"Aria?" Ellie's voice seemed to come from very far away. "You're glowing."
She was right. The golden veins weren't just visible, they were blazing, bright enough to cast shadows. And through them, I felt the princes' shock, their recognition, their desperate hope.
I looked at Ellie, loyal Ellie who'd followed me into darkness without question. Then at my hands, marked with golden veins that were never corruption but connection, never curse but gift.
"I'm going to destroy the Gate," I said aloud, to Ellie, to the princes, to the ghost of Pandora that seemed to linger in this ancient chamber. "I'm going to free them. And then I'm going to burn down every lie the Council ever built."
"The Council will kill you," Ellie said, though there was no protest in it, just fact.
"They're going to kill me anyway. At least this way, my death means something. This way, I choose."
Through the connection, I felt all four princes' response, not words but pure emotion. Gratitude. Desire. Fear for me. And underneath it all, something that felt dangerously like the love Pandora had written about.
Not love,Flynn corrected, his voice rough.Not yet. But the seed of it. The possibility.
If you do this,Thane warned gently,there's no going back.
There never was,I replied.From the moment I first fed the Gate, I was always going to end up here. The only question was whether I'd understand why.
I turned to leave, to climb those ancient stairs and face whatever came next. But Ellie caught my arm.
"I'm coming with you," she said. "Whatever you're planning, wherever this lead… I'm with you."
"It will probably end in death."
"Then at least I'll die free. Die knowing the truth. Die beside my friend instead of in service to a lie."
We climbed the stairs together, the hidden vault sealing itself behind us. Above, the Gate pulsed with increasing instability, cracks spreading like a virus through stone and spell alike.
Fourteen days, the Council had given me.
But I wouldn't need nearly that long.
Because now I knew the truth, not just of the princes' imprisonment but of my own purpose. I wasn't meant to be a Keeper.
I was meant to be a destroyer.
TWENTY-TWO
Aria
The world exploded into chaos without warning.
I'd been in the meditation chamber, trying desperately to center myself when the first explosion rocked the Citadel to its very foundations. Stone dust rained from the ceiling in choking clouds as the ancient walls, walls that had stood for centuries without so much as a tremor, shuddered violently beneath the assault. Through the narrow window carved into the thick stone, orange light bloomed against the perpetual grey of our mountain storms. Fire. The wrong kind of fire, corrupted and hungry and utterly unnatural, eating through our supposedly impenetrable magical defenses like acid through old parchment.
The Order of Khaos had come.
Not with a handful of zealots this time, not with the small raiding parties we'd repelled before, but with an army. Through my enhanced senses, still frighteningly new, still not entirely under my control, I could smell them, hundreds upon hundreds of them, their crude, violent magic thick in the air like rotting meat left in the summer sun. They poured through the outer walls like a flood of corrupted water, surging through breaches that shouldn't have been possible, not with all our wards andprotections intact. Their scarred faces were twisted with fanatic glee, mouths open in screams of devotion to their chaotic cause.
I pulled on my training leathers as fast as I could and ran toward the Sanctorum, my feet pounding against stone floors I'd walked my entire life, knowing instinctively, with a certainty that went bone-deep, that it would be their primary target.
The Gate.
If they could destroy it entirely, if they could unleash the total, primordial chaos they so desperately worshipped, if they could shatter the barriers between worlds completely? Then they would win. Then everything I'd ever been taught to protect would be unmade.
The corridors were absolute pandemonium. Keepers fled in every direction, their years of rigorous training and discipline crumbling like wet sand in the face of real, visceral violence. A young acolyte, I thought her name might be Marina, stumbled past me, blood streaming freely from a deep gash in her scalp, her eyes wide and unfocused with shock. Behind her, moving with predatory confidence, three cultists advanced with those wrong-angled blades that seemed to cut at reality itself just by existing.
I moved without thinking, without planning, pure instinct melding with years of careful training.
