The flame on the horizon didn't flicker.
It consumed.
Like a wound torn open in the sky, shaped like a crown, made of coal-black light. The Eighth Throne had been kindled—and the world was beginning to remember what had once been erased.
Valen watched it from the high ridge above the frost ruins. Lyra lay beneath a coat of fire-woven silk, breath shallow, her soul still shaken from severing Lazarin's binding.
"She needs rest," Dhera said softly.
"She needs time," Valen corrected. "But we're running out of that."
They buried the shard of the Crimson Mark at the mouth of a snow-locked cave. It pulsed faintly in the earth, a slow heartbeat echoing through the frozen stone.
"She poured herself into it," Dhera murmured. "That's why she lived."
Valen nodded. "But she left something behind."
They both turned to the sky.
To the black flame that crowned the distant horizon.
Dhera asked, "If that's the Eighth Throne... what does he plan to do with it?"
Valen unsheathed Sorrowfang.
The steel was duller now—tarnished, as if afraid.
He whispered, "He's not planning to sit on it."
The next day, they reached a ruined gate carved into the mountain's edge: Ghal'Sevrin's Watch. No guards. No stone. Just bones—towers of them, stacked like monuments. Human. Dhampir. Other.
A warning.
"Turn back."
But Valen walked forward.
Inside, the wind howled through tunnels of ice-veined rock, carrying whispers.
Lazarin's voice.
Not words. Fragments.
"You will become..."
"...end of names..."
"...she chose wrong..."
Lyra stirred.
Her eyes opened, dull silver flickering with buried pain.
"Where are we?"
Valen looked down. "At the edge of everything."
The caverns wound deep beneath the mountains.
Here, the world was quiet—but not dead.
Spirits whispered behind every wall.
Dhera carried the Chronicle close to her chest, its ink pulsing like veins. She pointed to a cracked mural along the stone.
"This... this was the Eighth Throne."
Valen examined it: a throne never built. A hollow dais surrounded by eleven kneeling kings, their faces cracked or gone.
Only the Eighth remained uncarved.
A void.
No identity.
No truth.
"A throne meant for no one," Dhera said.
Valen nodded. "Or for someone not yet made."
They reached the heart of the cavern.
A lake of frozen starlight stretched before them—shimmering with shapes that moved beneath the ice.
Memories.
The past, imprisoned.
Hovering above the lake:
A figure wrapped in flame and shadow.
Lazarin.
He didn't wear a crown.
He was one.
Formless. Robed in the dreams of others.
Valen stepped forward.
Sorrowfang in hand.
Lazarin turned slowly.
His face was a shifting mass of all things forgotten—every lie, erased name, abandoned history.
He smiled with a hundred mouths.
"Ah, the blade without lineage."
"The child of no house. The heir to none."
"And yet, you carry the Chronicle."
"The truth."
Valen didn't answer.
Lazarin tilted his head.
"You came to kill me, didn't you?"
"That's what broken things do. Try to unmake the hand that dropped them."
Dhera raised the Chronicle.
"This doesn't belong to you anymore."
Lazarin laughed.
The cavern trembled.
"Every word in that book came from me."
"I chose what survived. What faded."
"I gave the world its story."
Valen stepped closer. "Then let me write an ending."
He charged.
Steel met shadow.
Sorrowfang struck—but slid through Lazarin like air. The warlock didn't even flinch. He waved one hand, and Valen was hurled backward into the ice wall with bone-snapping force.
Dhera screamed.
Lyra stood.
Her eyes blazed.
"You don't control me anymore," she whispered.
"No," Lazarin agreed.
"I freed you."
"Because now you'll choose to return."
He extended a hand.
A chain of memory unfurled.
Not the same ring—but a newer one, forged from the Eighth Throne itself.
"Come."
"Sit beside me."
"We'll rebuild the Court together."
Lyra stepped forward.
One pace.
Two.
Valen groaned from the ground.
"Don't."
She didn't look at him.
Just reached for the chain.
Her fingers brushed it.
It hissed.
Burned.
Bit into her skin.
And then she clenched her fist.
And said:
"No."
She turned—and threw the chain into the frozen lake.
Where memories swarmed.
And consumed it.
Lazarin screamed—not in pain, but in rage.
"You broke the script."
"You... chose chaos!"
Valen stood.
Blood running from his temple.
"Chaos is freedom."
He charged again.
This time—not with a sword.
But with memory.
He opened the Chronicle to the first page.
And read:
"There once was a king who built a lie."
"And buried truth in names."
"But names return."
"And they burn."
The Chronicle erupted in flame.
Not fire.
Remembrance.
Lazarin staggered as pieces of himself peeled away—every lie, every erased truth, every altered thread of history.
And for the first time—
He looked mortal.
Valen drove Sorrowfang through the warlock's chest.
Not steel.
But truth.
The blade hummed as it absorbed names, titles, false thrones, rewritten crowns.
Lazarin's form unraveled.
His voices screamed.
Until there was only one left.
"Lyra…"
But she didn't answer.
She turned her back.
And walked away.
The lake shattered.
Memory spilled into the cavern.
Cold wind roared as centuries returned to the world.
And where the Eighth Throne had hovered—
There was nothing.
Just freedom.
Valen fell to one knee.
Breathing hard.
The Chronicle fell shut beside him.
And on its cover, a new title had been carved in blood and ink:
"The Legend of the Thronebreaker."