The world healed, but Ethan did not.
The Keeper's betrayal had left scars that no celestial salve could mend. The raven sigil on his palm now pulsed erratically, its light dimming as the Thirteenth Star's influence seeped into the fabric of reality.
The sky might have been whole again, but Ethan felt the fractures in his bones, in the hollow where his mother's memory once lived.
He found himself in the ruins of Valenmoor, his family's estate now a skeletal husk. The air smelled of burnt ozone and rot, and the ground whispered with the voices of Veyras long dead.
"You are running out of time, Duskheir."
The voice came from the shadows—not the Keeper's, but a man's, weathered and weary. A figure stepped into the moonlight, his features achingly familiar, the same sharp jawline as Ethan, the same green eyes as his mother. But this man wore armor forged from starlight and ash, his face lined with centuries of grief.
"I am Alric Veyra," he said. "The first Duskheir. And you are killing us both."
Alric led Ethan to a crypt buried beneath the estate, its walls lined with obsidian mirrors. Each reflected a different era of the Veyra line, wars waged in the name of forgotten gods, betrayals that birthed empires, and a woman—Liora's spitting image—weeping as she sealed a void with her own breath.
"The Keeper was not always a liar," Alric said, tracing a finger over a mirror showing his mother and Cedric as children and his grandmother Liora. "She was once the Athenaeum's guardian, a being of pure order. But your uncle… he corrupted her. Twisted her purpose. Now, she seeks to unmake the boundaries between realms, to become a god where she was once a servant."
Ethan's sigil flared, pain lancing up his arm. "How do I stop her?"
Alric turned, his eyes hollow. "By remembering what she fears. The Duskheir's true power isn't to bind or destroy—it's to forgive."
The answer was a blade to the gut. Forgiveness? Ethan's laugh was brittle.
"You want me to forgive the thing that's devouring reality?"
"No," Alric said. "Forgive yourself. The Keeper feeds on your guilt, your rage. She is a reflection of every Veyra's darkest hour. Sever that tether, and she weakens."
But Ethan's guilt was a living thing. Mara's sacrifice, his mother's erased face, Cedric's hollow laugh—they coiled in his chest like serpents.
Alric pressed a hand to Ethan's sternum. "The ritual to banish her requires three anchors, a memory of love, a truth unspoken, and a sacrifice unredeemed. You've already lost the first. The second lies in the Athenaeum's ashes. The third…" His gaze fell to the raven sigil. "The third will cost you what remains of your soul."
They found the unspoken truth in the Athenaeum's wreckage—a shard of the original codex, glowing faintly in the rubble. Touching it unleashed a vision.
The first Keeper, radiant and whole, kneeling before Alric.
"The Veyras will guard the balance," she vowed. "But should your line falter, I will become the knife that pares the rot."
Alric's voice trembled. "And if the rot is within us?"
The Keeper smiled. "Then I will remind you how to bleed."
The vision shattered. The shard dissolved, its light seeping into Ethan's sigil.
One anchor secured.
The Keeper found them at dawn.
She descended from a tear in the sky, her form a shifting maelstrom of starlight and screaming faces—Veyra ancestors, their essences devoured. The ground cracked beneath her, reality itself recoiling.
"Pathetic," she boomed. "You bring a ghost to fight a god?"
Alric stepped forward, his armor flaking to ash. "I bring a Veyra."
The battle was chaos. Alric wielded shadows like blades, but the Keeper unraveled them with a glance. Ethan struck with the sigil's waning light, each blow weaker than the last.
"You cannot win," the Keeper sneered, seizing Ethan's throat. "Your heart is too heavy with regret."
"I know," Ethan choked out. "That's why I brought you."
He slammed his sigil-hand into her chest.
The world went silent.
Ethan's mind flooded with the Keeper's memories—not the corrupted ones, but her true past, her laughter as she taught Alric to weave starlight, her tears as Cedric's dagger pierced her core, her slow unraveling into vengeance.
"You were loved once," Ethan whispered. "You can be again."
The Keeper recoiled.
"Lies!"
"No," Ethan said. "A truth unspoken."
He tore the sigil from his hand, the raven disintegrating into golden dust—the sacrifice unredeemed.
Light erupted. The Keeper screamed, her form fracturing.
"You… you fool," she gasped. "Without the sigil, you'll fade. Your line will end!"
Ethan smiled. "Then end it."
When the light faded, the Keeper was gone. The sky bled dawn's first light, untainted by void or star.
Alric's ghost knelt beside Ethan, whose body was translucent, edges fraying.
"You didn't have to give all of it," he murmured.
"Yes," Ethan said. "I did."
He closed his eyes.
But death did not take him.
He woke in a field of white flowers, the air sweet with a perfume he almost remembered. A woman knelt beside him, her face blurred, her voice a balm.
"Not yet, little guardian," she said. "Your story isn't finished."
Behind her, a raven took flight—its wings stitched with starlight, its eyes kind.