The cavern’s collapse had sealed the Blood Choir’s tomb—but not the whispers in Liraeth’s skull.

  She pressed her palms to her temples, nails biting into skin, as if she could claw out the crown’s lingering voice. It slithered behind her eyes, murmuring in a language of smoke and teeth.

  "You could have been glorious."

  Sorin’s hand found her shoulder. His touch was warm, but the black veins still spiderwebbed across his knuckles, sluggish now but not gone.

  Never gone.

  “We need to move,” Kael gritted out. Blood soaked his tunic where Riven’s sickle had hooked deep. His golden eyes—so like hers—flicked to the rubble behind them. “The rest of the Choir will be hunting us.”

  Liraeth forced herself to nod. The staff trembled in her grip, its light guttering like a dying candle.

  Then—

  A sound.

  Not from the tunnels.

  From Sorin.

  A low, broken laugh.

  “You don’t understand,” he said softly. “They’re not just hunting us.”

  His gaze lifted to the cavern ceiling—or where it had been, before the collapse. Somewhere above, beyond stone and ruin, the sky waited.

  “They’re calling him.”

  The Hollow King.

  The tunnels twisted like a gutted serpent, leading them deeper into Sunspire’s bones.

  Liraeth’s breath fogged in the chill air. Every step sent jagged pain up her ribs—cracked, maybe, when the crown had forced her to attack Kael. The memory curdled in her stomach.

  Her hands, moving without her. Her voice, speaking in tongues. Kael’s blood on her fingers.

  Ahead, Sorin moved like a man walking to the gallows. The Hollow Crown’s corruption had receded, but its mark remained—a lattice of black veins pulsing faintly at his throat.

  And his eyes.

  Gold, still. But darker now. Hungrier.

  Kael limped beside her, his sword hand clenched around a makeshift bandage. “He’s slipping,” he muttered, low enough that Sorin wouldn’t hear.

  She knew.

  She’d seen it in the altar’s vision—the moment young Sorin had driven a rusted dagger into the Hollow King’s wrist. Resistance. That’s why the crown wanted him. Not because he was weak, but because he fought.

  And fighting made the corruption worse.

  “We need to get out of these ruins,” she said.

  Kael’s jaw tightened. “It’s not that simple.”

  He stopped, pressing a hand to the tunnel wall. The stone was warm. Alive.

  “Sunspire isn’t just a place,” he said. “It’s a trap. The Hollow King built it to cage things. Things like the Blood Choir. Like the crown.”

  A beat.

  “Like me.”

  Liraeth’s pulse spiked.

  Before she could speak, Sorin’s voice cut through the dark—cold, sharp, wrong.

  “And now it’s waking up.”

  The tunnel spat them out onto a ledge overlooking a yawning abyss.

  The Chasm of Chains.

  Liraeth’s breath caught.

  Bridges of black iron stretched across the void, their lengths strung with manacles—some empty, some holding skeletons clad in ancient armor. Below, a sea of liquid shadow churned, its surface broken by the occasional glint of gold.

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  Crowns.

  Dozens of them.

  “Gods,” she whispered.

  Sorin stepped to the edge, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the stone. “Not gods,” he said. “Failures.”

  The Hollow King’s rejects.

  Kael’s grip on his sword tightened. “Riven said the crown wanted you. But it didn’t. It wanted her.” His gaze flicked to Liraeth. “Why?”

  Sorin didn’t answer.

  The chasm did.

  A voice, thick and wet, bubbled up from the depths:

  "Because she’s the only one who ever made you kneel."

  The shadows surged.

  The voice wasn’t just sound—it was pressure, a weight against Liraeth’s ribs, as if the darkness itself had hands and was testing her bones for weakness.

  It laughed, a wet, guttural sound that echoed off the chasm walls.

  "Little king," it crooned. "Did you think breaking the crown would break your chains? You are still his. Still mine."

  Liraeth’s staff flared, its light carving a fragile circle in the dark. “Ignore it,” she hissed. “It’s trying to provoke you.”

  But Sorin wasn’t listening. His gaze was locked on the chasm, his pupils swallowing the gold of his irises.

  “No,” he murmured. “It’s trying to remind me.”

  The voice deepened, vibrating through the stone beneath their feet.

  "She doesn’t remember, does she? The oath. The knife. The way you begged."

  Kael’s sword hissed free of its sheath. “Keep moving.”

  The shadows coiled, playful.

  "Run, then. But the deeper you go, the louder I become."

  The nearest bridge swayed as Sorin stepped onto it, its rusted chains groaning like a living thing. The manacles lining its length rattled, though no wind stirred in the abyss.

  Liraeth followed, her staff's light barely piercing the gloom. Below, the crowns in the liquid shadows shifted, their edges catching the glow like watching eyes.

  "Careful, thief." The voice oozed up from beneath them. "The chains remember your hands."

  Sorin froze. His own fingers twitched—black-veined and trembling.

  Kael brought up the rear, his sword drawn. "Don't stop," he warned. But his gaze kept darting to the skeletal figures suspended along the bridge, their hollow sockets turned toward them.

  Halfway across, the whispers began.

  Not just from below, but from the air itself—fragments of conversations that didn't belong to any of them:

  "...shatter the throne..."

  "...your brother begged prettier..."

  "...the flame dies with the dawn..."

  Liraeth's breath came faster. The voices tugged at memories she couldn't place. A flicker of gold eyes in the dark. A hand clutching hers as the world burned.

  Then—

  A manacle snapped open.

  The iron cuff lunged like a striking serpent, aiming for Sorin's wrist.

  He moved faster than human.

  One moment he stood rigid; the next, his hand clamped around the flying manacle, muscles straining as it thrashed against his grip. The black veins in his arm pulsed violently.

  For a heartbeat, his eyes went utterly blank.

  Then he crushed the iron in his fist.

  The bridge shuddered. All around them, manacles began twisting open, their rusted jaws creaking wide.

  Kael cursed. "Run. Now."

  They sprinted as the chasm woke around them. Behind, the freed skeletons twitched in their armor, bones clicking as their skulls turned to track the living.

  Liraeth risked one glance back—

  —just as Sorin's steps faltered.

  His head tilted, listening to something only he could hear. When he spoke, his voice wasn't his own:

  "You shouldn't have made me remember."

  The far side of the bridge crumbled as Riven emerged from the shadows.

  His sickle gleamed with fresh blood—too much blood for one man to carry. Behind him, the remaining Blood Choir lurched forward, their mouths sewn shut with black thread, their eye sockets weeping thick, tarry tears.

  Kael skidded to a halt. "Liar," he spat at Riven. "You swore the Choir was dead."

  Riven's smile split his face like a wound. "We are."

  The first corpse lunged.

  Liraeth's staff flared, its light searing through the thing's chest—but it didn't stop. Rotten fingers closed around her wrist, and suddenly she was remembering:

  A golden-haired boy laughing as she fumbled with a practice spear. The same boy screaming as shadows poured from his mouth. The Hollow King's hand on her shoulder, whispering, "You'll thank me later."

  She wrenched free with a gasp. The memory evaporated, leaving her trembling.

  Across the bridge, Sorin stood motionless as the skeletons advanced. The black veins now reached his jawline.

  "Fight, damn you!" Kael shouted, cleaving through a Choir member.

  Sorin blinked slowly. When he spoke, two voices overlapped—his and another, deeper, rotten:

  "They're not the enemy."

  The bridge exploded.

  Not outward—inward, as if some colossal hand had clenched around it. Iron chains whipped through the air, impaling the Blood Choir through their weeping eyes. Riven screamed as a manacle clamped around his throat, dragging him toward the chasm.

  "Stop!" Liraeth grabbed Sorin's arm—and recoiled.

  His skin burned colder than the dead. His pupils had vanished, leaving only pools of liquid gold.

  The voice that came from his mouth was ancient:

  "You kept the oath, Liraeth. Even when it broke you."

  Kael tackled her aside as another chain lashed out. "That's not him anymore," he panted. "We have to—"

  A whisper cut through the chaos:

  "...little brother..."

  Sorin—no, the thing wearing his face—staggered. The gold in his eyes flickered.

  Riven, half-hanging over the abyss, gurgled a laugh. "Too late. The crown's not on him. It's in him."

  The chasm's liquid shadows surged upward, forming a monstrous hand that seized Riven mid-sentence. His shriek ended abruptly as it dragged him under.

  Silence.

  Then—

  A whimper.

  Sorin collapsed to his knees, the black veins receding like tidewater. His hands shook as he stared at them, horrified.

  Liraeth reached for him.

  He flinched away. "Don't. I can still hear it."

  Above them, the cavern ceiling trembled. Dust rained down as the distant sound of drums echoed through the tunnels—a rhythm that matched the frantic pounding of Liraeth's heart.

  Kael wiped blood from his lip. "The Sunspire's waking. And it's not just the dead that'll come for us now."

  Sorin laughed hollowly. "I know."

  He looked at Liraeth then, and the grief in his gaze was worse than any corruption.

  "It's going to be so much worse."