“This tomb predates it all,” Zairon added softly. “Older than our history.”
“Then why was it hidden here?” Riven asked, eyes fixed on the tomb.
“Because Eiren feared it,” Maris said, her voice trembling. “She buried it to weaken me. But she couldn’t destroy it.”
Her sigil began to glow faintly at first, then with blinding intensity. Her fingers pulsed with heat, drawn toward the blade.
The chamber filled with light as her palm hovered over the warrior’s skeletal hand.
Kael stepped forward. “Are you certain —”
“She has to be the one,” Serenya murmured, eyes locked on the tomb.
Maris reached out.
The sigil flared.
The bones crumbled to dust the moment her fingers brushed the hilt.
The warrior’s final defense… undone.
And the sword…
Yielded.
Power surged up her arm like flame through her veins — bright, and ancient. Not like her magic. Not like any she’d felt before.
The others shielded their eyes as the blade blazed like a fallen star, runes igniting one by one in a language none of them could read, but all of them felt.
The moment the blade settled into Maris’s grip, paired with her crown's grounding power, she felt nearly immortal.
Her voice spoke a prayer in a language she did not know she contained. As old as the runes carved in the steel. A spoken promise to a goddess to unravel her webs and ruin.
The rock groaned.
The tomb trembled beneath their boots, a low, guttural hum rising from the stone like the world itself had been cracked open. The air thickened with heat. The light from her sigil dimmed but the power it had stirred did not fade.
It echoed.
Outward.
Through the ruin.
Through the forest.
Through the Veil.
Kael’s head snapped toward the entrance. “ For fuck sake.”
Alarik was already moving, blade drawn, magic igniting along his palms in a violet glow. “That much divine energy,”
“It's a beacon,” Serenya finished, eyes going cold.
Outside, a shriek rang out. Animal, but wrong.
Then another. A hundred.
Zairon unsheathed his long blade with a curse. “Positions!”
