85 lines
No EOL
3.8 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
No EOL
3.8 KiB
Markdown
The blade had already been drawn.
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Ashmire throbbed in her grasp like a second heartbeat—too large for her hand, too alive for a dead thing. It sang without sound, low and deep, like a wind moving through old bones. Where her fingers touched the leather-wrapped hilt, her skin split open and bled—not from violence, but **as if the blade was drinking**.
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The crypt around her warped.
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The walls of basalt pulsed. Torches shuddered. A distant sound echoed—a scraping, like antlers dragged across stone.
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Then, the darkness swallowed everything.
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She stood beneath a black sun.
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No warmth. No sky. Just a churning disc of cold fire, its corona flaring outward like cinders fleeing a forge too ancient to name. The world beneath her feet was ash and ruin. The mountains were gone—melted, sundered, or simply forgotten. The horizon burned sideways.
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The throne rose before her—built of stone, sinew, and splinters of shattered stars. And seated upon it was the Queen.
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She was no longer a corpse. No longer the mummified husk she had once been. She burned now with the memory of flesh. Her skin was pale gold fissured with black veins of flame. Her hair, a shroud of smoke. Her crown had fused to her skull. Her voice did not echo—it branded.
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“You are the price,” the Queen said. “But not enough.”
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Telaryn opened her mouth to speak—but no words came. Her throat was full of ashes. Her blood felt thick with heat.
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“The blade remembers,” said the Queen, rising. “But memory is not strength. Blood is.”
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She stepped down from the throne. With each footfall, the ground trembled.
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“Would you carry my will?” the Queen whispered. “Then you must bind it. One soul. One bond. One offering.”
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Ryn staggered back—but the blade kept her upright. It pulled her forward, tethered her to this place, to this voice, to this terrible promise.
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“Not just any blood,” the Queen said, touching Telaryn’s face with burning fingers. “_Yours_. Reflected. Known. Given meaning. That is the law.”
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Reality snapped back like a noose.
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Telaryn reeled, collapsing to her knees beside the altar in the crypt, Ashmire clattering to the stone floor, singing as it hit. Her chest heaved. Her mouth was dry.
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Alisha was there. Pale, trembling.
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Ryn saw her through a veil—_not with her eyes, but with something deeper_. Her companion glowed faintly in the dim light, as if the blade itself recognized her.
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Alisha took a hesitant step forward. “Ryn… something’s wrong. You’re shaking.”
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Telaryn blinked. Her lips parted.
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“The blade,” she rasped. “It… it asked.”
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Alisha went still. “What do you mean, _asked_?”
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Ryn’s hands trembled. “It needs something. It—it needs…”
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She didn’t finish.
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Ashmire pulsed again. A warm current, rising from the blade, crawling into her chest like longing turned liquid. Her eyes blurred. She saw again..
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Alisha’s face, in another time, kneeling in the camp with her head bowed as Telaryn grieved.
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Alisha’s hand in hers, back in Winter’s Edge.
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Alisha’s blood, not yet spilled, but already known.
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“One bond,” said the Queen again, voice inside her now.
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“Let her be the bridge. Let her be the door.”
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“I thought—” Alisha stepped closer, her voice cracking. “I thought we were searching for something that could help people. That could bring Talpis back.”
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Telaryn looked up.
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Alisha’s eyes were full of tears. “Not this,” she whispered. “Ryn… not this.”
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And Telaryn, with Ashmire vibrating beside her, could not answer.
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Because in the pit of her heart, something whispered: *You already knew.*
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It was not the kind of blade made for salvation.
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It was a blade made to _cut away what was weak_.
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To remake.
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To reshape.
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To _feed_.
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And the price… was her.
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Or someone who mattered to her.
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The blood would bind.
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The blade had waited a thousand years.
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And now, it was _hungry_. |