Elira sat at the edge of the monastery's broken altar, shards of her shattered veil glinting around her like fallen stars.
She touched her face—flesh now visible after years of illusion. The mirror's grip had cracked, but its weight still lingered.
"I don't know what I was before this," she murmured.
Kael stood nearby, silent, his back to the altar. The wind moaned through broken arches.
"You don't have to remember everything," he said. "Only who you choose to be now."
Elira gave a ghost of a smile. "Spoken like a man who's seen too many lives die behind his eyes."
Selene knelt nearby, cleaning her blade. "We've all seen enough."
A faint thrum echoed from the cursed dagger at Kael's belt. It pulsed not in warning—but in recognition.
Another Marked had been found. Another thread pulled into the web.
Kael's cursed eye flicked westward.
"The next one's waiting."
Elira looked up sharply. "You feel it too?"
Kael nodded. "The mark shows the path now."
Selene sheathed her blade. "Where to?"
Kael exhaled slowly.
"The Red Teeth."
Silence. Even the wind seemed to still.
Elira's voice was quiet. "That place is cursed. A kingdom swallowed by blood and betrayal."
Kael turned, his face grim. "Then we'll fit right in."
---
Elsewhere…
Far from Valehart, deep within the ruins of a drowned city, another Marked stirred.
He sat alone upon a throne of rusted chains, surrounded by statues of warriors whose skulls grinned with gold teeth.
Blood dripped steadily from his fingers into a basin carved from a single obsidian fang.
A voice echoed through the shadows.
"Three have awakened. Soon they will seek you."
The man—his skin inked in ancient script, his eyes burning with hunger—smiled.
"Let them come. The throne does not bind me. I drink from its spine."
His laughter echoed through the drowned halls, and something beneath the waters moved.
---
End of Chapter 18
Kael, Selene, and Elira prepare for the journey to the Red Teeth, unaware of the monster that waits ahead—one who does not resist the throne's curse, but embraces it.