The heart whispered lies in the shape of truths.
It pulsed on the sand between them, its rhythm syncing with the jagged scar now binding Aelric's shadow to Linya's frostblade. Her confession hung heavier than the desert sun—I was sent to kill you—but it was the heart's murmurs that poisoned the silence.
"She knows where your mother's body lies," it sighed in Aelric's voice.
"He remembers the taste of your blade," it crooned in Linya's.
Aelric's iron feathers had grown barbed, their edges serrated by stolen vows. "Your Order," he said, tossing the heart into the air where his shadow caught it mid-spin, "sent you to finish what they started. Why hesitate?"
Linya's frostblade trembled. The pact's aftermath had left her brand weeping black ice. "They didn't tell me you were a child."
"Were."
The heart laughed.
Night fell like a guillotine. The desert transformed—dunes hardening into obsidian waves, the stars above arranging themselves into the Ravens Three's sigil. Linya's breath crystallized as she traced the new constellations. "This isn't natural."
"It's a memory," Aelric said, his shadow dissecting the heart with chain-link fingers. "Their memory."
The vision struck without warning:
A cavern where moonlight congealed into liquid vows. Three infants floated in stone cradles, their shadows surgically removed. Aelric's mother stood at a forge of frozen flame, hammering raven feathers into living chains. Linya's frostblade—still pristine—pierced the first infant's chest, extracting a wisp of primordial darkness.
"The Ravens must feed," spoke a figure cloaked in starlight. "Their hunger justifies all sins."
The memory shattered as Linya retched black ice. "That's impossible. I've never—"
"But your blade has," Aelric interrupted. His shadow held up a sliver of extracted memory—a younger Linya, eyes glazed with forced devotion, repeating the ritual on dozens of shadowblood children.
The heart pulsed triumphantly. "All oaths begin in betrayal."
Linya shattered the memory-shard with her boot. "Your corruption warps truth."
"Your denial warps you."
The Ravens' sigil flared. Iron feathers tore free from Aelric's back, forming a jagged wing that cast a cage-like shadow over Linya. "We need to silence that thing," he nodded at the heart, "before it resurrects its masters."
"And afterward?" Her frostblade carved containment runes in the air. "You'll kill me? Absorb me? Become the monster they fear?"
"Afterward," he said, watching his shadow stitch the heart into its chest cavity, "we'll be too dead to care."
The ritual required three lies and one truth.
Linya arranged crystallized vow-shards into a fractured mandala, their edges bleeding memories Aelric's shadow harvested from the heart. His iron feathers now covered half his face, the metal creeping toward his remaining eye.
"First lie," she intoned, frost spreading from her brand. "I serve the greater good."
The mandala's western shard ignited.
Aelric's shadow contorted. "Second lie," it rasped through the heart's voice. "My hands are clean."
Southern flames rose.
Linya's blade pressed against Aelric's corrupted throat. "Third lie." Her voice broke. "I regret what I became."
Eastern fire roared.
The desert held its breath.
"Now the truth," Aelric said, his human eye locking onto hers.
She hesitated—then kissed him.
It wasn't tenderness. It was theft.
Her frost surged into his veins, seizing control of the heart's corruption. Aelric's shadow screamed as the mandala's central shard—the truth—ignited:
"We're both already dead."
The heart exploded.
Reality rewrote itself.
They stood in a derelict nursery, walls lined with empty stone cradles. The air reeked of preserved rot and dying magic. At the room's center lay Aelric's mother—not frozen, but mummified, her hands still clutching a raven-feathered quill above an unfinished letter:
...they'll use my son to open the final seal. You must ensure the Ravens consume him before—
Linya's frostblade dislodged the letter. "Charming family legacy."
Aelric's shadow absorbed the quill, its feathers adopting her handwriting. "She tried to warn someone." His remaining flesh crystallized as he read the fragmented address. "Someone in your Order."
Before Linya could retaliate, the cradles awoke.
Stone lids slid open, releasing shadowblood corpses—twisted mockeries of Aelric at different ages. Their iron feathers sang as they attacked.
"Yours?" Linya deflected a corpse's chain-wing with her blade.
"Ours," Aelric corrected, his shadow harvesting their corrupted vows.
The nursery became a graveyard ballet. Linya danced between crystallized claws, her frost preserving severed limbs like macabre art. Aelric's shadow grew bloated with stolen power, its form now mirroring the colossus from Chapter 8.
The last corpse fell, revealing a hidden alcove. Inside pulsed a miniature oasis—a perfect replica of Chapter 7's vow-city, its citizens screaming soundlessly.
"A map," Linya breathed. "To the Ravens' prison."
Aelric's shadow consumed it whole. "A trap."
The nursery doors exploded.
Dawnlight revealed a battalion of frost-clad warriors, their blades identical to Linya's. At their helm floated a figure wrapped in living vows—the same starlit cloak from the memory.
"Linya of the Shattered Oath," it boomed. "You stand accused of covenant treason."
Her blade faltered. "High Inquisitor..."
Aelric's laughter crystallized the air. "Right on schedule."
The Inquisitor's cloak parted, revealing Linya's own face beneath—aged, scarred, eyes glowing with stolen starlight.
"Surrender the shadowblood," the future-Linya commanded, "or join him in oblivion."
The present-Linya's frostblade flared. "What in the nine hells—?"
"A living vow," Aelric said, iron feathers shielding them both. "Your 'greater good' made flesh."
The oasis-city erupted from his shadow, its miniature citizens swarming the Inquisitor's forces. Amid the chaos, Aelric seized Linya's wrist—their pact-scar burning—and whispered the truth the ritual had seared into his soul:
"They're not here for me. They're here for your silence."
As the nursery collapsed, the mummified mother's letter finally crumbled, its last legible phrase branding the air before dissolving:
...find the Child of Ashspire before the Ravens...