Chapter 46 The Wake
Chapter forty-six
The Wake
-Maris-
After what felt like an endless journey through the underbrush, the temple revealed itself like a secret half-buried in stone and shadow, swallowed by vines the color of dried blood.
At its center, as the vision had shown, stood a tree not towering, but wide-limbed and luminous.
Its bark shimmered faintly with silver veins.
The entire dead forest was bowing before it.
Maris’s sigil pulsed wildly.
She took a step forward, barely breathing. “It’s here. I can feel the pull.”
Alarik flanked her, faelight and sword drawn, scanning the perimeter.
Serenya moved closer to her. She rolled her shoulder blades, “Let’s get this over with.”
Maris stepped toward the altar that lay broken beneath the tree’s roots. It was half-sunken into the ground rejected by time itself.
She reached outward, letting her fingertips grasp the stones edge.
The world shuddered, forcing her to pull her reach back.
A sound like stone cracking beneath oceans tore through the sky. The tree lit from within — lines of fire racing up its bark like molten veins.
The wind howled and the skies darkened.
“No,” Alarik said sharply, grabbing Maris and pushing her behind him. “They’re here.”
The Veil ripped from above with a deafening boom.
“They sent these to protect it?” Serenya hissed, blades already drawn.
“No,” Maris breathed. “Not to protect it. But to end me.”
Veilspawn shrieked through the fractured shadows above the Hollow’s temple, their forms misshapen by divine cruelty, limbs too long, mouths where no mouth should be. Their screeches split the air like serrated knives. Alarik and Serneya formed a line in front of Maris.
Kastor the wielder moved first.
The warrior’s voice rang out in the old tongue, and the very ground trembled beneath his boots.
Magic rooted in stone and time surged from his body, thick stone walls burst from the ground, forming jagged barriers between the creatures and the group.
His halberd gleamed with rune-etched sigils that flared to life, slicing clean through the limbs of two terrors that tried to leap over the barricade.
Vireth wasn’t far behind, lithe and silver-eyed.
She summoned a shroud of mist so thick and cold it hissed when it met flesh.
Her magic was elemental, airy and precise — she move like death with each flick of her blade.
She twisted between the veilspawn with preternatural speed, dispatching one after another with a soft-spoken incantation and a single, perfect thrust of her sword.
Even so, it was not enough.
They kept coming. The terrors poured through the broken seams of the Veil like water through a cracked dam.
She saw it before she could scream in warning — a terror moved swiftly straight at Alarik.
He didn’t hesitate. Faelight exploded from his palm. A blinding white blaze knocked the creature back into stone, cracking its skull into black mist. Two more took its place in the assault. His sword struck one impaling it through its torso. The other turned to ash before his magic.
Twenty.
Fifty.
One-hundred.
Maris lost count.
They kept coming from the Veil each more tantalizing than the last.
They were severely outnumbered.
A battalion member fell before her, his head turned a sickening direction. His eyes were wholly black, drained of life.
Steel clashed. Magic screamed as the air thickened with ash and war cries.
Maris raised her hands, her power sang to her. Too loud. Too wild. She fought to shape it like scholars had taught her, like she had practiced. But this was raw. Unfiltered. Like trying to tame a star mid-collapse.
“Focus,” Alarik shouted, eyes flashing to her between his own blows with the nightmares before them. “Let it through you, not out of you!”
Another creature lunged for her, Serenya caught it mid-air, dragging it down with a battle cry. It shrieked, dissolving into the ground, only to reform as a fog made of screams.
Maris broke.
She couldn’t hold it.
The magic tore through her like a wildfire through dry grass. Her vision blurred, her breaths shallowed. Somewhere, she heard her name — Alarik’s voice, but it was distant. Like he was on the far side of a field.
Her knees buckled.
The tree flared ahead. Her sigil —once faint —now blazed with molten silver, the green of her irises bleed over until they were nothing but white fire, her veins lit from within, now visible rivers of starlight beneath her skin.
The pain vanished, and a presence older than stars whispered into her ear.
“Glory is not given, it is claimed.”
Maris in that moment resembled a god incarnate.
She rose not by footfall, but with the air itself.
Suspended between the heavens and the hell being unleashed below her.
Her hair whipped behind her in a silken stream, starlight dancing across her skin.
Magic wrapped her like armor, entwining with her black leathers, unfurling in waves that cracked the very sky.
And gods— it felt good. She uncoiled more of her power, releasing it from its shackles.
The terrors halted.
Frozen in place writhing —confused.
She smiled —a slow, devastating smirk curling her lips.
She raised one glowing hand.
“You meant to end me. Instead, you’ve awakened a new nightmare. Tell the gods they’ve miscalculated,” she seethed in a divine terrifying voice.
And with a snap of her fingers the world obeyed.
One by one, as if struck by the wrath of divinity the attack was over. Veilspawn bodies didn’t just fall, no, they faded, unraveling like threads yanked back to the Veil itself. Screams were silenced and smoke scattered.
The Veil, ragged above, sealed.
A sound like a thunderclap echoed through the temple as the last of the rips vanished into nothing.
Silence fell.
Serenya, dropped to her knees beside her blade before Maris. Then the two magic-wielders, their eyes wide with reverence fell before her. The battalion, then with heads bowed. And finally Alarik.
He dropped to one knee, sword lowered, breathing hard.
But his eyes never left her.
Maris lowered slowly, down from the heavens— her boots whispered against the stone. The light in her eyes still glowed but the harsh fire was replaced with a hue of starlit steel. Her power lingered in the air like smoke, the glow of her veins began to fade.
She walked forward, slow and commanding. Straight to Alarik.
He didn’t move.
Maris tilted his chin up with one silver-lit finger, forcing his violet-blue gaze to meet hers.
“You thought I could shatter, but I’m god forged, I won’t break.” she said quietly.
“Rise,” she spoke with lethal grace.
Slowly, the group began to stand — in the quiet peace brought by Maris.
Behind her, the silver-veined tree hummed with quiet life.
Then, the land took a breath.
It was faint at first a tremble beneath their feet, an ancient consciousness stirring from slumber. A gust of wind swept through the temple ruins, but it wasn’t cold. It was warm, scented with salt and blooming things. The sigil on her hand flared once more, not in alarm… but in acknowledgment.
A low, deep quake shuddered through the stone under their boots. Dust tumbled from the carved ceiling. Vines curled inward toward the altar, as if bowing.
Right at the base of the great altar ahead, the floor split with a violent crack. Ancient stone gave way in a clean seam, revealing a hollow cavity beneath. Light poured from it. A pale, radiant white, the same glow Maris had encompassed.
There, resting on a bed of velvet black stone…
A crown.
Not of gold. Not iron. But bone-white, delicate and sharp all at once, fashioned from sleek, slender branches similar to the tree before her. Its delicate silver accents gleamed like frost kissed with moonlight. A small crest adorned the center, curling down like sigil lines.
The Crown of Bones.
Maris only stared, heart thundering in her chest, the divine whisper still curling around her thoughts like smoke.
“It’s waited for this,” Alarik said behind her, his voice low, rough with wonder. “For you.”
Maris stepped forward.
As she neared the altar, the crown rose on its own, lifted by invisible hands or the will of the goddess, it was unclear. It hovered for a breathless moment, humming with power.
Alarik stepped beside her.
Silent.
Pious.
He took the crown in both hands, and when he turned to face her, there was something in his gaze that wasn’t vengeance. It wasn’t hunger or desperation.
It was devotion.
Not just to her, but to the hope she represented.
“You’ve worn uncertainty enough,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “I think it’s time for change.”
Maris didn’t flinch as he placed it atop her brow.
The crown settled and magic surged through her anchored. The roar in her head quieted, her veins cooled, and for the first time since it had awakened, her power felt… hers.
“A Queen,” Alarik murmured.
As the breeze wind whispered through the temple, the tree at her back bloomed. Its silver leaves fanned out from bark that now glistened of pearl. The roots glowed faintly along the floor, like veins pumping life back into the island.
The Hollows, no longer slept.
They were reborn alongside her.