The castle screamed.
Not the stone, not the wood—the living flesh beneath it all. The walls pulsed like the throat of some great beast, veins of black ichor swelling beneath the tapestries. The air reeked of copper and rotting roses, thick enough to coat Seraphina's tongue as she stumbled back from the thing wearing her sister's face.
Lysandra—or what had once been Lysandra—stood wreathed in swirling shadow, her silver wound split wide like a second mouth. The blade of darkness that had impaled Kaelan retracted slowly, dripping molten gold onto the library's now-quivering floorboards.
"Did you think the first queen was the only one who could make a sacrifice?" the creature crooned through Lysandra's lips, her voice layered with the whispers of every devoured monarch. "I have fed on your bloodline for centuries. Every forgotten queen, every lost heir—their power is mine now."
Kaelan gasped on the floor, his body more light than flesh, golden radiance spilling from the gaping wound in his chest. His fingers scrabbled weakly against the floor, leaving smouldering trails in the wood. His eyes—still his own, still burning with defiance—locked onto Seraphina's.
"The feathers," he choked. "Remember the—"
A tendril of shadow lashed out, wrapping around his throat. The creature laughed, and the sound was the cracking of bones, the rending of flesh. "No more secrets, little light."
Seraphina's hands flew to her brow, where the circlet had once rested. The brand there throbbed, and for the first time, she understood. The golden feathers had never been a weapon. They were a distraction. The ghost queens were dying.
Their spectral forms flickered at the room's edges, their translucent flesh unravelling like smoke in the wind. The false Sleeper fed on them, drinking their fading essence through Lysandra's wound. With every passing moment, the thing grew stronger, its form solidifying—Lysandra's fair skin darkened to the colour of old bruises, her golden hair bleaching to corpse-white, her fingers elongating into claws.
One of the ghost queens—a woman with Celine's silver eyes—lunged forward, her ephemeral hands grasping for Seraphina. "The bones," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the castle's screams. "The throne was never the prison. It was the lock."
Then the creature seized her, and the ghost queen dissolved into shadow with a final, silent scream.
Seraphina's breath came in ragged gasps. The brand on her brow burned hotter, the pain a white-hot lance driving deep into her skull. Visions assaulted her—
The first queen's skeleton, hidden beneath the obsidian throne, had its fingers curled around a single golden feather.
Kaelan—not as a knight, but as a spark of light torn from a dying star—is being forged into a blade by bloodied royal hands.
And the truth, the horrible, simple truth: the feathers were never meant to fight the darkness.
They were meant to open the door.
Kaelan's light was almost gone.
He lay sprawled on the floor, his form barely human now, more like a guttering candle in the shape of a man. The shadow tendril still coiled around his throat, leaching the last of his radiance into the creature's maw.
But his eyes—his eyes were clear.
"Do it," he mouthed.
Seraphina's fingers dug into her own branded flesh. The creature turned, Lysandra's face twisting in sudden alarm. "No—"
Seraphina pulled.
The pain was beyond anything she had ever known—like tearing her soul from her body. But as her fingers wrenched free, she held not blood, not bone, but a single, shimmering feather.
The last key.
The castle shuddered. The floor split open, revealing the cavern of flesh below, the broken bone-throne, and beneath it—
The first queen's skeleton, still clutching her heart in its ribcage.
The creature screeched, its form unravelling as the ghost queens' stolen power rebelled. Lysandra's body collapsed, the silver wound in her side snapping shut like a starving mouth denied its meal.
Seraphina stumbled forward, the feather blazing in her grip. And from the depths of the castle, the true Sleeper finally woke.
The moment Seraphina's fingers closed around the burning feather, time itself seemed to fracture. The air vibrated with a sound deeper than thunder—the groan of ancient mechanisms shifting, of locks forged from royal blood finally turning after centuries of stillness.
The cavern below yawned wider, its fleshy walls pulsing in frantic rhythm. The bone-throne shattered completely, its fragments tumbling into the abyss like broken teeth. And from the darkness rose the first queen's skeleton, held aloft by unseen hands, her ivory bones gleaming with an eerie inner light. The heart clasped in her ribcage was no longer flesh, but a crystalline thing, its surface cracked and weeping black tears.
The false Sleeper howled, its stolen form writhing as the ghost queens' essence tore free from its grasp. Lysandra's body hit the floor with a sickening thud, her limbs twitching as silver light leaked from her mouth, her nose, the corners of her sightless eyes.
Kaelan dragged himself toward Seraphina, his golden form barely more than embers now. His mouth moved, but no sound came out—just faint puffs of luminous mist that dissipated into the charged air. Yet she understood.
Throw it.
The feather burned like a live coal in her palm, its edges dissolving into golden mist. Seraphina drew back her arm—
The creature lunged.
Its shadowy tendrils lashed out, wrapping around her wrist with crushing force. The pain was immediate and excruciating, as if every bone in her arm were being ground to powder. The false Sleeper's face loomed inches from hers, Lysandra's familiar features now stretched into something monstrous, the skin splitting at the seams to reveal the writhing darkness beneath.
"Foolish child," it hissed, its breath smelling of opened graves. "You would unleash what even your ancestors feared to face?"
Seraphina's vision swam. The brand on her brow seared hotter, the pain radiating down her spine like molten metal. But through the agony, she heard it—a whisper, faint but unmistakable.
"Let go."
Celine's voice.
With a scream that tore her throat raw, Seraphina opened her hand.
The feather fell.
It tumbled end over end, spinning like a maple seed in autumn wind, its golden light intensifying with every revolution. The creature shrieked, releasing her to swipe desperately at the falling light—
Too late.
The feather struck the first queen's crystal heart with a sound like a thousand bells ringing in unison.
For one suspended moment, nothing happened.
Then—
The world unmade itself.
Light.
Blinding, all-consuming, scouring every shadow from the library's corners. The false Sleeper's form disintegrated, its stolen flesh peeling away in layers, revealing the hollow hunger beneath before that too was burned away.
The castle's living walls convulsed, their fleshy surfaces blistering and blackening. The ghost queens' remaining fragments swirled like leaves in a storm, their faces finally at peace as they dissolved into the radiance.
Kaelan's fading light was caught in the maelstrom, his form stretching, reshaping—no longer a man, not anymore, but what he had always been: a shard of that ancient star, reforged into a weapon meant for this single purpose.
And in the center of it all, the first queen's skeleton moved.
Not the jerky motion of puppetry, but the graceful rise of someone waking from long slumber. The crystal heart in her ribs pulsed once, twice, then shattered, releasing a wave of power that sent Seraphina crashing to her knees.
When she raised her head, Valeria the First stood whole before her—not a ghost, not a corpse, but flesh and blood and terrible, radiant majesty. Her eyes were twin suns, her hair a living cascade of starlight. The crown of thorns atop her head bloomed with roses the color of fresh blood.
And when she spoke, the castle itself held its breath.
"The feast," she said, her voice the sound of mountains being born, "ends today."