Dawn refused to come to the fishing village.
Lion crouched on wind-scoured rocks, running his thumb along the fragment Shadowglow had left behind. Even after a month, the inscription [VESSELS MUST BE PAIRED] still pulsed faintly at midnight. Behind him in the shack, Selene's coughing fits came irregularly—the crystallization had reached her carotid since the lab's destruction.
"You should tell her."
Calvin's voice triggered Lion's fight reflex. The knight materialized below the rocks like a specter, his hook suspending a dripping burlap sack. Moonlight caught the unnatural gold sheen in his lone eye.
"Tell her what?" Lion palmed the fragment as his Shadowheart lurched.
"Don't play dumb." Calvin upended the sack. Several fish plopped onto stone—each sporting human teeth and tiny grasping fingers near the gills. "Dawn catch. The Corruption spreads faster now."
Lion prodded one with his boot. The milky flame frozen in its eyes matched his memory-flashes of tainted creatures.
"Shadowglow's memories—"
"That scrap of a girl saw fragments." Calvin seized Lion's wrist with crushing force. "I was there when the pact was signed. The Shadow Royals consented, but they never expected—"
Glass shattered in the shack.
They found Selene floating midair, wreathed in dichromatic flames—gold-and-gray. Crystalline veins now covered her entire left side, while her right cheek had regressed to youthful smoothness. Worst was the village girl kneeling before her, chest burned transparent yet bloodless.
"Subject Seven also fails." Selene's voice overlapped with another woman's. "Mother was right—common vessels cannot host the Ember..."
"Selene!" Lion's shadow-tendrils lashed out instinctively, only to wither in those ashen flames. The fifth chain vibrated like a plucked guillotine wire.
The floating thing turned. Heterochromatic eyes—one phoenix-gold, one corpse-gray—locked onto him. Within the fire, a phantom resolved: Selene's mother in Archon robes, injecting liquid flame into an infant's heart.
"Lion Shadowborn." The voice came from the flames, not Selene's mouth. "Surrender the paired vessel you carry."
Calvin's sword barred Lion's path. "That's not her! The Corruption speaks through the Phoenix link!"
As if in confirmation, Selene's right arm spasmed. Her prosthetic spat genuine golden sparks—a fleeting clarity. She screamed through gritted teeth:
"Blackreef Isle... find... the other me..."
The gray fire detonated.
Lion barely dragged Calvin through the window before the shack crystallized into dust. Where Selene had stood, only a burning sigil remained: twin phoenixes bound by chains.
"Corruption cult mark." Calvin drove his hook into his own thigh, using pain to focus. "They're herding us somewhere."
Lion touched the symbol.
The vision struck like a spike:
A storm-lashed island. A "Selene" in tattered Conclave robes feeding gray flames. Her left arm flesh, her right pure amethyst crystal. When she turned, the Archon's brand glared from her neck.
"Blackreef holds her other half." Lion gasped back to reality. "The Corruption wants us there."
Calvin exposed his chest—a decades-old scar over his heart, surrounded by crystalline markings forming a tiny dragon sigil.
"Twenty years ago, I guarded Blackreef." His voice aged decades. "They kept the Conclave's most dangerous experiment there... codenamed Twin Vessels."
The sea stank suddenly. Beyond the shore, hundreds of bioluminescent jellyfish pulsed with gray fire, drifting northward like a damned armada.
"The Bloodmoon tides cut off Blackreef in three days." Calvin took a fortifying swig. "That's our window."
Lion clenched the fragment. Shadowglow's warnings warred with Selene's plea in his mind, while the Shadow Prince whispered:
[WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE SAVING?]
At sunrise, every villager stood watching with matching corpse-gray eyes. They smiled in unison:
"Come to Blackreef, Shadowborn. Your truth awaits."