Ashmire pulsed like a second heart in her grip—slow, powerful, ancient. The hilt was warm now, alive with something that moved beneath the metal like sinew, like breath. Her fingers curled tighter around it without thought, as if the sword were drawing her deeper into itself.

Then came the change.

She staggered back, gasping, as heat surged through her arm—not like fire, but like molten stone pouring through her veins. The wound on her ribs, half-forgotten through pain and exhaustion, suddenly clenched. Flesh knit with a sound like twisting leather. She looked down. Where there had been gashes, bruises, blackened frostbite—there was now smooth, untouched skin. Only a faint red shimmer marked where the damage had been.

She touched her face—her fingers tingled, her breath steady. The weight of exhaustion had vanished. The hunger. Even the grief felt… distant. Walled behind something smooth and cold.

Her eyes adjusted faster now. Every surface in the crypt seemed sharp-edged and precise. The silver filigree around the runes glinted. The carved bone in the Nameless Queen’s throne gleamed like wet ivory. And the shadows—those reaching, groping, whispering things—had stilled.

They weren’t gone.

They were waiting.

She straightened, spine clicking into place like armor being fastened. Her breath steamed once, then not at all. The torchlight did not flicker near her.

Then the visions struck.

Not like dreams, but like knives.

She blinked—and the world shattered.

Ash raining from a sky without sun.  
Mountains melting into glass.  
Cities torn open like carcasses beneath fireless flame—buildings crumbling in reverse, screams rising too late to be useful.  
A woman on a throne of bone and black starmetal, wearing a crown that bled—dripping scarlet that coiled midair like threads of fate.  
Armies prostrating, then screaming.  
A newborn, held aloft, swallowed by the sword's shadow.  
The Veil, stretched too thin, cracking like old ice as something vast and unseen pressed against it from beyond.

And always—_the Queen_.  
Her face both hers and not hers.  
Her lips not moving, but her voice curling into Telaryn’s skull like smoke.

> _“They burned the memory of me to keep their world whole.”_  
> _“You carry what they tried to forget.”_  
> _“You are my breath. My blade. My waking.”_

Telaryn opened her mouth—but no sound emerged. The scream had no path.

Only pressure.  
A hollow ringing in her ears.  
A tremble through the bones of the crypt.

She collapsed to one knee—more reflex than choice. The floor cracked beneath her, hair fanned around her shoulders like black flame.

The shadows bent toward her again. But not in hunger.

In reverence.

The blood on the altar had dried, but her blade still gleamed, wet and eager.

Ashmire throbbed again. With every pulse, her heartbeat aligned to its rhythm.

In.  
Out.

A steady, dreadful clarity filled her. As if someone had drawn a curtain inside her mind and shown her what had always been waiting behind it.

Her wounds were gone.  
Her fear had cooled.  
Her name still hung in her mind—but not alone.

She stood.

Not trembling. Not unsure. The weight of what she had done did not crush her—it forged her. In her hand, Ashmire no longer pulsed like a second heart. It _was_ her heart, her breath, the axis of her becoming. Her eyes, ringed in red, no longer searched for answers—they **carried** them. Cold. Certain.

The throne no longer looked empty. It looked expectant. She turned from it. Not away—_past_ it.

Ashmire whispered in her mind, but the voice was no longer a foreign presence. It was her own, returned deeper. Sharpened. She could feel the blade’s hunger, and it no longer frightened her. It promised power. Dominion. The right to shape the world instead of be shaped by it. The Nameless Queen had ruled in fireless flame—Telaryn would do more. She would _rise_, and nothing would burn unless she chose it.

Her cloak swept behind her as she climbed the broken steps.

Above, the crypt ceiling groaned, snow falling like dust through the cracks.

She did not look back at Alisha's body. The price had been paid. The world would answer.

And Telaryn of Talpis, blade in hand, eyes lit with the blood of an ancient queen, stepped boldly ahead—no longer seeking hope, but carrying judgment.