her drive me backward. One step. Two. Three. Toward the broken wardstone jutting from the projection floor. Her shadows surged. I ducked beneath them.
She followed exactly where I wanted her to.
I pivoted.
Lidia saw it. She kicked the fallen piece of stone into the path of Shadow Lyra’s next step. The projection stumbled. One heartbeat. Mine. I drove the sword through her. The blade entered below her ribs. Her eyes widened.
Then softened.
Black poured from the wound. Not blood.
Shadow.
It slid down the steel and spilled across the stone. Toward me. My own darkness stirred beneath my boots. Reaching.
No.
I ripped the sword free and stepped back. The black tide followed. My Shadow answered once. A quiet pulse. I felt eyes on me beyond the ward.
Too many.
Then Emrin dragged me backward by the shoulder. The projected darkness stopped inches from my boot and dissolved. Shadow Lyra smiled as her body began coming apart.
Not defeated. Satisfied. Then she vanished. The battlefield shuddered. Lidia stumbled. Emrin caught her. A wall of silver wardlight erupted between them and me.
“What the hell?” Lidia slammed one hand against it.
“Lyra!” I turned. Emrin was already searching for a way through.
“Don’t touch it!” She ignored me. Green sparks exploded as her hand hit the barrier. She recoiled with a curse. The battlefield shifted again and all the bodies disappeared.
The Hollowborn.
Warrior.
Broken.
Mourner.
Shadow.
Every fallen version erased from the stone. The battlefield emptied. Except for one.
The Queen.
She stood where she had before. Silver circlet. Starlight. Sword in hand. Waiting.
The Codex stirred inside my mind.
At last.
I almost laughed.
You knew she wasn’t gone?
I suspected.
I hate you.
Frequently.
The Queen began walking toward me.
Behind the barrier, Lidia struck the ward with the pommel of her sword. “Lyra!”
Emrin shouted beside her, but the ward swallowed her words.
The Queen stopped. “Choose.”
I looked around the empty battlefield. “Choose what?”
Nothing in her betrayed the weight of the question.
“Which survives.” I thought of the Hollowborn.
The girl I had been. The Warrior. The woman I might need to become.
The Broken. The part of me terrified that surviving could eventually become its own kind of death.
The Mourner. Grief waiting somewhere on roads I hadn’t walked.
The Shadow. Already beneath my skin. And the woman standing before me now. A crown I didn’t understand. A power I didn’t recognize. Possibilities. Not verdicts.
The Queen lifted her sword. “One survives.”
And suddenly, I understood. Not the battlefield. Myself. All this time, everyone had been asking the same question.
The Sanctum.
The Codex.
Halos.
Kieran.
Even me.
Light or Shadow.
Hollowborn or wielder.
Weak or strong. Past or future.
As though one answer had to devour every other one. As though becoming someone new meant killing everyone I had been.
I looked at the Queen. “No.”
For the first time, her composure cracked. “No?” I lowered my sword. Lidia shouted my name. Emrin slammed herself against the barrier. Beyond them, I saw movement near the edge of the Crucible.Kieran.
The Queen raised her blade. “You must choose.”
“No.”She stepped closer. “Only one survives.” I let my sword fall. Steel struck stone. The sound rang across the battlefield.
“Then you never understood the question.” The Queen stopped. For one impossible heartbeat, her expression faltered. I could almost feel the Codex smiling somewhere inside my skull. The Queen’s sword remained raised.
“You want to know which one I am?” The Hollowborn had been me. The Warrior could be. The Mourner might be waiting.
So might the Broken.
Shadow already was.
And whatever waited beneath that crown—I would meet her when I got there.
None of them erased the others. None of them got to decide alone. I looked directly into my own silver-blue eyes. “Me.”
The Queen smiled. Not cruelly this time. Almost proudly. Then the world broke. Light shattered. Shadow screamed. The battlefield collapsed beneath my feet.
And somewhere beyond it all, I heard Vareena shouting my name.