The scream wasn't sound—it was pain, carved directly into their bones. Kael clawed at the crown, his fingers passing through the shadowy metal as if it were smoke. The voices inside grew louder, more desperate:
"She lied to you!"
"The door must open!"
"He was never your brother!"
Elara grabbed Kael's face, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Don't listen. It's not real."
His pupils were blown wide, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "It is real. That's the problem."
The new shard—the dark one—pulsed in her palm, its edges writhing like living tendrils. It wanted the crown. It remembered it.
And it was getting harder to hold onto.
They found the cultists in the dead city's heart.
A dozen figures in tattered silver robes knelt before a massive archway of black stone. At its center, where the keystone should have been, was a gaping hole—a hole that bled, thick crimson droplets oozing down the arch's curves.
Elara's stomach turned. "That's not a door. That's a wound."
Kael's hand found hers, their marks flaring in unison. "It's both."
The cultists turned as one. Their eyes were sewn shut with the same golden thread as the Keeper's. Their smiles were identical.
"You bring the key," they intoned. "The door hungers."
Then the archway moved.
The stone rippled like muscle. The blood flow increased, pooling at the base before surging upward in a grotesque reverse waterfall. Within the liquid, shapes formed—faces, hands, mouths, all screaming silently.
The lead cultist raised a bone dagger. "The key requires blood. Will you give it freely?"
Kael stepped forward. "You first."
His blackfire took the man in the chest, burning through robes and flesh alike. The others didn't react. They simply waited, their stitched smiles unwavering.
Elara's silver vines lashed out, immobilizing three. "They're not fighting back."
Kael's jaw tightened. "Because they don't have to."
The door was opening anyway.
The archway split down the middle with a sound like tearing meat.
What lay beyond wasn't darkness. It wasn't light. It was absence—a void so complete it hurt to look at. And in that void, something stirred.
A hand, pale and too-long, pressed against the invisible barrier from the other side.
Then a voice—not in their ears, but in their bones:
"You are late."
Kael's crown shrieked, the shadows writhing violently. The dark shard in Elara's hand burned cold enough to blister.
The door wasn't a prison.
It was an invitation.
And whatever was on the other side was about to RSVP.
The cultists began to chant, their voices rising in eerie harmony. The door's edges frayed, tendrils of darkness reaching through like probing fingers.
Elara gripped the shard tighter. "We can't let it through."
Kael's eyes never left the door. "We might not have a choice."
She turned to him, horrified. "You can't be serious."
"The crown knows what's on the other side," he said quietly. "And it's terrified."
The hand pressed harder. The barrier buckled.
Elara made a decision.
She slammed the dark shard into the amulet's chain—not to fuse it, but to *break* it.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Light.
Not the gentle glow of dawn, but the searing white of a star's heart. It erupted from the amulet, from the crown, from the marks on their skin, scouring the courtyard clean.
The cultists dissolved, their stitches popping like overtaut strings.
The door screamed, its edges blackening as if burned.
And the thing on the other side?
It laughed.
Then the light faded, leaving only silence—and the amulet's chain, now severed completely.
Kael touched the crown. It crumbled to ash in his hands.
Elara stared at the broken chain around her wrist. "What did we just do?"
From the ruins of the door, a single word echoed:
"Enough."