Here is:
Chapter 75: The Final Seal Beckons
The air still shimmered with the aftershock of the Seal's destruction.
Where once the Temple of the Rootless Tree stood, there was now only silence—thick, oppressive, unnatural. Not a bird sang, not a leaf stirred. Even the wind dared not move through the valley where Clara Bennett stood, her body trembling beneath the weight of what she had done.
The Second Seal was gone.
Shattered.
And in its place was something new.
Something terrifying.
Clara dropped to her knees, her hands scorched with radiant burns, the sigil of the Hollow Eye now fused with strange new patterns etched by the broken seal. They glowed faintly across her chest and wrists, pulsing with a rhythm that wasn't hers—yet.
Her ears rang with the echoes of the Third's death scream, and though the entity had dissolved into ash and memory, Clara could still feel her—like a ghost stitched into her skin.
She'd rewritten history.
But something ancient had awakened in the process.
And it was watching her.
"Clara…"
Liam's voice was faint.
She turned sharply. He lay several feet away, half-buried in debris, his face bruised and bloodied, one leg twisted unnaturally beneath him. The tree he'd collided with during the Third's attack had splintered in half.
Clara scrambled to his side.
"Liam—stay with me. You're going to be okay. I'm going to get you help."
He grunted, his eyes barely open. "You… glowed."
A broken laugh slipped from her lips. "Yeah. It wasn't as fun as it looked."
He coughed. Blood bubbled on his lips.
"No hospitals… not safe."
"I'm not taking you to a hospital," she said, voice shaking. "I'm taking you home."
He smiled weakly, then passed out.
The walk back to Wrenmore was slow and agonizing. Clara constructed a makeshift sling with scraps of her cloak and dragged Liam across what was left of the storm-soaked forest. The sky above them had dimmed to a strange orange hue, as though sunset had decided to stay permanently suspended.
When they finally reached the threshold of the Hollow House, she kicked the door open and laid Liam on the couch, frantically searching for supplies.
She found gauze. Alcohol. Stitching thread. Painkillers.
She didn't stop shaking.
Not until he stirred again, hours later.
And whispered, "What did we unleash?"
Clara sat in silence beside him.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But it's not over. There's still one Seal left."
"And the Third… she said you had to choose. One to keep. One to break."
"I didn't choose," Clara whispered. "I broke both."
Liam stared at her.
"Then what's left?"
She looked toward the window.
The shadows outside had thickened. There was movement—slow, deliberate. Like something circling the house. But when she blinked, it was gone.
"I think," she said softly, "I became the Seal."
That night, Clara dreamed.
But not of memories.
Of futures.
She stood at the edge of a vast lake made of ink and fire. Trees with bleeding bark loomed above her, their branches tangled into impossible shapes. In the center of the lake stood a single tower of bone.
And atop it, the Final Seal.
It was not a coin.
Not a sphere.
Not a relic.
It was a face.
Her own.
—
The vision split.
In one future, she stood atop the tower, hands raised, her voice echoing across nations as the world bowed before her. Her eyes burned with the Hollow Eye sigil, and beneath her, the earth cracked open to swallow cities whole.
In the other, she stood alone, blood pouring from her eyes, her hands shaking as she drove a blade into her own chest—sealing the power forever within herself, dying as the world breathed again.
Two futures.
One price.
And the Final Seal waited for her choice.
Clara woke screaming.
Liam jolted upright, groaning from his bandaged ribs. "Clara?!"
She clutched her chest. "The last Seal… I saw it."
"Where?"
She hesitated. "In a place that doesn't exist yet. It's… becoming. Like it's being built from everything we've broken."
"The Unborn."
Clara nodded. "It's not a
relic. It's a state. When all three Seals break, the Final one forms naturally. It's the synthesis of memory, silence, and will."
Liam's eyes widened. "So if that Seal completes—"
"Then I become the gateway," Clara whispered.
"Or the lock."
There was no more time to doubt.
The map in Clara's mind—burned into her during the Seal's destruction—began to unfold with eerie clarity. She saw ruins beneath Wrenmore, catacombs never documented, doors that only opened to those marked by memory.
She had to go back beneath the well.
To the deepest part.
To the place where the First Ritual failed centuries ago.
The place where her bloodline began.
Before leaving, she gave Liam a blade—one inscribed with protective runes she didn't know she could write until her fingers moved on their own.
"If I don't come back," she said, "burn the Hollow House. Burn everything. Don't let the Seal form."
"Clara—"
"I'm serious."
He gripped her hand, not letting go. "Come back."
She met his eyes. "I'll try."
And then she left, the woods parting for her like she was something the forest feared.
Clara returned to the well.
It no longer whispered.
It screamed.
She climbed down into the dark, alone—except for the Seals now etched into her flesh, guiding her steps, pulling her deeper, deeper, past the place she once feared.
She found the gate.
Not stone. Not wood.
Flesh.
It pulsed, like it had a heartbeat. It recognized her.
And it opened.
Beyond it, she found the chamber of the ancients.
Rows of sarcophagi. Bones of former vessels. Echoes of failed lives.
At the center, a mirror.
But it didn't show her reflection.
It showed her becoming.
The Seal.
The Keeper.
The End.
And as she reached for it—
Something reached back.
A hand of smoke.
A voice like her own.
But older. Sharper. Crueler.
"You think you've come to stop this?" the voice asked. "You are this."
Clara froze.
The mirror whispered:
"The Final Seal is your choice."