The air around them thickened like molasses as the child’s silhouette disappeared into the shifting dark. Seina stepped in front of Kaydence without hesitation, her fists crackling faintly with kinetic magic she didn’t remember learning.
Kaydence grasped her wrist.
“We don’t know what it is.”
“We don’t need to. It’s not friendly.”
From the shadows came a whisper—not a voice, but a memory.
“You will kneel, daughter of death.”
Seina’s heart skipped. That voice… it wasn’t the child. It was her mother’s.
“Kay, did you—”
He was already scanning the room, blade drawn, body tense.
“We need to get out. Now.”
But the chamber doors slammed shut.
The runes on the walls ignited with violet fire.
A woman stepped out of the shadow. Older. Eyes like molten gold. A black veil across her mouth. She didn’t walk—she glided, like thought incarnate.
“You brought the end of one curse,” she said. “But another wakes.”
Seina stepped forward, every cell in her body alert. “Who are you?”
“I am the Oracle. Guardian of what comes after.”
Kaydence stiffened. “Veritas warned of an Oracle. She sees what should never be seen.”
The Oracle ignored him. She looked only at Seina. “The boy was your test. The crown, your inheritance. But the child—the child is your undoing.”
Seina blinked. “The boy? The child?”
She meant Kaydence.
She meant the white-haired creature.
Seina’s breath caught in her throat. “What do you mean undoing?”
The Oracle raised a single hand.
The runes behind her shifted. A new vision flooded the room.
A throne of bones. A woman in shadow. A dagger in a child’s hand.
Seina stared at the image of herself—bloodied, alone, wearing a crown she never forged.
“Unless you kill him,” the Oracle said, “you will become her.”
Then the chamber went dark.
And the choice stood before her.
Kill the boy.
Or lose herself.
Seina sat in the ashes of the chamber long after the Oracle disappeared. The silence pressed in on her ears like the depths of the sea, and for the first time since donning her first false identity, she felt like she didn’t know her name at all.
Seina Sallow.
Scarlet Veil.
Daughter of the woman who created the Bone Crown. Heir to a throne she destroyed.
Now, maybe, destroyer of a child.
A child who hadn’t blinked when he said, “You must face what comes after.”
Kaydence crouched beside her, wiping a smear of soot from her cheek
. “That Oracle. Do you think she was real?”
Seina didn’t answer right away. “She was real enough.”
“What she said about the boy—about you…”
“She said if I didn’t kill him, I’d become the woman in the vision.” Her voice broke. “My mother, maybe. Or worse.”
“She could be lying.”
“She wasn’t.”
Kaydence didn’t argue. He just sat beside her, silent, and Seina wondered for a moment if that silence meant he was already choosing what side of her he’d stand on.
The northern mountains loomed like stone guardians as they made their way to the cliffside keep that once belonged to the Veritas Circle’s outpost. Kaydence had sent word ahead to a few loyal Vultures-turned-rebels. What was left of them, anyway. The war had trimmed the mafia tree until only roots and rot remained.
Seina couldn't stop picturing the child.
His black eyes.
The eerie smile.
The way her blood had sung when he entered the room—like he was a part of her, or a part of something buried inside her.
At the summit of the keep, a messenger was waiting.
"News from the east," the young woman said, panting from her climb. "Three towns—gone. Not just burned. Gone. Like they were pulled from the map."
Seina and Kaydence exchanged a look.
"The child?" he asked.
"Or whatever power follows him."
Seina clenched her fists.
 "Then we need answers. And I think I know who has them."
 The Tangle of Truth
They found the witch in the ruins of the Weeping Forest.
Tall. Grey-eyed. Covered in inked symbols and scars that pulsed when Seina stepped closer.
"I knew you'd come," the witch rasped, her voice like sandpaper and wind.
"You know what the child is," Seina said. Not a question.
"I do."
"Then tell me. Before I burn every tree in this cursed place."
The witch smiled—not cruel, but sad.
“He is the Dagger of Echoes. Not a weapon forged by men, but a soul split in two.”
Seina’s heart thundered. “Split from what?”
The witch looked her dead in the eyes.
“From you.”