The tower bled light.
Bone-white walls, veins of obsidian threading through them like rot. The throne, wrought of swords too ancient to name, stood empty.
Until now.
Nyssara opened her eyes.
A slow breath escaped her, misting in the cold chamber. Her lips parted as if she had been caught mid-whisper in her sleep. Her fingers twitched, curling around the stone armrest. Long nails scraped sparks from the throne's edge.
She sat in silence, listening.
He awakens, she had said. But she did not smile.
Instead, she wept.
One tear. Black as oil. It slid down her cheek, tracing a line where no sunlight had fallen in a thousand years.
She stood.
Robes of midnight coiled around her like living shadows. A circlet of broken silver hovered above her brow—never touching. Behind her, the great windows of the throne hall showed only void: stars frozen in agony, a dead sun weeping fire across a broken sky.
The Demon Queen walked alone through her palace.
The halls were hollow. Statues of weeping angels lined the corridors, their faces cracked, their wings shattered. At her passing, torches lit—one by one—though no flame touched them. Magic remembered her. The world did not.
When she reached the Mirror Gate, she stopped.
A hundred reflections shimmered across the arched portal: faces she had worn, moments she had stolen, lifetimes unspoken. In one reflection, she was mortal—soft-eyed, laughing, wrapped in a red cloak against the snow. In another, her eyes bled light. Her voice had commanded legions.
In all of them, she was alone.
She reached toward the glass. Her fingers did not touch. The mirror rippled.
A battlefield. A tower. A child's hand. A sword dripping not blood, but memory.
Then—his face.
Arjuna.
Younger than she remembered. Older than the world would understand.
He had not changed. But the pain in his eyes was new. Raw.
The mirror whispered.
"You could end this."
Nyssara's voice was barely a breath.
"No. Not yet."
She turned. Her footsteps echoed like war drums. As she descended the steps of the throne tower, the air shifted. Ice cracked. The mountain stirred.
The world had kept sleeping.
Now it would remember.
Far away, across shattered continents and flooded plains…
A little girl woke screaming in a burnt village. Her name lost, but the black flame mark on her palm pulsed with heat.
In a sealed cathedral, priests burned a tapestry they had guarded for generations—because the woman in it had opened her eyes.
In the capital of Viremor, a mad seer collapsed in the street, laughing blood from his mouth.
"She walks again. The moon burns. The vow breaks."
And in the wilderness near Ashwood Hold, Arjuna stood at the edge of a frozen lake.
He felt it. Like a hook behind his ribs.
Someone had woken. Someone who remembered him—when he could not remember himself.
He stared at the water.
His reflection trembled, not from wind—but from doubt.
Behind him, crows gathered on broken branches. The medallion from Thorne's ashes hung at his hip. It pulsed faintly—two names carved within, one his own.
Who am I really?
The sword at his back whispered a name.
He turned. And walked.
South. Toward the places no map remembered. Toward names that still had meaning, though his mind refused them.
Toward the woman in the storm.
In the tower of bone, Nyssara passed beneath a ruined arch.
A mural sprawled above her: a knight in flame-red armor kneeling before her, crown broken, sword planted in ash. Her own painted eyes stared down at the scene—full of sorrow. Or love. Or both.
The mural was unfinished.
She raised her hand.
Black fire spilled from her fingertips. The stone shimmered.
And the knight stood up.
The crown mended. The sword rose.
She smiled—not cruelly, not triumphantly.
Just softly.
"You left me once."
She closed her eyes.
"Don't do it again."