Chapter 23
The sky above Dravencourt had turned blood-orange, the color of endings. Not sunset—warning.
Eliendara sat alone in the ancient scrying chamber, a place once sealed behind layers of memory-locks and spellfire wards. The room was circular, rimmed with faded runes, and in its center floated the Obsidian Pool—a mirror of liquid glass that showed only what you never wanted to see.
Kael waited outside. She had asked him to.
What she was about to face… couldn't be witnessed.
Not even by him.
She drew her fingers over the surface of the pool.
"Show me the second death."
The pool darkened. The runes flared.
And time reversed.
She saw herself—older than her first self, dressed in armor, eyes colder, harder. This was after the Sealing War. After the betrayal. After she had taken back her name from the ashes of Vexley.
She was standing before a great gate carved into the side of a mountain—the Final Gate. The one tied to the Seventh.
At her side stood a woman.
Tall. Dark-haired. Eyes burning violet. Her mirror in power, but not in soul.
The Seventh Sealing Lord.
Her name had never been spoken.
Not even in dreams.
But the woman had whispered to her:
"You're not ready to kill me. Because you already did. Once."
Then the vision fractured.
Eliendara saw herself raise her blade.
She saw herself turn it inward.
Not out of defeat.
Not out of surrender.
But out of strategy.
She had killed herself.
To trick the Seventh.
To seal away part of her own soul so that the Seventh couldn't bind to it. Her death had been by her own hand. Her second death.
And in that moment, the Seventh had been lulled into slumber, believing she'd won.
But now…
Now that Eliendara was whole again…
Now that her soul had returned from both deaths…
The Seventh was waking.
Eliendara jerked back from the pool, breath ragged, tears lining her eyes.
"I died," she whispered. "So I could come back later. Stronger. Unbound."
Behind her, the door creaked open.
Kael's voice was low. "What did you see?"
She turned to him.
"My second death," she said. "And what it cost me."
She held out her hand.
The last shard of her soul—once sealed in a death that wasn't truly an end—burned like a silver flame in her palm.
"I have it now," she said. "Everything. Every memory. Every piece."
Kael stared at the flame, then at her.
"Then what's next?"
Eliendara stood, her silhouette reflected in the black water.
"We go to the Hollow Spire."
"Why?"
She looked him in the eyes.
"Because that's where she's waking up."
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 24: The Hollow Spire
Hidden beyond the ruined borders of the Eldraen Wastes lies the Hollow Spire—A tower made from bones of fallen gods.
Inside, the Seventh stirs…
But not alone.
She has already found a new host.And she's wearing a face Eliendara knows all too well—Her mother's.
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