The Shallow Island did not welcome them.
It recognized them.
The moment Nia, Rieta, Ziess, and the Wind Hun struck the ground, the soil sighed — a low, intimate sound, like breath released against skin. Their boots sank instantly, not with the clumsy pull of mud, but with deliberate hunger. The earth moved upward as much as they sank downward, sand and rot crawling over leather, gripping ankles, tightening around calves. The ground was warm. Alive.
"Don't—" Rieta gasped, the warning snapping off as the soil surged higher, swallowing her knees. She reached instinctively for teleportation, light flaring around her fingers, but the glow distorted, bent inward, strangled by black roots that surfaced like veins rising beneath skin. They coiled around her legs, firm, intimate, possessive. "It's blocking me," she hissed, panic threading through her voice despite her control.
Ziess roared and drove his blade down with all the fury of a veteran who had broken worse things than land. Sparks burst as steel struck something unyielding, ancient. The vibration shot up his arms, rattling bone. "This isn't earth," he snarled. "It's a body."
The Wind Hun lifted both hands, eyes blazing silver as he summoned a gale strong enough to tear ships from harbors. The wind screamed into existence—then vanished. The island inhaled it. Just… swallowed it. The sudden silence was worse than resistance.
Roots climbed higher.
Nia did not scream. She dropped to one knee as the soil reached her thighs, fingers plunging into the ground, nails tearing, blood darkening the sand. Her breathing stayed measured, jaw locked, golden eyes sharp as they scanned the island's surface. "It's not attacking," she said, voice low but steady. "It's restraining. It wants us still."
The roots tightened in response, as if offended by being understood.
Far away, beneath stone and dust and centuries of unbroken sleep, the Mare crypt awakened.
Morvain's hand trembled as it brushed aside the last layer of dust from the ancestral stone. The symbol beneath — hoof and crescent moon — pulsed faintly, as if recognizing blood. When his fingers finally closed around the hidden hilt, the world screamed.
The sound tore through the chamber like a wound opening. The silver coffin exhaled, ancient air flooding the crypt, and then it split open with a sigh heavy enough to feel like grief. Light burst outward, cold and pale, and Pony Mare's spirit surged free like a storm unbound.
She was not alone.
Shadows peeled themselves from the walls — ancestors, silhouettes of Mare blood, forming a circle that tightened with every breath. Their voices overlapped, dozens speaking as one, not cruel, not angry, simply absolute.
"You are in a trap."
Morvain swallowed hard, candlelight trembling across his face. "The world outside is collapsing," he said, voice raw. "If Nyx rises unchecked, your bloodline ends anyway."
Silence followed. Not forgiveness. Consideration.
Then the Blue Hun moved.
His flesh liquefied mid-step, body dissolving into a towering column of water that shimmered with moonlight and memory. He surged forward, placing himself between Morvain and the ancestors just as spectral blades of accusation struck. Each impact rippled through him, waves exploding outward, droplets hissing as they struck stone.
"Take it," the Blue Hun commanded, voice echoing like surf smashing against cliffs. "Now."
Morvain did not hesitate again. He seized the Mare Dagger as it revealed itself fully — moonfire tracing its edge, power humming through the hilt like a living pulse. Saya's hands closed around his instinctively, lips moving in prayers older than language.
The ancestors wailed then, warnings sharpening into fury.
Do not take what is sewn to blood.
Do not wake what lies beneath our hooves.
They tore at the Blue Hun, spectral hands plunging into water, ripping memory from him in silver arcs. He bled spume and song, form destabilizing as he forced them back, inch by inch, buying seconds with his own dissolution.
Morvain ran.
They ran through catacombs where every footstep echoed like a betrayal, through halls carved with Mare history, the dagger's hum vibrating through Morvain's arm like a verdict already passed.
On the eastern spine of the Shallow Island, the air reeked of poison and scale.
Serpents poured from the undergrowth, bodies thick, eyes bright with a hunger that knew bone from marrow. Raym moved without thought, placing himself where he always did — in front. His blade cut clean, precise, but age slowed what instinct demanded.
A serpent lunged for Carl.
Raym twisted.
The bite landed deep. Teeth sank into flesh with a wet, final sound. Blood arced across the night, steaming where venom met heat. Raym staggered, breath ripping from his chest, face slack for a heartbeat as if the world had asked him to count every year he'd lived.
"Move," he rasped, shoving Carl back. "Don't waste it."
The Steam Hun exploded into motion, vapor detonating outward as clone after clone formed, a storm of hissing bodies hammering serpents back with steam-heavy fists. Joey dropped beside Raym, hands shaking as he bound the wound, fabric darkening instantly.
"I stay," the Steam Hun said calmly when Carl protested, silver eyes unwavering. "Go. That's the pact."
Carl hesitated — then ran.
Light tore the darkness open as Rieta appeared beside him, breathless, eyes wide with horror. "West team," she said in one shattered rush. "The ground took them. It buried them."
They doubled back instantly. Hands tore at soil that resisted like muscle, magic burning uselessly against something too old to fear it. The earth tightened its grip, indifferent.
Then the island answered.
The ground convulsed. A seven-headed serpent rose, massive, ancient, each head whispering hunger, teeth like shards of night. Carl and Rieta fought together — her teleportation flickering erratically, his fists cracking root and scale — but the creature moved with unbearable patience.
Then it shuddered.
Its scales peeled away like a lie shedding skin.
A man stood where the monster had been.
Tall. Terrible. Eyes dark pools where serpents still slept.
His laughter split the night.
Ryok had arrived.
Ryok's laughter filled the clearing, a sound like cracked stone rolling down a canyon. His shoulders shook with it, broad, relaxed, as if he alone had read the heartbeat of the island and found amusement. The serpents writhed at his feet, bowing and twisting with a supple obedience that was unnerving, as though each scaled head carried a fragment of his will, a whisper of the terrible covenant they shared. Every flick of his slender fingers sent ripples through their bodies, commands executed with fluid grace and the inevitability of old laws.
"Vampires and pride—always such brittle things," Ryok's voice slithered across the island like oil pooling in a gutter. It carried weight, mockery, and authority, and it sank into the sand, into their bones. The serpents, responding to a single flick of his hand, seized the fallen and dragged them like puppets toward a palace that was born not of light, but of shadow.
The palace rose like a wound against the horizon, black rock and bone fused in architecture jagged and crowned, edges bitten away by time and something older. Spires jabbed at the sky like accusations. The air inside carried a heavy perfume of rust, sleep, and decay, settling in lungs like a bargain made without consent. Each breath burned, sharp and intimate, as though the very atmosphere was bartering their will for survival.
Nia moved quickly, her voice low, precise, biting through the haze. "Cover your faces. Tie the cloth tight," she commanded, hands snapping knots with speed that betrayed her calm. Breath muffled, each inhale was a shard of resistance. Fear sharpened them; every nerve screamed with the ache of barely-breathed air.
Ziess, old and indignant, snapped first. Rage became words as his tongue lashed out, old names and older curses spilling over the poisoned air. "York! Iliana! Do you remember the debts you've left unpaid?" His chest heaved with the fury of memory and blood, the kind that demanded repayment.
Ryok's grin broke into flame. A laugh, a hiss, and then fire leapt from him—not conjured, but born of his being—striking Ziess squarely in the chest. The old warrior collapsed, as if carved from marble, smoke curling from his lips in silence, his light extinguished. For one dreadful instant, nothing moved but the hiss of poisoned wind and the faint cracking of stone under despair.
Grief shredded the remaining group like a blade drawn across taut skin. Carl's fist smashed into a marble column, fragments scattering like frozen snow, each piece a punctuation of rage. Rieta fell to her knees, hands clawing at the air, trying to grasp at something that had fled—her voice splitting into moans of futility. Fingers could not lift what death had claimed, could not pull Ziess from the air.
The Wind Hun expanded his form, arms stretching wide, conjuring a dome of calm—a sanctuary hum that pulsed with old sky-song. The magic wrapped around them like a heartbeat, stilling the spill of blood and the despair that threatened to undo them. "Not now," he said, voice deep, final. "Do not let grief drown what we came to do." The command was soft, resonant, yet every word cut like steel through panic.
Inside Rieta's hollow despair, a vow ignited. One life, one godless life, would be the price to see Ryok fall. She whispered it between ragged breaths. He must die.
Joey, silent until now, knelt beside Ziess. Fingers pressed to the cooling forehead of their fallen comrade, whispering apologies, promises, prayers, as the poisoned wind hissed through their cloaks. Every heartbeat marked the world's imbalance, every inhale a reminder that the stakes had grown too high.
Nia stepped forward, calm, deliberate, voice a blade wrapped in velvet. She approached Ryok, words chosen like stones set in a precise path. "Nyx dies," she said. "If you leave this island, if you take your serpents and allow us to survive, Nyx dies. The Book of Damned will be yours to read."
The words hung in the palace air like contraband. Poison thickened, twisted; even the serpents paused, sensing the bargain. Ryok's expression shifted slowly, his amusement mutating into a smoldering hunger. He licked his lips, tasting the words as if each syllable had been a draught of water in a desert he had long crossed.
"Book of Damned?" he murmured, voice low, reverent, wanting. Disbelief and desire wrestled across his features. Every moment of his life, every path of hunger, seemed to converge in that single name.
Then he spoke—conditions and laws, carved from the scales that were part of him, part of the island. "I will leave," he said, smooth, deliberate. "But only if a life feeds my serpents while I walk free. It is not cruelty," he continued, voice cold with logic, "it is law. They are bound to me. If I depart without payment, they devour me. Their hunger is mine to bear, and their feeding cannot be denied."
Rieta's head shook violently, cords of her neck taut with refusal. No sacrifice of another would pass through her hands. Carl's chest heaved, decision splitting his ribs like thunder; the choice was immediate, raw, absolute. He stepped forward, hand outstretched, offering his own flesh with the clarity of someone who would rather extinguish himself than see more lives taken for power.
"No," Rieta screamed, voice raw, shaking with disbelief. "You cannot."
Raym, who had bled before, whose veins were nicked by scales and shadow, stepped forward quietly, eyes grey, dignity intact. No fear, no pleading. He had lived long enough to see debts unpaid. Now he would pay his own.
"My son," he said, voice firm, steady, eyes fixed on Carl, "go. Live. Finish what I could not."
No flourish. No theatrics. The axe was steady in his hands. He placed his head beneath it as if the world itself had consented to the act. Silence followed, profound, brutal. No gore was necessary; the cut was felt in hearts, an invisible rending that left a hollow echo where courage and despair intertwined.
Carl cradled Raym's head afterward as if it were a relic, pressing it to his heart. The weight of grief, gratitude, and resolve braided together, a tether that would guide them forward.
The group departed Ryok's palace as mourners and partners in a terrible bargain. The Mare Dagger pulsed in Morvain and Saya's grip, alive with promise and danger. Ryok's words, his pact with the serpents, rang through their minds like a contract sealed in blood and scales.
The island watched silently, eyes in the sand and stone closing like shutters, content, perhaps, or merely sated for a time.
Their journey home was heavy with mourning, each step punctuated by sobs and whispered names. Nia's plan, once a clear map of strategy, now carried the burden of one life given so many might survive. The Book of Damned had transformed from rumor into currency. Ryok's leash of serpents was a toll they had paid in flesh and pain.
As the grey sea stretched before them, rain began to fall—first a drizzle, then heavier, washing salt and smoke from their faces. Each drop tasted like memory, grief, and the blood of promises made. Far away, in the deep halls of the York Empire, a crowned figure slept, unaware that the death of one man had shifted the scales, carrying Nyx's doom closer with every aching mile.