The roar of the Sulfur Falls was a physical pressure, and Nyrissa's smile was a quiet, predatory counterpoint to the chaos. Kaelen held her leaf-green gaze, feeling the weight of the Hollow Crown against his hip and the solid, silent drumbeat of the Geode's pact in his veins. He was a collection of borrowed strengths and stolen memories, and this dryad of the deep crossroads wanted a sip of the cocktail.
"A 'taste' is a vague currency," Kaelen said, his voice cutting through the hiss and thunder. "What does it cost me? Drained strength? A lost memory? A piece of my sovereignty?"
Nyrissa's vine-hair twitched with amusement. "The young Aethelborn learns. Good. I am not the Geode. I do not collect static memories. I drink potential, the heady wine of what could be. The fervor of your rage, the stubbornness of your will, the… intriguing solidity you just acquired." She tilted her head. "The cost is temporary emptiness. A coldness where that fire once burned. It will return, in time, fed by your experiences. But for a few hours, you will feel… muted. It is the price of passage."
Valerius stepped closer to Kaelen, his whisper barely audible. "She speaks a half-truth. The emptiness is real, but it leaves you vulnerable. The denizens of these depths can smell spiritual depletion like blood in the water. Crossing the bridge is one challenge. What awaits on the other side, while you are weakened, is another."
Kaelen looked at the stone bridge. The vapors rising from the boiling lake below were visibly toxic, curling in yellow-green plumes that made the air above the archway shimmer. Without a blessing, it was suicide.
He then looked inward. The silver thread—Lyra's thread—thrummed with her recent, panicked directive. Find the anchor. Stop the bleed. She was fighting her own battle, and her stability was somehow tied to his. If he was weakened here, if he fell, what would happen to that connection? Would it snap, harming her? Or would it drag her essence down into the abyss with him?
The decision was not just about survival. It was about strategy.
"You get one taste," Kaelen stated, locking eyes with Nyrissa. "Of the rage. Not the solidity. The solidity is my foundation. The rage is my fuel. You can have a sip of fuel."
Nyrissa's glowing eyes widened slightly, intrigued by the specificity. "Bargaining with ingredients. How refined. Very well. A draught of pure, undiluted vengeance. That is a rare vintage indeed." She extended a slender, green hand, palm up. "The transaction is simple. Touch my hand, bring the emotion to the forefront of your spirit, and I will drink."
Valerius's warning echoed in his mind. But Kaelen had made his choice. He thought of the platform. But instead of the overarching panorama of his pain, he focused on a single, crystallized moment: the exact instant the Sunlance's light had begun to unravel him, and the absolute, universe-denying NO that had roared from the core of his being. It was rage in its purest form—not hot, but cold, absolute, and defiant.
He took Nyrissa's hand. Her skin was cool and smooth as polished stone.
He summoned that crystallized NO.
Nyrissa's breath hitched. Her form seemed to swell slightly, the vines in her hair thickening, the flowers blooming brighter. Her eyes flared like captured emeralds. A sensation unlike any other gripped Kaelen—not pain, but a profound leaching, as if a vital, boiling organ had been cleanly removed from his soul. The cold fury that was his constant companion, the engine that had driven him since awakening in the Pits, vanished. It was simply… gone.
He stumbled back, releasing her hand. He felt… hollow. Light. The world seemed distant, muted, as if viewed through thick glass. The roar of the falls was softer. The threat of Valerius, the memory of Lyra, the weight of the crown—they were all intellectual facts, devoid of their emotional charge. He was a shell, operating on logic and the residual, mechanical solidity of the Geode's pact.
"Exquisite," Nyrissa purred, a healthy, rosy hue now blooming beneath her green skin. She looked invigorated, powerful. "So few can isolate an emotion so perfectly. You have a surgeon's control, for a brute. Your passage is granted." She waved her staff, and the wisp of light at its tip flared. A shimmering, green-tinged bubble of air enveloped the stone bridge, pushing back the toxic vapors. "The blessing will last until you reach the far side. Do not tarry."
Valerius took Kaelen's arm, his grip firm. "Walk. Do not think. Just move."
They stepped onto the bridge. The blessing was like walking through cool, clear water; the deadly vapors coiled away from them. But Kaelen felt the emptiness yawn inside him. It was a terrifying kind of peace. He understood now why this was a vulnerability. Without his rage, without that driving fire, his will to continue felt… academic. Why bother? The logic was there—revenge, survival—but the need was dormant.
Halfway across the bridge, the silver thread moved.
It wasn't a pulse from Lyra. It was a reaction from his end. In the void left by his extracted rage, the connection—a thing of pure, strange energy—seemed to expand to fill the space. It became more palpable. And for the first time, he didn't just feel it as a line; he felt it as a conduit.
A whisper, thin and clear, flowed down it into the newly quiet chambers of his mind. It was Lyra's voice, but not in real-time communication. It was an echo of something she was studying, memorizing, perhaps reciting in that distant spire.
"…the Fate-Bond, a theoretical catastrophe of intersecting divine destinies, acts as a quantum tunnel. Energy equalizes. State seeks parity. To stabilize one end, you must either sever the tunnel—impossible post-formation—or stabilize the other end. The anchor is not within the bonded, but in the medium. A third point, a symbolic linchpin that first connected the destinies…"
The echo faded. Kaelen's logical mind, freed from the distortion of emotion, analyzed it coldly. Lyra was researching the bond with celestial scholarship. She believed stabilizing it required finding an "anchor" in the "medium." The medium where their destinies intersected. The moment of intersection.
His execution.
The "anchor" was something from his execution. Something that witnessed it, was part of it, and held metaphysical weight.
He stored the information, a puzzle piece for later.
They reached the far side of the chasm. The blessing dissipated. The world's sensory volume rushed back in—the heat, the smell, the sound—but his internal emptiness remained. They stood at the mouth of a vast, dry cavern system, the walls riddled with hexagonal basalt columns.
"We rest here," Valerius declared, guiding Kaelen to a sheltered alcove. "You are psychically bloodletted. We move when your fire returns, not before."
Kaelen sat, leaning against the cool stone. He felt like a ghost. He pulled the Hollow Crown from his belt, its weight now purely physical. He focused on it, and the memory-echo surfaced more easily in his emotionless state, not as a drowning vision, but as a data stream.
King Zyr. The Aether-Elves. Chaos and song. The Golden Erasure. The fall.
He saw the tactics of Solaris's legions—not brute force,but a systematic, magical unraveling of things they deemed "chaotic" or "impure." A sterilization of reality. His own Draconian heritage was clearly such an "impurity."
"Why are you really helping me?" Kaelen asked Valerius, his voice flat, devoid of its usual heat. The question was pure curiosity.
Valerius, who had been scanning the tunnels, looked back, surprised by the tone. He saw the hollow look in Kaelen's eyes and understood. "Honesty is easier when asked by a ghost, isn't it? Very well. You are a key, as I said. But not just to any vault. There is a specific prison, deep below the Sulfur Falls, in the Chamber of Stillborn Stars. It holds the Eternal Night, a primordial fragment of the universe before the first sun was kindled. Solaris trapped it there, for light cannot tolerate the concept of its own absolute absence."
"And you want it."
"Iam of the night," Valerius said simply. "My power, even as a Fallen Lord, is a pale echo of that true darkness. With it, I would not just be a vampire in a hole. I could be a sovereign of shadows, reclaim my court, and challenge the very order of day and night. Your Aethel, especially touched by draconic creation-magic, can unpick the sun-forged locks that hold it."
"You want to plunge the world into darkness?"
"I want torestore balance," Valerius corrected, a fervent glow in his red eyes. "To create a realm where my kind, and all things that flourish in the dark, are not hunted abominations. Your revenge and my ambition are aligned, Draconian. We both require the sun-king's fall."
It was a grand, terrifying goal. It also made perfect sense. Valerius was no altruist; he was a revolutionary in exile.
As Kaelen processed this, a faint trickle of warmth began to seep back into his chest. Not the rage yet, but a simpler, more primal emotion—annoyance. The annoyance of being cold. Of being empty. It was a spark.
And with that spark, his rage began to return. Not as a sudden inferno, but as a slow, deep coal re-igniting. The world gained its edges back. The weight of the crown became symbolic again. The memory of Lyra's voice carried its old, complex sting.
He stood up. The hollowness was receding. "How long?"
"A few hours more for full restoration," Valerius judged. "But the spark is enough. We can move. The next layer is the Crystal Labyrinth. It is neutral ground, of sorts. Home to reflective spirits and trapped light. It is also where we might find a different kind of ally—or a lens to see your 'anchor' more clearly."
As they ventured into the forest of basalt columns, Kaelen felt more himself. The Nyrissa's theft had been a violation, but it had also granted him a terrifying clarity. He now knew Valerius's true endgame. He had a clue about the Fate-Bond from Lyra's own research. And he carried the crown of a king who had chosen annihilation over submission.
The path was no longer just about survival or personal vengeance. He was walking a tightrope between a vampire' apocalyptic ambition, a princess's desperate scholarly panic, and the ghost of a chaotic king. And his own fire, returning now, hotter for its temporary absence, had to burn a path through it all.
He was not just an Aethelborn. He was becoming the crucible in which the fate of shadows, chaos, and a stolen destiny would be forged.