The nightmares didn't stop.
Sunrei woke each night drenched in sweat, his scar burning with the echo of that thing's voice. They're coming. The words coiled around his ribs like smoke, suffocating.
Kaelis sharpened her knives by the window, the rhythmic scrape of steel the only sound in their moonlit room. She didn't ask anymore. They both knew sleep was no refuge.
Liri had taken to walking the shore at night, her silver-gold hair catching the starlight as she whispered to the waves. Ryna found her there one evening, ankle-deep in the surf, her fingers tracing symbols in the wet sand that vanished with the next ripple of tide.
You know what it was,Ryna said. Not a question.
Liri didn't look up. I know what it called itself.
The key.
The words tasted like oil on Sunrei's tongue as he joined them. And the keepers?
Liri's hand stilled. They were the first.
She drew a single symbol in the sand
and the sea hissed where it touched.
The ruins beneath the old watchtower held answers.
Ryna led them down a crumbling stairwell, her tattooed arms bare in the torchlight. The markings had begun to darken again, the violet hue returning in jagged lines. Found this place after the Pillar vanished, she said. Thought it was just another ruin.
She was wrong.
The chamber walls were lined with the same strange armor they'd seen in the crystal cavern, each set posed as if standing guard over the massive stone slab at the center.
Kaelis whistled. Cheery decor.
Sunrei approached the slab. The carvings were worn but unmistakable figures wielding brands against a shadow with too many eyes.
Liri traced the inscription. They weren't just keepers. Her voice trembled. They were prisoners.
A sound echoed from the dark beyond the torchlight.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Hiss.
Ryna's tattoos flared. We're not alone.
It moved like liquid shadow the same shifting, formless mass they'd fought in the cavern, but smaller. More deliberate.
It spoke with Ryna's voice this time.
You took too long.
Kaelis's knives flew, embedding in the thing's chest or where a chest should have been. It didn't react.
Sunrei stepped forward, his scar burning. What are you?
The shadow rippled, its edges fraying into tendrils that brushed the ancient armor.
The last keeper.
Then it changed.
The darkness peeled away like a cast-off cloak, revealing a man or what was left of one. His skin was the color of old bruises, his eyes solid black. The brands on his arms weren't marks they were wounds, pulsing with the same violet light as Ryna's tattoos.
He smiled, showing teeth filed to points.
And you're the replacements.
The truth was worse than they imagined.
The keeper Velyn, he called himself led them deeper into the ruins, to a chamber where the walls breathed. The stone pulsed like a living thing, veins of gold and violet threading through the rock.
At its center hung a massive brand, its edges fused to the ceiling as if it had grown there.
Kaelis eyed the exits. This just keeps getting better.
Velyn pressed a hand to the brand. The Maw wasn't the first. Just the most recent. The veins in the walls pulsed in time with his words. Your world is a cage, Sunrei. And you're the warden.
Liri's breath hitched. That's why the brands chose you.
Sunrei's scar ached.
He remembered the vision from the First Brand the thousand Sunreis, the thousand failures.
Not princes.
Jailers.
Velyn's smile widened.
And the prisoners are waking up.
They emerged at dawn to a changed world.
The sea had receded, revealing blackened ruins that hadn't been there yesterday. The air tasted of lightning and old blood.
In the distance, something stirred.
Ryna's tattoos burned violet. We need to move.
Kaelis checked her knives. Where?
Liri looked east, where the horizon shimmered unnaturally.
To the first brand, she whispered.
Before they do.