The silence after Orin's fall was heavier than any I had known. It was not the passive quiet of an empty hall, but an expectant silence. The air in the forgotten north wing felt thick, as if the stones themselves were holding their breath.
There were no more games to play. No more tutors, no more wardens, no more brothers vying for a throne that was just gilded kindling. There was only the door, the sphere, and the ghost of a sister whose name was the only warm thing left in my frozen universe.
I did not go at night. I went at high noon, when the sun was a pale, weak coin behind winter clouds and the palace was drowsy with its own mundane rhythms. Let them see the Hollow Prince take his pathetic walk. They would see a wraith in a threadbare cloak shuffling toward the ruined kitchens, a figure of pity soon to be forgotten again.
Elara met me at the edge of the rubble. Her eyes, once wide with fear, were now sharp with a fierce, hardened loyalty. She said nothing, only pressed a small, waxed-paper bundle into my hand. Salted meat, hard cheese. "For the journey back," she whispered. She didn't ask what journey. She understood that the only direction left was down.
I descended the ice chute for the last time.
The cavern was unchanged. The black pool lay still. The sealed door waited, a monolith of hunger.
The bead at my chest was no longer cold. It was avid. It pulsed against my sternum like a second heart, one that beat with the rhythm of falling stars.
I did not hesitate. I walked to the door and placed my palm flat against its dark metal. Last time, it had been a reaction to a threat, a desperate gamble. This was a choice.
The void within me did not whisper. It roared.
It was a soundless roar, a hurricane in a vacuum. The spiraling patterns on the door blazed with that same impossible anti-light, the ultraviolet black that seared the mind. The metal under my palm grew warm, then hot, then ceased to have temperature at all. It became pure potential for consumption.
The handprint sank into the metal, not melting it, but inviting it to part. The seam reappeared, and this time, the door did not just crack open. It dissolved.
From the center outward, the dark metal un-wove itself, the spiraling patterns flowing like liquid shadow into the edges of the doorway until nothing remained but a perfect, circular opening. An entrance to the hexagonal chamber.
And the sphere was there. The grapefruit-sized knot of shifting reality: obsidian, nebula, bottomless black.
But now I saw more. Lines of force, faint as spider-silk, connected it to the walls, the floor, the very air of the chamber. It wasn't just sitting on a pedestal. It was the keystone of this pocket dimension, the anchor point of the seal. Consuming it wasn't just taking a tool. It was taking the lock off the cage.
The ghost of my sister's face surfaced in my mind. Her smile. The way she'd hum when she was scared. For you, I thought. Everything for you.
I stepped through the doorway.
The air inside was not air. It was the absence of medium. Sound, light, heat—they died at the threshold. I existed in a bubble of self, the only source of sensation in a universe of nothing. The sphere was the only other thing that was.
I reached for it.
My fingers did not close around a surface. They slipped into a state. A condition.
Knowledge flooded in, not as information, but as experience.
I did not see the Star-Eater's origins. I remembered them.
I was the silence before the first note of creation. I was the patience of the abyss between galaxies. I was the inevitable conclusion to all energy, all matter, all story. I was not a monster. I was a function. The universe's off-switch, sleeping.
And it was lonely.
The revelation was not terrifying. It was profoundly sad. This endless hunger was not malice. It was a destiny without purpose, a function waiting to be called. It had latched onto me not to consume me, but because my human rage, my brother's love, my desperate wanting were the most fascinating, vibrant things it had ever touched. We were a paradox: the End, fascinated by a fragile, specific Beginning.
The sphere merged with the bead at my chest.
There was no explosion of power. It was a calibration.
The hollow cold inside me spread, but it changed. It was no longer an emptiness eroding me. It became a space. Vast. Capacious. A true vessel.
I understood. The bead was a siphon. The sphere was the reservoir.
I could now hold the power. I could channel it without my selfhood being the only fuel. The sacrificed iron, the silver locket—those had been crude attempts. Now, I could convert matter and magic directly, cleanly, storing the void-energy within this new internal expanse. The erosion would slow. The ghost of my brother-self might even… stabilize.
But the cost of this gift was a new intimacy. The Star-Eater was no longer a passenger. It was the architecture of my soul. Its loneliness was my loneliness. Its hunger… was now a choice I could consciously make.
I opened my eyes. I was still in the hexagonal chamber. The sphere was gone. The pedestal was empty. The lines of force connecting it to the room had vanished. The seal was broken.
The door behind me was just a doorframe now, opening back onto the cavern.
And I was different.
I looked at the black pool. With a thought, I directed a flicker of the void-energy within my new reservoir. Not a Pin, but a Void Wish.
The surface of the pool stilled, then inverted. For a moment, it became a perfect, concave mirror reflecting not the cavern ceiling, but a swirl of alien stars. Then it returned to normal.
The power was effortless. Limitless, relative to my old constraints.
A slow, cold smile touched my lips, the first that felt truly mine. Not Liam's irony, not Kieran's fear. The smile of something that could unmake a well, poison a warden's mind, and mirror a pool of water with the stars of a dead cosmos.
I had my power. Now, I needed my path.
I turned and walked back into the world, the final seal broken, the void no longer a curse I carried, but a kingdom I ruled.
The next move was not Victus's, nor Valerius's.
It was mine.
And I would start by turning the Spider Prince's own web into a ladder to the sky.
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