The ruins did not rest for long.
Skyhold breathed around him, slow and deep, the way a beast sleeps with one eye open. The dais at the center kept that faint pulse, a steady glow that fed something inside Liam just as it fed the stone, a quiet hunger and a promise.
He stood there until the silence changed.
It was not a footstep, not a voice, more like the air deciding to move. Seris drifted from a shadowed arch and let her silk settle, pale eyes reflecting every rune.
"You touch too many threads at once," she said, soft as rain. "Pull them too hard, and the loom bites."
"I hear you," he said, and he did not look away.
Her gaze slid to the crystal. "The relic is not done with you. Neither is the storm."
The system answered her, cold and bright.
> [System Alert]
Skyhold, stable
Sovereign Command, one charge restored in seven hours
Zone Seventeen, Cradle of Storms, trial window, nineteen hours
Rival Markus, sighted at east shelf, intent ambiguous
Oracle Thread, active, hazard warning available
Rena came back at a run, mail whispering, hair tied high, eyes already reading faces. "Perimeter holds. Vexa is at the west ridge. Sarya locked the east wing. We can move when you say."
Elyra slipped in behind her, amusement tugging at the corner of her mouth. "We should move before Markus plants a flag and calls it a wedding."
Kaelithra sauntered in last, a lazy circle around the dais, blades at her hips, that look that said the joke would end when she decided. "You decided who you are taking."
Sylvara's voice floated from the upper ledge. "You will take me."
The Ice Queen did not announce herself, she simply stood, frost tracing a line from her bare foot to the base of the crystal. "And you will take sense."
Liam let them settle, then spoke.
"Seris, with me. Rena, Elyra, Nysera, forward team. Kaelithra, you are the knife I do not have to call. Aisha holds Skyhold with Ice Queen and Sarya, Naia runs the clinic. Vexa owns the ridge. Rotate Sylvara to me when we reach the shelf."
No one argued. They rarely did when his voice sounded like this.
Seris tipped her head, listening to something only she could hear. "If the path opens, it will not stay open long."
The light shifted. The dais answered.
> [System Notice]
Harem Sync, steady at ninety three
Emotional load, high
Recommend, resync within twenty four hours to avoid decay
Cradle ingress, east shelf forming in three hours
Kaelyn appeared in the arch again, closer this time, scarf loose, gaze sharp. "You owe me a night," she said, quiet and sure. "Do not spend yourself in the storm and come back empty."
"I will not," he said.
"You better not," she replied, and the corner of her mouth lifted before she vanished.
Vexa's voice rolled up from the corridor. "If you die, I will kill you."
He almost smiled. "Noted."
The air changed again. Not a warning, a promise. The glyphs along the walls brightened in a ripple, then stilled. Seris's eyes unfocused for a breath, then snapped clear.
"Markus is testing the outer skin," she said. "Not an assault. A touch."
"Let him touch," Rena said. "We have teeth."
They moved.
Skyhold watched them go. The long stairs spilled them into light, past torn banners and old lions and the last dust of the old empire. The east road ran to the shelf like a blade laid across rock. The sea waited beyond, not quiet, not kind, its skin lifting in long, slow breaths. Out on the water, islands turned like thoughts. Bridges rose, sank, rose again.
Sylvara matched them at the cliff. She dropped from a high face and landed like a breath beside him, lightning still whispering across her cloak. "Scouts on the right, higher than they should be. Something is holding them up."
"Not something," Seris said, and for the first time a shadow crossed her voice. "Someone. The crown is trying on a face."
The system hummed.
> [Oracle Thread]
Forewarn, right flank, unseen span, thirty breaths
Ambush, likely, if approached blind
Alternative, call the path, accept the price
Liam stepped to the very edge and let the wind press cold fingers against his chest. He lifted his hand, not high, not dramatic, just enough for the storm to see it.
"Yield," he said, and he meant the water, and the bridges, and anything that thought it could deny him.
Stones lifted from the sea.
One by one, they rose and locked into place, slick with salt, warm with something older, an arc drawing out toward the first moving isle.
> [System Update]
Cradle of Storms, ingress confirmed
Path, negotiated, will shift if will falters
Crown flare, six hours
"Move," he said.
Rena took the first stone at his heel. Elyra slid to his right, calm and watchful. Nysera flowed to his left, teeth just a little too sharp as she smiled at the sea. Seris stepped in behind, quiet as a thought that knows it will be listened to.
They crossed the first ten stones without a sound but the water.
On the eleventh, the air went thin and strange. Elyra's fingers brushed his forearm, light and deliberate. "Not yours," she whispered, and her eyes cut right.
A woman stood there, not on stone, not on water, wearing pale glass like a veil and the storm like a crown, hair braided tight with wire, eyes the color of quicksilver. Not the silk seeker from the walls. Something else.
"Overlord," she said. Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, as if the wind had learned to speak. "You took Skyhold. Clever. Pretty. The crown is not impressed."
Rena shifted her stance. Nysera's tail stilled. Seris's breath did not change.
Liam did not lift his blade. "You are not the crown."
A pause, then a smile that had too many meanings. "I am the mouth it wears when it wants to be listened to. Turn back, and the storm will forget you. Step forward, and it will remember."
"I want it to remember," he said.
"Then bring a chorus," she replied, amused. "It loves songs that think they are orders."
The wind pulled at his coat, then let go.
Elyra's lips brushed his ear. "She is not a wife," she murmured, velvet and iron. "Do not speak to her like one."
"Noted," he said, and the mouth of the crown laughed as if she had heard.
The path shifted, one stone sliding a finger width left, another a finger width right, a small change that would be a long fall if you moved like a man and not a king.
He moved like a king.
"Left," he said, and the stones obeyed his voice more than they obeyed the storm.
The mouth of the crown tilted her head. "Sovereign Command," she said. "Interesting."
"Get used to it," Rena said, and stepped past Liam to take the next stone as if she was daring the sea to argue.
They made the first isle. Black sand, black rock, a ring of pale towers like broken teeth. The mouth of the crown did not step onto the shore. She stood on nothing and watched.
Seris knelt and pressed her palm to the sand. "Markus is near," she said. "Too near. He is trying to make the crown remember him first."
"Then we make it forget," Liam said.
The towers hummed. Not from power, from memory. Elyra closed her eyes and listened with him. Nysera sniffed the air, then pointed, low and left. Rena lifted her blade without looking away from the mouth of the crown.
The first of Markus's scouts broke from a crack in the stone.
They did not last long.
Steel and shadow and light made quick work of the welcome, bodies sliding to sand and becoming nothing but foam before they had time to turn cold. The mouth of the crown watched without comment, like a priestess at a ritual that did not interest her.
"Enough toys," Liam said, and the sea answered, or maybe the relic inside his chest did.
> [Sovereign Command]
Order, reveal the nearest true path to the core
Charge, expended
Result, inner arc revealed, span stable for one hour
A bridge of pale stone unfurled like a tongue, stretched toward a second isle where the towers leaned close enough to whisper to one another.
The mouth of the crown's smile thinned. "You will bleed," she said, not unkind, not kind at all.
"Then we will bleed," he said back. "And we will keep walking."
She dipped her head, a small grace, then blurred into the spray.
Rena glanced at him, fierce and bright. "That felt like a win."
"It felt like a beginning," Elyra said.
Seris's hand brushed the sand once more. "Markus is not alone," she said. "He brought someone who thinks she knows how to wear a crown."
Nysera laughed, low and lovely. "Let her try."
They took the bridge.
Behind them, far away but not far enough, the banners at Skyhold snapped once in a restless wind, then lay still.
The storm ahead opened its eye a little wider and watched them come.