One
I’m standing before two enormous, gilded doors, semi-blind as white glare fades from my vision.
I taste smoke and blood on my tongue, but when I lift my hand to wipe it away, I find nothing there.
I don’t know how I got here. The last thing I remember is the snap of Ruin’s fingers, the shudder of a world cracking down the middle, the heat of Kael’s hand closing over mine. Then—nothing.
My presence here feels impossible and yet, absolute.
Neither man moves to block me. Neither seems capable of speech.
I try to turn away but something in my chest forces my eyes forward—a string pulled taut, a resonance with this scene that fills every cavity in my body. My feet move without me, down the endless aisle, each step laid out like a script I’ve never read.
As I walk, some of the Blessed recoil; others drop their heads deeper, but their shoulders are hunched, waiting to see how this will play out. A few seem to watch openly, a kind of brazen calculation measuring the odds, the consequences, the prize, all while safe behind their veils.
Halfway down the aisle, Alistair shudders forward. His knees slam into the dais with the sound of a dry branch breaking. The ornate crown perched upon his head—a delicate thing, meant for show and nothing more—slides off, hits the steps, and shatters into pieces.
The real crown is a thing he carried inside, tucked behind his ribs, eating him alive for generations.
And now it lives in me. The thought should feel triumphant.
It doesn't.
He claws at his chest, as if it’s still inside him and he needs to pass it on, light spraying from his fingernails as he tears himself apart.
The first piece of him goes not with a scream but with a gasp.
His skin buckles and flakes, each fragment drifting up, defying gravity.
It’s all too familiar. I feel numb to it.
His body follows: shoulder, then jaw, then eyes, all rising in gold-white motes that swirl through the shaft of light pouring from the stained-glass behind the throne.
His bones crumble to ash and vanish before they hit the floor.
The light goes next.
The only thing left is his shadow, burned into the dais, and the faint hiss of breath from the scores of Blessed who have just watched their Crown die.
I don’t stop walking, stepping over the shards of the crown. I reach the foot of the throne, and looking down, I gaze upon the reflection in the polished marble.
It’s not me. It can’t be.
Gone is the boy who kept his head down and tried not to be seen. Gone is the corpse I was supposed to become. This version of me is thinner, sharper, eyes like molten glass, something burning just below the skin.
I think of Kael. I think of Marissa. I think of every dead Offering whose life fed this throne, and I sit.
The throne is not warm. The crystal bites through my clothes the instant my spine touches it, and the whole room snaps into focus, every atom of light searing a path through my eyes and into the back of my skull. My hands clamp on to the arms of the throne, not by choice but by necessity.
For a heartbeat, something brushes against my mind—I cannot explain it.
A sensation of falling. A hand signing a document. The taste of wine. Gone before I can grasp it.
It’s not a voice or a thought, but a memory, and it isn’t mine.
Then every vein of gold running through the throne shines. One by one. Gold spreads through the crystal beneath me like water finding old cracks.
The room goes silent. Not quiet.
Silent.
Even the Blessed stop breathing.
Light begins to gather around the throne, blazing through the stained glass, gold flooding every pane and filling the hall with impossible colour. The floor beneath my feet becomes liquid sunlight.
Everybody feels it. Everybody sees it.
A Blessed drops to their knees. Another follows.
Somewhere behind me somebody starts crying.
Nobody speaks. Nobody dares to.
The pool of it runs down the aisle, over the feet of the Blessed, washing them in gold until they look like statues, then ghosts, then less than that.
The light touches me, and for a moment, I am not in my own body. I am the room, the aisle, the air vibrating with the echoes of this place. I see my whole life at once.
A child, small and hungry and afraid, surviving by being nothing.
Blood running down my wrists.
Marissa laughing beside me.
Saltwater crashing against a shield of light.
Curled on the floor of the Dome.
Getting back up anyway.
Nyxen smiling through fire and blood.
Then standing before a god with Kael’s hand in mine.
A hand that never let go.
The moments blur together. Not memories, but proof.
The first to move is Sera Vayne.
She steps from the front row, unveiled, the jewels decorating her face and neck sharp as blades.
Her face is set in a mask of calm, but the skin around her eyes is pinched and ready to split.
She bows, not a dip of the head, but a full, ceremonial kneel, forehead pressed to the floor, her many chains and trinkets rattling.
One by one, the rest follow. Some fall like they’ve been felled; some go down slow, muscle by muscle, fighting it all the way.
A handful remain standing, chins raised, blazing contempt beneath the veils—so pure it’s almost divine.
I see you, they say. We will outlast you.
Sera rises. Her hands are empty, palms up.
She opens her mouth to speak and I see the struggle—the way she reaches for doctrine and finds nothing, her tongue scraping uselessly against the inside of her teeth.
There is no precedent for this, no prayer or speech.
I wasn’t meant to return. And she has no plan.
She finds her voice eventually, and it rings out clear as a bell, silencing the echoes.
“Our Crown.”
The pause is measured, precise.
“Our new Crown of Light.”
She looks me dead in the eyes, pausing again. Just a fraction too long.
No one dares break the silence.
“Luceris Navin.”
She lifts her chin, the jewels at her throat glinting like fresh blood.
"Our Undying Light."