Mine
527 Words
The Sigil blazed through her skin.
Not just pain now—pull.
Like her bones were being drawn forward through a door her body couldn’t see.
Rhea stumbled back from Riven, but the shadows behind her breathed inward, folding in slow and deliberate, until they pressed close as walls. The space itself felt aware. Listening.
She turned a full circle, chest heaving.
Every surface—stone, crystal, even the air—seemed to pulse faintly with her heartbeat.
The Sigil was syncing the Hollow to her.
“What is this place?” she demanded.
Aurel came up beside her, gaze sweeping the vast black arches overhead. “The Hollow Crown. Once the heart of a kingdom ruled by our kind. Now it’s a throne room for ghosts.”
“Why me?”
Noc’s voice slipped out of the shadows, a frost-edged whisper. “Because you woke it up.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You survived,” Riven said simply.
Bram gave a short, rough laugh. “And now everything else will smell it on you.”
The pull in her spine tightened, sharp enough to steal her breath. She pressed a hand to her chest, but it didn’t help—the pounding was coming from inside the mark, not her heart.
Then the world moved.
The floor tilted. The walls groaned. Cracks bled pale light that slid down the stone like molten glass. Under her feet, rough crystal smoothed into obsidian tile. Arches twisted higher, stretching into a cathedral spine. Torches bloomed along the walls with flames the color of dying suns.
“Is that—” she swallowed. “Is that me?”
No one answered, but the looks they gave her said enough.
Aurel’s expression was almost delighted.
Noc’s was… wary.
Bram muttered something she didn’t catch and started toward her.
“Don’t,” she snapped, holding up a hand.
He stopped. Lowered himself to her eye level instead. “Then stand. Or I carry you.”
“I’ll walk.”
She tried.
Her knees buckled instantly.
Bram caught her before her head hit the floor, one arm sliding under her legs like she weighed nothing.
“Put me down.”
“Later.” His mouth quirked in a grin that showed just enough teeth. “You look better in my arms anyway.”
She swore at him, but her words slurred. The world was flickering, the Sigil’s heat drowning out her thoughts.
They passed through a vaulted arch—and the Hollow Crown opened before her.
It was vast and wrong and breathtaking. Spires curled like bone, ribbed arches swelled as though the palace itself was breathing. Black marble streaked with silver veins gleamed beneath their feet. The air tasted of metal and something sweet rotting beneath it.
And at the far end, on a dais of silvered bone, sat the Throne.
It pulsed.
It throbbed.
It saw her.
Her vision blurred. Heat roared through her spine, clawing toward her heart.
The last thing she felt before the dark closed in was a voice—not hers, not theirs, older than anything she’d ever known—curl through her mind.
Mine.
- Writer
