Valeria did not scream as she burned. She unmade herself—a slow, deliberate unravelling, each thread of golden light peeling away to reveal the hollow beneath, the space where a soul should have been. The king raised his hand, a command half-formed on his lips, but it was too late.
The explosion was not a fire. Not light.
It was an absence.
A great, soundless void opened where Valeria had stood, swallowing the first three ranks of soldiers whole. They did not even have time to cry out. One moment, they were there—flesh, armour, breath—and the next, they were gone, their outlines etched into the air like charcoal sketches before crumbling to ash.
The king staggered back, his perfect composure cracking. Seraphina saw it—the flicker of something raw and terrified in his eyes.
He didn't know.
He hadn't known what Valeria truly was.
Or what she could do.
Lysandra's fingers dug into Seraphina's wrist. "Now," she hissed.
They ran. The trees closed around them like a sigh. The forest was old—older than the castle, older than the crown. Its branches wove together so tightly that the dawn became a dim, green-tinged twilight, the air thick with the scent of damp moss and something faintly metallic.
Seraphina dragged Lysandra deeper into the undergrowth, her own breath ragged in her ears. Behind them, shouts echoed—the king's remaining men, but none dared follow. Not yet.
Lysandra collapsed against a gnarled oak, her skin slick with sweat. The silver scars had spread, now creeping up her neck in delicate, swirling patterns. She pressed a hand to her chest, her breath hitching.
"It's inside me," she whispered.
Seraphina reached for her, then froze. The shadows between the trees were moving. Not the sway of branches. Not the dart of animals.
Figures.
Tall, slender, their outlines blurred as if seen through smoke. They made no sound, but the air around them warped, the way heat distorts the horizon.
One stepped closer.
A face emerged from the gloom—pale, elongated, its features too sharp, too still to be human.
"You are wounded," it said, its voice like wind through dead leaves.
Lysandra bared her teeth. "And you're not helping."
The figure tilted its head. Then, without another word, it reached out and pressed a single, bone-white finger to Lysandra's forehead. The forest screamed.
The king stood amidst the ashes of his men, his daughter, Seraphina's elder sister, clutching his arm.
"Father," she breathed, "what was that?"
He did not answer. His gaze was fixed on the forest's edge, his jaw clenched so tightly that a muscle twitched in his cheek. The castle lay in ruins behind them. The throne was dead.
And yet.
He reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a small, blackened key.
"Bring me the Scholar," he said.
His daughter stiffened. "He's mad."
"And he's the only one who's spoken to the Watchers and lived." The king's smile was a thin, brittle thing. "We are not finished yet."
The pain was blinding.
Lysandra arched, her back lifting off the ground as the silver in her veins detonated, racing outward in a web of light. The figures—the strangers—circled her, their hands outstretched, their mouths moving in a chant Seraphina could not hear.
And then—
A vision.
Not hers. Not Lysandra's.
A memory, old and frayed, playing out behind her eyes:
A woman with blood-moon hair standing before a door of bone.
The First Queen.
"I will not die," she whispered, pressing her palm to the door. "I will sleep. And when my children's children bleed, I will wake."
The door opened.
Behind it, the Watchers waited.
The pain had become something else entirely—a metamorphosis that twisted Lysandra's body like a sapling in a storm. Her spine arched unnaturally, fingers digging deep furrows in the damp earth as silver fire raced through her veins. Seraphina lunged forward instinctively, but the tall, smoke-wreathed figures intercepted her with effortless grace, their elongated fingers wrapping around her arms with surprising strength. Their touch burned cold, like winter steel pressed against bare skin.
"Don't."
The word seemed to come from the forest itself, whispered through rustling leaves and creaking branches. Lysandra's scream tore through the air, raw and guttural, before cutting off abruptly. She collapsed, gasping, her skin now etched with luminous silver patterns that shifted like living ink. One of the strangers knelt beside her, tracing the markings with something akin to reverence.
"The Watchers have chosen," it murmured, voice like wind through dead grass.
Seraphina wrenched herself free, her dagger already in hand. "What have you done to her?"
The figure turned its head slowly—too slowly—and for the first time, she saw its eyes clearly. Slitted pupils burned like molten silver within irises the color of gathering storms.
"We did nothing," it said. "She was always theirs."
Across the kingdom, in the dim light of his private study, the king stood over the chained Scholar, his knuckles white around the hilt of his dagger. Books lined the walls, their spines cracked with age, their pages filled with the desperate scribblings of men who had glimpsed truths too terrible to bear. The Scholar grinned up at him, blood trickling from his split lip.
"You're too late," he crooned. "The heart is dead. The throne is dust. And the Watchers? They're laughing at you."
The king struck him again, the sound sharp in the heavy silence. "Tell me how to find the door."
The Scholar laughed, a wet, broken sound. "Oh, Father. You already know where it is."
A chill ran through the room. The king's eldest daughter—Seraphina's sister—took a step back, her face pale. "What does he mean?"
But the king wasn't listening. His gaze had gone distant, fixed on some unseen horror.
Deep in the forest, the trees parted before Lysandra like a living curtain. The air grew thick, heavy with the weight of centuries, as the strangers led her toward a door woven from bone and threaded with pulsing veins. Symbols carved into its surface made Seraphina's eyes water, their meanings slipping just beyond comprehension.
Lysandra reached for it without hesitation.
"The First Queen waits," she said, her voice no longer entirely her own.
The door swung open, and the world beyond was not a place, but a memory—a flood of images that crashed over Seraphina like a wave. A woman with blood-moon hair kneeling before faceless Watchers. A crown of thorns biting into flesh. A kingdom falling not to war, but to silence, its people vanishing one by one.
And then, clear as a bell, the First Queen's voice:
"Bring me my daughter."
Lysandra stepped through. Seraphina moved to follow, but the figures blocked her path.
"Not you," they said in unison. "Not yet."
The door slammed shut with a sound like a dying breath, and the forest screamed.