The morning the birds forgot how to sing, the world felt thinner. Mist clung to the trees like gauze, and every sound came muffled—footsteps, breathing, the faint drip of water from leaves. Elara woke to the taste of iron on her tongue and the lingering echo of the First Healer's words. Save the world… or save Kael.
She reached for him instinctively. He was there, exactly where he had been the night before: curled against the roots of the old oak, elbows on knees, gaze lost in a place she couldn't follow. He looked older somehow, as though a season had passed in his face overnight. The curse lay in the plane of his shoulders, in the way his breath came and in the way his fingers twitched.
"Elara." His voice when he spoke was small, hollowed at the edges. "You shouldn't have seen that."
"You told me to demand the truth," she said. Her voice surprised her with its steadiness. "So tell me everything."
Kael hesitated. He closed his eyes, as if drawing a map through the dark, then opened them again to find her still there, stubborn and fierce as a flame. He took a breath like someone preparing to dive into freezing water.
"It began before I was a man," he said. "Before the crowns and wars. I was made—created—from the faultline in the old magics. They called me a solution, once: a weapon forged to end the war. But weapons forget mercy. I was bound with hunger that ate more than flesh. It ate a name. It ate choice."
Elara listened as the world narrowed to the sound of his voice. The forest seemed to breathe with him.
"The First Healer and those who followed her shaped the Hollowstar," Kael continued. "She used her own heart to anchor a seal—one that would hold back the hunger inside me. But seals break. Time wears them thin. People forget the exact words to bind the lock. They alter the wording. They underestimate the pull of hunger."
"Why me?" Elara asked. "Why is the seal tied to my blood?"
He looked at her then, and she felt the weight of centuries there, pressing between his eyes. "Because her blood was made to mend what rage and magic had broken," he said. "Your line… carries that echo. It's why you can heal. And why, if you give the Hollowstar its full power with your blood, it can seal more than locks. It can repair cracks that let the hunger climb out."
"So it's a cure," she breathed, panic turning into a fierce clarity. "You become well; the world is safe."
Kael's mouth shaped a bitter laugh. "Not without cost. The Hollowstar takes. The First Healer didn't only create a prison. She tethered herself to it. She thought by giving it life she could spare the world—but she could not spare herself. The sacrifice is always someone. The more the seal heals, the more it consumes."
"You mean—" Elara's throat closed. "It kills the giver."
He didn't hesitate. "If you pour your blood into that stone, if you give it everything you are, it will bind the Hollowborn again. But the toll—" He swallowed. "You will not survive."
The forest held its breath with her. Her hand went automatically to the faint scar on her sternum, the place where her power hummed closest to the skin. The mark warmed under her palm like the echo of a promise.
"Elara," Kael said softly. "There are other ways—less complete. We might slow it. We might teach others to weave the lattice we made last night, to protect villages, to divert the Hollowborn's hunger long enough to wear it down. But those are temporary patches. If the seal fails entirely, the Devourer wakes. The cost could be far greater."
Her chest tightened. The image of his face, of the dark just behind his eyes, pressed like a knife under her ribs.
"So my options are—die now and save everyone perfectly, or live and gamble on half-measures that might lose us everything?" Her voice wobbled, then found stubbornness. "I am not ready for the end either. But I won't decide without choice."
He put his hand on hers, and for a single, terrified moment she felt nothing between them but pulse and breath. "I don't want you to die," Kael said in a voice that very nearly broke. "If my life must be death for the world to live, I will take that burden instead. I will find a way so you do not have to."
She searched his face for a trick, a softness harking back to the man who tucked a blanket around her when storms came. His jaw set like iron. There was no trick.
"You could be lying," she whispered. "You could be bargaining to keep me by your side."
"I would die to keep you," Kael answered. "Not because I lied, but because love taught me sacrifice. This is not bargaining. This is the only truth I have left."
Elara flinched at the word love as if it were an echo of a stone falling in a deep well. It echoed back inside her chest and she could not tell whether it was comfort or a wound.
Something moved in the understory—barely a sound, but enough to make Elias spin. He returned, two figures behind him now: a woman cloaked in ash-grey and a boy no older than sixteen, whose hands jittered like small trapped birds.
"We found a hamlet," Elias said. He breathed hard, as if the forest had pressed on his lungs. "Tamsin knows of an old binding circle they call the Well of Mourning. She says her grandmother used to sing the words to keep wolves at bay. She wants to help."
The Ghostborn's silhouette detached from the trees. He had been where he often was—on the very edge of the world and the joke of it. He drew closer, and his expression was unreadable. "Tamsin could be useful," he said. "But you will need more than folk songs to stop an ancient fault."
"Who's 'you'?" Kael demanded.
The Ghostborn tipped his head. "Where the Devourer is concerned, 'you' means anything that looks like it will make a most delicious story. I like stories. I also like endings where the hero sneaks out of the trap."
Kael's eyes flashed. "You could have let Marcellus sever us last moon. Why did you intervene?"
"For entertainment," the Ghostborn said simply. "Also, because I do like this duet of yours."
Elara wanted to thump him. "Does that mean you'll teach us?"
He shrugged with an artist's boredom. "I will show. I will not hold your hands. You may be my favorite little upheaval—but I do not solve prophecies. I narrate them."
A rustle answered them—not the rustle of leaves, but the sound of metal being drawn. From the shadows stepped three riders: two with the black-and-red sigils of the Elders, and one in plain garb, helmet under his arm. Marcellus's eyes cut the clearing like a blade.
"I see the prophecy plays with new acts," Marcellus said coldly. "Joining hands beneath oak trees. How poetic. And how irresponsible."
Kael's stance tightened.
"You brought hunters?" Elara asked. Her voice was small in the huge, waiting air.
Marcellus smiled without joy. "Careful, child. The Elders have eyes everywhere. You're proposing to make war on an inevitability. If you choose the Hollowstar for sacrifice, we will help you. If you choose otherwise, know that we will judge the consequences—and we do not suffer nuisances well."
Elias moved forward. "We are not asking for your permission."
Marcellus's head snapped. "You will thank us when the Devourer rises without allies to contain it. We do this for the kingdom."
"For control," Kael said quietly. "Not for protection."
Marcellus's hand tightened on the pommel of his sword. "Know this: if you endanger the realm through hubris, I will stop you. With blood if necessary."
Elara felt the world tilt again like a ship caught in a wake. The choices closed around her like the pages of a book shut on their fingers.
She looked at Kael. He looked back, and in his eyes she found a pleading that terrified her more than the words of prophecy. For an ache inside her grew—a realization that whatever choice she made would not be clean. It would be an incision.
"You don't have to decide now," Elias said, voice low. "We can go to Tamsin. Gather more. Learn the chants. Build lattices. If the seal's strength is a matter of numbers and craft, we have time."
Marcellus snorted. "Time is a luxury you will not have. The Devourer stirs."
Elara inhaled the damp, cold air and felt the circle of responsibility around her widen and tighten at once. She thought of the villages she'd seen in dreams: children with hollow eyes, mothers who stitched crusted wounds with trembling hands. She thought of Kael's hand in hers and the promise written in it that he would do anything to protect her—even if that anything meant betraying himself.
"If we are to choose," she said finally, "let us choose with courage, not fear. I will not be sealed away as a casualty without trying every other path. But nor will I choose something cruel because I am terrified to lose one life I love."
Kael's jaw tightened. A hot, ugly tension thrummed in his throat.
Marcellus's expression hardened like stone. "Very well," he said. "Try. Fail, and we will decide for you."
Elara felt the weight of his words settle on her shoulders like a mantle of iron. She turned to the Ghostborn—a being of half-jokes and old sorrow—and saw his expression soften just a fraction.
"Teach us then," she said. "Teach us how to braid light and shadow into nets. Teach us how to make the lattice sing. Help us find allies. Let us try."
The Ghostborn's smile was the tiniest, most dangerous thing. "Very well, little healer," he said. "Stitch your chorus—there's a good tale in something that tries to save a monster."
As they packed and walked toward the hamlet, the sky began to bleed gold. For a moment, the sunlight touched Kael's features and brought out the man beneath the curse; for a flicker he looked human.
Elara's hand found his without planning. Their fingers intertwined—not sealing a fate, but making a promise: to try, to fight, to love in a world that demanded sacrifice.
The road to Tamsin was long. The choice was longer still.