The ruins of Tharamel sat like a grave swallowed by time.
Liora stood at the edge of what remained, boots half-sunk into ash and black moss. The air was colder here, almost brittle, as if sound and warmth had been drained from the place long ago. A dead kingdom, once ruled by soulbinders who had danced between life and death like lovers.
"This is where Alric hid the Bone Archive," she whispered.
"What's left of it," Tessa said behind her, eyes scanning the desolate horizon. "Looks like someone tried to erase this place."
"They failed."
Liora took a step forward. Her boots crunched over charred bone.
Dareth knelt beside a crumbling wall, brushing dirt away with his gauntlet.
"This was razed. Not by siege. Magic did this."
"Not just magic," Lienne said. "Ritual. Sacrifice. You can feel it in the stone."
Liora nodded.
She could feel it too—echoes of screaming souls, twisted spells lingering like ghosts in her lungs. The Archive was buried deep beneath the ruins. And whatever had tried to destroy it… hadn't finished the job.
They descended through a narrow fissure near what was once the palace's throne chamber. Liora led the way, her fingertips trailing firelight as she carved a rune into the stone to hold back the dark.
The corridor pulsed with old power. It made her soulstone thrum in her pocket.
Below, the path split.
"Left leads to the vault," she said. "Alric mapped it."
"And the right?" Tessa asked.
"A graveyard. He warned me never to go there."
Naturally, that's where the shadows whispered to her most.
But she turned left.
The Vault of Whispers was a room carved from black granite and obsidian bone, untouched by time. Soulflames floated above altars, casting silver-blue light that danced across a massive wall etched with sigils.
"By the gods…" Lienne breathed.
"It's all here," Liora said. "Every banned rite. Every death-forged binding. Even the Sundered Tongue."
She stepped toward the altar at the center, where a grimoire sat untouched.
The Codex Mortuum.
Bound in stitched flesh. Inked with blood that still glistened.
She touched it.
Pain lanced through her mind like a blade. Her breath caught, her vision spun—
And then she saw.
Fire. Screaming. A boy in chains, screaming as a Veil Priest carved runes into his spine.
A girl—dark-haired, pale-eyed—watching from behind a mask of bone.
The girl was her.
No, not her.
Her mother.
Alric's memories blended with her own. She staggered back, heart pounding.
"Liora!" Dareth caught her. "What did you see?"
She didn't speak. Couldn't.
The White Circle had lied.
She had always thought her mother was taken by them, a casualty of the war.
But no—
She had been one of their architects.
That night, as they camped by the vault's entrance, the wind howled above. Liora sat alone, the Codex in her lap. Pages turned themselves at her command now.
A voice rose from the shadows.
"You see it now, don't you?"
Mavrek again. Or a projection of him—his voice cold, wrapped in silk.
"You were never just chosen, Liora. You were born for this."
She stood. Faced the void.
"Why show me this now?"
"Because you're not just a weapon. You're a key. The gates to the Hollow won't open with brute force. They require blood. Lineage. The sins of your mother—and the power she passed down."
Liora's hands clenched.
"You killed Saren. You built the graftborn. You manipulated me."
"And I will continue to, until you understand. We're not your enemy, Liora."
"Then what are you?"
"Your inheritance."
The fire behind her sputtered.
A scream rang out from the treeline.
Not human.
Dareth, Tessa, and Lienne sprang to their feet—blades drawn, spells glowing at their fingertips.
From the dark came creatures—spine-walkers. Wraith-chained corpses with bone-woven armor, dragged from the failed right corridor.
"The graveyard," Liora hissed.
"They're guardians!" Lienne shouted. "Meant to keep us from—"
A spine-walker lunged.
Its blade tore through Dareth's shoulder. He roared, slamming his axe into its chest, splitting bone and cursed flesh. But more came—eight, ten, fifteen.
It was a massacre.
Blood splashed across the Vault steps. The Codex floated above Liora now, pages glowing with fresh script. The Book was calling to her.
"Say it," the voice of Alric urged. "Speak the Rite. End this."
"What does it cost?" she whispered.
No answer.
"What. Does. It. COST?"
She saw it in her mind's eye—Tessa's face, slashed open; Dareth, panting, dying; Lienne crushed beneath a creature's claws.
She screamed.
The spell burst from her throat like fire and venom and ash.
Runes carved into the sky. The Veil tore.
The creatures screamed—and disintegrated.
Silence fell.
And one by one, the fires around them died.
When she opened her eyes, three were dead.
Lienne was barely breathing.
Tessa sat motionless, arms wrapped around Dareth's lifeless body.
His axe lay in the dirt, still warm.
Liora's knees hit the ground.
And she wept.