“I will see every path you’ve ever drawn,” I murmur. “Every back door you helped inscribe into the forges. Get some rest, Masielle. Nightfall does not need your obedience anymore.”
As my power dives into her mind, she screams—but not just in pain.
In anger.
In loss.
She loved the old stories, the old purpose. She clutched them to her like a child with a favorite toy, even as they gnawed at her fingers.
How quaint.
I move carefully, as promised.
No damage to the eyes.
No burning of the hands.
Just… extraction.
Unraveling.
Thread by thread, I pull the routes free.
Conduits to sanctums long forgotten.
Hidden veins of ore.
Emergency fail-safes the Lords don’t even know exist.
The Crown pulses faintly in the distance, sensing the shift in its web.
I bare my teeth.
“Yes,” I whisper, feeling my reach expand. “Feel that. Feel them loosen. Your grip is slipping, old thing.”
When I am done, Masielle is still breathing.
But she is a shell now.
She will never weave again.
“Seal the threshold,” I tell my SoulTakers. “Leave her with food, water, and a lamp. She is no longer a soldier. She is a reminder.”
“A reminder, Master?” one of them asks.
“That the old ways are ending,” I say simply. “And that mercy is more than the Lords ever gave the miners they burned.”
I pull back from my puppet then, withdrawing my consciousness from his body.
He sags, gasping, as if surfacing from deep water. His light will burn out soon. They always do.
But puppets are not built to last.
The bond between us settles back into its usual hum—strong, pliant, obedient.
Well done.
My awareness rushes upward, back into my own body at the cliff’s edge. I blink and the world snaps into sharper focus.
