The silence in the sanctum was not peace—it was memory humming against marble and ash. Almond stood still, her fingers grazing the edge of an old altar carved with names she no longer dared to speak. The scent of burnt myrrh hung in the air, and time felt fractured—like the ruins around her refused to forget.
Velda was the first to speak, her voice lower than a whisper, "You knew this would happen. Didn't you?"
Almond didn't answer immediately. Her breath trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of knowing. "I didn't want it to," she finally said. "But want doesn't matter to the gods. It never did."
Aren limped in moments later, his shirt bloodstained, his eyes cracked open with half-visions still haunting him. He saw her—truly saw her. Not just the villain they whispered about. But the girl who once danced barefoot in midnight rain, who carved wishes into the backs of old wood, and dared to love too loudly.
"We're out of time," he rasped.
"No," Almond said firmly. "We're in time now. Everything led to this. The pact. The burn. The tether."
She turned to Velda. "If you stay, it's war. If you leave, it's betrayal. Either way, your blood will stain the stones."
Velda's jaw clenched. "And if I stay by your side?"
Almond blinked. For a moment, there was vulnerability—a flicker. "Then you'll never walk in the light again."
Velda stepped forward, slow and deliberate. "Good. I always looked better in shadows."
A soft wind crept through the ruins. It didn't feel like a breeze—it felt like breath. The story breathing them in. Holding them close before the fall.
The sanctum pulsed, not with life, but with afterlife.
Everything inside it felt like it was holding its breath—waiting for them to decide what kind of myth they were about to become. The walls, cracked from old spells and older grief, bore witness to a thousand prayers that never reached the gods. And now, three souls stood in its hollow belly, arguing with destiny like it could be bent.
Almond's steps echoed softly as she circled the altar. She traced her thumb over a sigil once used to seal a dying vow. The stone burned cold beneath her touch, and for a moment, she remembered her mother's voice, saying: Some sanctums don't protect—they record your sins.
"Tell me," she said quietly, not to either of them, but to the space between them. "When we die, do we still bleed?"
Aren let out a sound that might've been a laugh. Or a sob. "You already know the answer."
Velda, standing near the fractured window where light used to fall freely, spoke without looking. "We've been bleeding since the first lie we called a spell."
The silence returned like a beast crawling back into the room. Then Almond spoke again, voice steadier now.
"They'll come. The gods. The keepers. The ones who think we're mistakes that learned to breathe. They'll burn this place to salt just to be sure we don't rise again."
Aren stepped closer. "Then let's not rise. Let's haunt."
Velda tilted her head. "You speak like a prophet."
"I speak like a man who's tired of being rewritten."
Almond turned to face them both. Her eyes were dusk and steel and old storms. "We forge the end now—not with light, but with memory. Not with forgiveness, but fire."
A thin trail of blood was dripping down Aren's arm, unnoticed by him, but not by Velda. She walked over, tore a strip from her cloak, and bound the wound in silence. There was no softness in the gesture—only history. The kind you don't speak aloud.
Outside, the wind howled against the sanctum's broken dome. A storm brewed beyond the mountains, black with magic and mourning. It smelled like war. It smelled like old gods waking up.
Almond's hand brushed against the knife at her waist, one carved from bone and heartbreak. "Whatever happens next... we do not run."
"We never did," Velda whispered.
They stood, the three of them, in a crooked triangle—no longer lovers, not quite enemies, maybe just remnants of what once tried to be holy.
A flicker of lightning lit the room for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat, they were beautiful:A bleeding boy with stars in his lungs.A woman who kissed darkness and wore it like perfume.And a girl with war beneath her ribs, trying to rewrite fate with her bare hands.
The sanctum, sensing their vow, sighed. The walls didn't crack, but the air did.
The world outside would never forgive them. But maybe that was the point.
They didn't need forgiveness.They needed revolution.
The revolution didn't come with horns or banners.It came in the form of old blood warming again,in steps that echoed louder than fate,in a heartbeat that refused to sync with fear.
Almond moved first—always her.She took the torch from the wall, its flame a flickering memory of the fire that once tried to devour her soul. "This isn't about surviving anymore," she murmured. "It's about unmaking what tried to remake us."
Velda followed her without question.
Aren, with his wounds and his ghosts, hesitated just long enough to remember how much he loved her. Then he limped after them.
They walked through the sanctum's mouth, out into the ruins of a forest that once whispered secrets to witches. Now the trees were crooked with grief, bark burnt, soil soaked with spells no one dared recite aloud anymore.
Almond raised her hand and pointed. "There," she said. "The Hollow Spire. That's where they'll gather."
Velda nodded. "The Keepers?"
"And the gods pretending not to watch," Almond added.
Aren exhaled a curse. "So we storm the heavens?"
"No," Almond said, eyes glinting. "We pull them down."
The path twisted like the scars on Almond's back—winding, deep, permanent. Every step forward felt like ripping a page from an ancient book they were never meant to read. And with each page torn, the world around them flinched.
They passed a shrine crumbled in on itself. Almond paused.
She knelt and laid her fingers against its moss-covered bones. "This was where she was buried," she said softly.
"Who?" Velda asked.
Almond looked up, eyes too tired to weep. "My sister. The one I failed to raise. The one who believed I could be more than a monster."
For a moment, silence. Then Aren knelt beside her and laid one of his rings—black obsidian, cracked—at the base of the grave.
Velda did the same. She took the feather from her hair and pressed it into the soil. "We carry her," she said. "Into whatever this becomes."
Almond stood. The wind changed direction. The air buzzed like static before a storm. And somewhere distant, bells tolled—but not in mourning. In warning.
They were close.
So close to the Hollow Spire that magic had begun to itch under their skin.
Velda spoke into the heavy dark, "Do you feel it?"
"Yes," Almond replied, her voice firm. "That's not the end coming. That's truth."