The Silver Heir
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Sunless City
The road to the Sunless City was nothing but ruin.
For days, Pearl and Arden crossed a land where the stars refused to shine — a wasteland drowned in twilight. The air shimmered with strange distortions, echoes of the last fracture's aftermath. Time felt warped here, the horizon bending in on itself like the world had forgotten how to end.
Every step hummed with tension. The Crown at Pearl's temple pulsed faintly, whispering in a dozen ghostly tongues. She could sense Kaelith — faint, like a shadow breathing beneath her skin.
He's close. Beneath the earth. Watching.
"Don't let it in," Arden said quietly as they climbed the ridge. His voice was hoarse. "That thing in your head… it's waiting for you to slip."
Pearl didn't answer. She couldn't. She was too busy listening — not to him, but to the silence around them. It wasn't natural. It was expectant.
When they reached the crest, the world fell away before them.
There it was — The Sunless City.
Once, it had been a thriving kingdom of scholars and moon priests. Now, it was a graveyard of glass towers and rusted domes, swallowed by a permanent eclipse. Black vines grew through broken streets, pulsating faintly with silver veins.
And at its center stood a colossal temple — The House of the Oracle.
They descended into the ruins, weapons drawn. Every whisper of wind sounded like a voice. Every reflection shimmered with things that shouldn't have been there.
Arden kept a tight perimeter, his eyes scanning every corner. "No bodies. Not even bones," he muttered. "Whatever happened here… it erased everything."
Pearl ran her fingers along a crumbled wall. There were burn marks — not from fire, but from energy. "Kaelith passed through here. I can feel it."
"Then he's headed for the Oracle too," Arden said.
She nodded grimly. "And we'll get there first."
They reached the temple gates by dusk. Massive iron doors carved with lunar sigils stood ajar, humming faintly with old power.
Pearl touched one of the carvings — the mark of the twin moons. The metal shivered under her hand, and the sigil flared to life.
For a brief second, the voice of the Oracle whispered through her mind:
Child of the Second Light… you walk into your reflection.
Then the door creaked open.
Inside, darkness swallowed everything.
The interior was a cathedral of shadows — massive columns carved from onyx, the floor etched with constellations that glowed faintly beneath their boots.
At the far end, atop a dais, stood a crystalline throne. On it sat a figure cloaked in silver dust — unmoving, faceless, ancient.
"The Oracle," Arden whispered.
Pearl approached slowly. Every step echoed, too loud in the silence. The air was thick, like breathing through smoke.
When she reached the base of the dais, she spoke softly. "Oracle of the Two Moons… I seek the truth of the final fracture."
For a long, terrible moment, nothing moved.
Then, the figure exhaled. A cloud of silver mist drifted from beneath its hood, filling the room with pale light.
Its voice came from everywhere — ancient, hollow, like wind through a tomb.
"You wear the Crown of the Heir. You've seen what it costs. Do you still wish to know the ending?"
Pearl's jaw tightened. "I have to."
"Then you will not leave unchanged."
The temple floor cracked open beneath her feet.
She fell.
Not into darkness — but into memory.
She saw flashes — her parents' faces, the day she discovered her strength, the moment the Crown bound itself to her. And deeper still… visions she'd never lived.
A city made of moonlight, torn apart by a storm of silver fire.
Kaelith kneeling before an ancient altar, offering his own heart to the fracture.
And herself — older, harder — standing over a world of ash, her eyes glowing white.
Three scars upon the moon. The last will not destroy — it will transform.
Pearl gasped and fell to her knees as she returned to the temple. Blood dripped from her nose. The Oracle's voice boomed above her.
"You think you can end him. But Kaelith was the first Heir. The first to bear the Crown. He was chosen by the moon long before you were born."
Her eyes widened. "What?"
"You are his replacement — his echo. The moon always creates balance. Light and shadow. When one falls, another rises. But now the cycle is breaking."
The room trembled. Cracks ran up the columns as the ground shook violently.
Arden drew his blade, shouting, "Pearl! It's collapsing!"
The Oracle's body began to disintegrate, its voice growing louder — desperate.
"The last fracture is already forming! Beneath this city! The moon's heart is bleeding — and when it dies, all light will vanish!"
Pearl staggered to her feet. "Then tell me how to stop it!"
"You can't stop it."
The Oracle's hood turned, revealing empty sockets where eyes should have been.
"You can only choose who survives it."
The temple exploded in light.
When the dust cleared, they were outside again — the Sunless City burning with ghostly flame. Buildings collapsed, the ground splitting open to reveal silver veins of molten energy beneath.
Pearl looked around in horror. "The fracture… it's under the city."
Arden grabbed her shoulder. "Then we end it here. Before Kaelith gets to it."
She nodded — but before she could move, a beam of red light cut through the smoke.
Kaelith stepped through the flames, the darkness curling around him like a cloak. The second Crown burned in his chest, feeding on the chaos.
"You always arrive too late," he said, voice calm, almost gentle. "The moon chose both of us, Pearl. But only one of us will ascend."
Arden lunged first — reckless, desperate — and Kaelith caught him mid-strike, lifting him effortlessly by the throat. "You still cling to her like she's salvation," he sneered. "But she's the reason your world dies."
Pearl's sword flashed, severing Kaelith's hand. He staggered back, growling — the wound already closing.
"This ends now," she hissed.
Kaelith smiled, blood running like liquid fire down his arm. "No, little heir. This begins now."
He slammed his remaining hand into the ground — and the earth cracked open, revealing a vortex of silver energy spiraling downward.
The final fracture — the Moon's Heart.
Arden shouted her name, but the pull was too strong. The vortex swallowed them all.
Pearl's world turned upside down.
She fell through light and shadow, her body weightless, her mind unraveling. She caught glimpses of Kaelith's face — shifting between human and monster — and of Arden reaching for her, his hand dissolving into light.
Then — silence.
She hit the ground hard.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a void. The sky was pure white. The air hummed.
Kaelith stood before her, perfectly still, the Crown blazing at full power.
"This," he said softly, "is the core. The Moon's Heart. The birthplace of all power."
Pearl tightened her grip on her sword. "Then I'll end it where it began."
He laughed — a low, hollow sound. "You still think you're separate from me. But you and I… we are the same sin, told in two halves."
He spread his arms wide, the world behind him twisting and breaking apart. "Let the moon judge us, Heir."
And with that, he attacked.
Light clashed with light.
Their blades met, shattering the ground. The void rippled with every strike — each swing bending time itself. Kaelith's power was endless, drawn from the fractures of reality. But Pearl fought like a storm unbound, every wound feeding her fury.
He drove her to her knees once, twice — but each time, she rose again, eyes blazing.
The moon's heartbeat echoed through the void.
Slow. Trembling. Dying.
Kaelith's blade pierced her side — and instead of crying out, Pearl grabbed it and pulled him closer. "You said the moon made us both," she whispered. "Then it can unmake us too."
She pressed her hand to his chest — and let the Crown's light consume them both.
A scream tore through the void.
When the light faded, the Sunless City was gone.
Arden stood alone in the crater, the wind howling through the ruins.
In his hand, he held the cracked remains of Pearl's Crown. It pulsed faintly, a single heartbeat left inside.
He looked up at the moon — now pure white, whole again.
"She did it," he whispered.
But deep within the silence, something moved — a faint shimmer of silver, a shadow forming in the dust.
Pearl's voice echoed softly, like the memory of a dream:
I'm not gone. Not yet.
Arden's eyes widened. "Pearl?"
The shadow smiled faintly — and vanished into the wind.