Chapter 17 #2
“Look at you,” I murmur, drinking in every crack in her face, every tremor in her hands. “Still clinging to the old stories. The Prime’s martyrdom. The Lords’ noble sacrifices. The glory of feeding the dreams of others while we rot.”
Her jaw clenches. “We do not rot.”
“Oh?” I tilt my head. “Tell that to the families at Stone’s Edge whose children choke on ash in their sleep because there’s not enough ore to keep their hearths lit.
Tell it to the miners whose bodies are broken before their fortieth year.
Tell it to the widows tending altars to loved ones swallowed by the Ember Vein while the Lords burn their dead on pyres and call it ‘honor.’”
Her grip tightens on the staff.
“That is grief,” she says. “Not rot.”
“It is waste,” I snarl. Power flares out, rattling the dream-crystals overhead.
They sway and chime. “We funnel everything we are, everything we have, into worlds that do not know our names. Realities that never once look up from their own miseries long enough to thank the realm that keeps their sinks of despair from overflowing.”
“This is our purpose,” she says, dogged. “Nightfall is the fulcrum. We balance them. That is the bargain.”
“Bargain?” I laugh. “With whom? Did you meet this great negotiator? Did the multiverse come to you politely and ask if we would like to be used?”
She falls silent.
Because we both know the answer.
We were made for this. Crafted as a dam and drain, a stabilizing force. Whether by gods or something worse, we were designed to be the invisible hand that keeps every other world’s madness from tipping over.
No choice.
No consent.
“Slavery,” I say softly. “With fancier words.”
Her staff lifts.
“If you believed we were truly slaves,” she says, “you would not need to break old women to free us, as you say.”
Ah.
There it is.
The last little stab.
“You misunderstand,” I reply, stepping closer. My puppet’s hand closes around her staff, not unkindly. “You are not a victim. You are a tool. The sharpest kind. And I—” I lean in, let her see how bright my certainty burns behind this borrowed face “—am going to use you to cut the leash.”
She spits in my face.
Brave to the last.
I close my eyes briefly and let my temper pass over me like a storm. When I open them again, my hand is steady as I lift it to her brow.
“I will see every path you’ve ever drawn,” I murmur. “Every back door you helped inscribe into the forges. Get some rest, Masielle. Nightfall does not need your obedience anymore.”
As my power dives into her mind, she screams—but not just in pain.
In anger.
In loss.
She loved the old stories, the old purpose. She clutched them to her like a child with a favorite toy, even as they gnawed at her fingers.
How quaint.
I move carefully, as promised.
No damage to the eyes.
No burning of the hands.
Just… extraction.
Unraveling.
Thread by thread, I pull the routes free.
Conduits to sanctums long forgotten.
Hidden veins of ore.
Emergency fail-safes the Lords don’t even know exist.
The Crown pulses faintly in the distance, sensing the shift in its web.
I bare my teeth.
“Yes,” I whisper, feeling my reach expand. “Feel that. Feel them loosen. Your grip is slipping, old thing.”
When I am done, Masielle is still breathing.
But she is a shell now.
She will never weave again.
“Seal the threshold,” I tell my SoulTakers. “Leave her with food, water, and a lamp. She is no longer a soldier. She is a reminder.”
“A reminder, Master?” one of them asks.
“That the old ways are ending,” I say simply. “And that mercy is more than the Lords ever gave the miners they burned.”
I pull back from my puppet then, withdrawing my consciousness from his body.
He sags, gasping, as if surfacing from deep water. His light will burn out soon. They always do.
But puppets are not built to last.
The bond between us settles back into its usual hum—strong, pliant, obedient.
Well done.
My awareness rushes upward, back into my own body at the cliff’s edge. I blink and the world snaps into sharper focus.
The acolyte beside me is sweating. “Master?”
“It is done,” I say. “Masielle’s knowledge is mine. The forges will not be hidden from me much longer.”
“And the Lords?” he asks.
Ah, the Lords.
Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.
They think themselves pillars holding up a collapsing sky.
They do not yet see the cracks in their own foundations.
“Oh, they are moving even now,” I say lightly.
“Rushing to staunch every wound while leaving their hearts exposed. Dagan broods at The Barrow with the Crown sulking in his vault. Alaric agonizes over his pregnant little viyella. Thorne snarls at anyone who looks at his mate. Kael pretends he is not terrified of losing the one soft thing he’s ever allowed himself to hold. ”
I smile.
“All that power,” I murmur. “Fractured. Divided. Distracted by their precious bonds.”
“You’re not… frightened of them?” the acolyte asks.
“They should be frightened of me,” I correct, and the cliff groans in agreement. “They cling to their roles—guardians, rulers, shepherds—without ever asking who built the pen.”
“But you have asked,” he breathes.
“Yes,” I say. “And I have my answer. The multiverse will not stop taking. It will never stop needing more hope, more dreams, more Nightfall. So I will do what the Prime was too weak to do.”
I turn from the cliff at last, the wind whipping my cloak around me like the wings I once envied in others and now wear in my own way.
“I will break the Crown. I will unmake the leash. I will gather every last thread of power this realm wastes and weave it into something for us.”
“Just for Nightfall?” he whispers.
“Why not?” I arch a brow. “We have been generous for eons. Let the other worlds learn despair. Let them feel what it is like to choke on their own nightmares without our hands at their throats, forcing them back down.”
The acolyte swallows.
“That sounds… cruel.”
“Cruel?” I laugh again. “Cruel is burning children for a purpose they didn’t choose. Cruel is telling a realm it exists only to support others. I am not cruel, little one. I am correct.”
The earth shudders beneath us again—more distant this time. Somewhere, Dagan has felt the strike at Stone’s Edge. Somewhere, the Lords are gathering, their mates at their sides, their stupid, soft, dangerous bonds flaring bright.
Good.
Let them come.
Let them throw all their strength at me.
I will take it.
I will take everything.
And when it is done, when the Crown lies in my hands and the last thread between Nightfall and the multiverse is severed, they will finally understand:
I was never their villain.
I was their liberation.