The raven didn’t fly without purpose.
Its wings cut across the gray morning sky, slicing eastward toward a coastline wrapped in fog and fear. Beyond that coast, behind veils of storm and spell, the last piece of the puzzle stirred—unclaimed, untouched, waiting.
Seina and Kaydence stood on the scorched cliffs, the ruins of Veritas Circle smoking behind them. The war wasn’t over. Not yet. They knew it. Felt it in their bones.
“She said he wouldn’t forgive me,” Seina whispered.
Kaydence didn’t answer right away. “Do you want him to?”
She glanced up. “You are him.”
“I’m not the same boy she left behind.” His voice was rough. “You know that.”
“I do. And I don’t want forgiveness,” Seina said.
“I want vengeance. I want truth. And I want to burn every cage they ever tried to trap us in.”
He nodded. “Then we take the kingdom.”
The castle beyond the eastern cliffs had long been abandoned, its doors sealed by blood pact and betrayal. It had once belonged to the House of Virel—the bloodline that spawned the Bone Crown. A place of secrets. A place of ghosts.
They reached it by nightfall, the sea churning behind them like a monster hungry to reclaim what was stolen.
Inside the gates stood a boy.
Not quite alive. Not quite dead.
A prince who wore a broken circlet and an empty gaze.
“You should not be here,” he said.
Seina stepped forward. “Neither should you.”
“I was born here. I died here. I wait here.”
Kaydence drew his weapon. “Are you a guardian or a threat?”
“I am both.”
The prince lifted a hand and the gates screamed open behind him.
“The crown is shattered. But the root is still buried. Find it. Uproot it. Or this world will bleed again.”
Inside the castle, they found a garden growing where a throne room should’ve been. Vines wrapped around twisted columns. Thorned roses bled golden sap. And voices whispered from the walls—not in speech, but in memory.
Annora’s voice.
“My father warned me about her.”
Another—Kaydence’s own, fractured and low.
“I loved her. Even when I hated her.”
Seina reached for his hand. He took it.
They moved deeper.
At the center of the garden stood a mirror. But it didn’t show their reflections—it showed what could have been. Scarlet Veil, in a different life. One without war. Without fire.
With peace.
“I could’ve had that,” she said, voice tight.
“You still can,” Kaydence murmured.
“No. Not after this. But maybe someone else can.”
The mirror cracked.
Beneath the garden, they found the final chamber.
A pit.
Inside—thousands of bones. All marked with the triangle sigil.
“The first Vultures,” Seina breathed.
“They were sacrifices,” Kaydence said, sickened.
And in the center—rooted into the marrow—grew a tree.
Its bark was white.
Its fruit was blood-red.
The Tree of Crown.
Seina knew what had to be done.
She pulled out the last blade—the one her mother had forged in secret. It pulsed in her grip, a twin to the Bone Crown’s magic, made to undo what it began.
She drove it into the tree.
The earth screamed.
The bones writhed.
And above them, the entire castle began to collapse.
They fled as the world collapsed behind them, the sea devouring the cliffs like a god returned for its due.
The castle was gone.
The tree was gone.
The echoes silenced.
And the raven…
was perched on Seina’s shoulder.
“I think that means it’s done,” Kaydence said, breathless.
Seina smiled—tired, bloody, alive. “No. It means we just woke something worse.”
The wind shifted.
Seina turned to the sky—and this time, the raven didn’t fly away.
It changed.
Feathers became fingers. Wings melted into a cloak blacker than night. A face emerged—sharp, ancient, and smiling like a god who remembered everything and forgave nothing.
Kaydence stepped forward, shielding Seina. “Who are you?”
The being—no longer bird, no longer man—floated above the ruined cliffs.
“I am the one who watched,” it said, voice like thunder and silk.
“When your blood built crowns. When your mothers stitched magic into bone. When you chose love over power, and war over silence.”
Seina raised her blade. “And now?”
The creature bowed.
“Now you owe me.”