The forest was burning.
Not with fire—
but with light and shadow tearing through each other in violent, impossible arcs.
Trees had become crystal skeletons, their bark flash-frozen into translucent fractures. Leaves hovered in midair, caught in waves of starlight and void. The ground was split by glowing scars where Miren's power and the Devourer's hunger collided.
At the center of it all, the Devourer of Relics writhed.
Its shape no longer held. It twisted between smoke and claw and something that could not exist, shrieking as Miren's power carved into it again and again. Each scream scraped across her nerves, not sound but pain—raw and invasive.
Miren could barely feel her own body.
Every breath came too slow, too shallow. Her heart pounded not with blood but with something older, heavier—an echo of standing in storms of celestial war, of watching continents shatter beneath impossible light.
Hold on to yourself, Arkel urged. You are not only what you were.
"I don't know who I am!" Miren cried.
The Devourer surged again, dragging itself through broken space toward Seren.
"No!" Miren screamed.
She threw herself forward without thinking.
A wall of starlight exploded around Seren just as the creature struck. The impact shattered what remained of the clearing. Shockwaves tore outward, uprooting trees, blasting crystal shards into the sky.
Seren lay on the ground inside the shield, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"Miren…"
She felt the strain tearing through her muscles and bones. This wasn't just power—it was memory, grief, devotion. Love that did not belong to a single lifetime.
The cult leader stood untouched amid the chaos, her silver-tattooed face lit by flickering starlight.
"You see?" she whispered in awe. "The Star Sovereign protects what she loves."
"I am not a sovereign!" Miren shouted. "I am just a girl who doesn't want anyone else to die!"
The woman tilted her head.
"That is exactly who you always were."
The Devourer slammed into the shield again. Cracks spread through the glowing barrier.
Miren felt herself starting to break.
Arkel's voice softened, grounding her.
Miren… listen to me.
"I don't want to hear it!"
You must.
Long ago, he said, you were more than my wielder. You were my partner. You carried the power of the stars not to rule—but to shield.
Images flooded her mind.
A younger Miren—fierce, luminous—standing at the center of a battlefield littered with broken relics and fallen gods. And beside her, a man with dark hair and kind, stubborn eyes, gripping her hand even as the sky fell.
He believed in you, Arkel whispered.
The Devourer tore another claw into the barrier.
He was Seren's ancestor, Arkel continued. The last Guardian of the Star-Bound Blade. He died to give you time—to seal yourself away, to save the world from the war you had become.
Miren's breath hitched.
"That means… Seren…"
Carries his blood. And his oath.
The barrier shattered.
Seren struggled to his feet, bleeding but defiant. "Miren, go! I'll hold it—"
"You can't!"
He smiled faintly. "Looks like my family has terrible timing."
The cult leader laughed, sharp and triumphant.
"The blade always demands a price."
Something inside Miren finally broke open.
"No more," she whispered.
She stepped forward, placing herself between Seren and the Devourer.
Light gathered around her—not wild now, not raging—but focused, aching with choice.
"I don't care what I was," she said. "I choose who I am now."
Arkel wrapped around her presence like a vow.
Then let us choose together.
The starlight surged inward.
Not outward.
The Devourer screamed as it was pulled toward her, bound by threads of radiant energy that wrapped around its void-form, crushing it smaller and smaller.
The cult leader stared in horror.
"You would seal it inside yourself?"
Miren's voice trembled—but it did not waver.
"If it means he lives."
Seren reached for her. "Miren, don't—"
The sphere collapsed.
Silence fell.
Miren dropped to her knees, breath ragged, vision swimming.
The Devourer was gone.
And something else was gone too.
She felt it—a hollow space where a piece of Arkel's power had been.
Seren caught her before she fell. "You're alive… you're—"
"Different," she whispered.
Arkel was still there—but quieter.
I am with you, he said. But what you did… it changed us.
The cult leader fled into the trees.
Seren held Miren as the ruined forest slowly settled.
And somewhere deep inside her, a promise older than history began to ache.
The world had been saved again.
But the cost was only just beginning.