From her outstretched palm, fire spilled—not flame but memory. Moonfire, the kind that remembers your pain before it burns you alive. It caught one of the attackers mid-charge, turning his scream into a thousand voices.
Kaelen stood unmoving, staring at the chaos.
"You fought for power," Athena shouted, "but this is what it costs."
He looked at her.
Then at the coffin.
And growled, stepping forward. "Then let me pay."
He shifted.
Not fully—but enough.
With fangs and claws of obsidian-tinted steel, he lunged into the fray, colliding with a masked figure bearing a staff carved from bone. They wrestled into the mirror corridor—and vanished.
Lucas reached her side, breath ragged. "There's too many—"
"I'll seal it." Athena turned back to the sarcophagus. "Even if I have to bind it with my own blood."
But just as she raised the blade—the tomb cracked again.
Not by her hand.
By its own will.
The figure inside twitched.
