The bone archway exhaled damp, ancient breath against Selene's face as she approached. Up close, she could see the intricate carvings between each fused joint...not random markings, but names. Hundreds of them.
Lirya's small fingers tightened around hers. "They're waiting for you," the child whispered.
Kael's shadow fell across them both. "Wait." His claws...still tipped with that strange obsidian sheen...hovered near the archway's edge. "We don't know what this will..."
Mara's torch hit the bones with a shower of sparks.
For one frozen heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the names began to scream.
The Remembrance
Fire raced along the archway's curves, illuminating each carved name in turn. With every flare, Selene's mind flooded with someone else's death:
A young mother shielding her children with her own shadow before the purge took her,
An elder's final moments as he burned his life's work rather than let it be stolen,
Mara's grandmother watching the village pyres reflected in her granddaughter's infant eyes,
The visions came faster, sharper...each death carving itself into Selene's flesh alongside her existing markings. She fell to her knees, her scream joining the chorus of ghosts.
Lirya pressed against her back, small hands clutching her shoulders. "Breathe through it! This is how we remember!"
Kael moved to pull her away, but the moment his shadows touched the archway, something extraordinary happened.
The flames turned silver.
And the oldest name of all flared brightest...Alaric.
The First Lie
The vision came clearer than all others:
Alaric standing over his sister's convulsing form, not with a knife, but with hands glowing white-hot. "I can fix this," he pleaded as her shadows devoured her from within.
Little Lirya...the true Lirya, not the entity wearing her face...reached for him with blackened fingers. "You were supposed to catch me..."
The memory shattered as present-day Lirya howled.
"LIAR!" The child's voice shook the ruins, her form stretching, warping...
Mara struck again.
This time when her torch connected, the bones didn't just burn.
They answered.
The Unfinished Ritual
Silver fire raced down the archway's pillars, forming a mirror-like pool at its base. In its reflection, Selene saw the truth:
The ritual had never been completed.
Alaric had stopped midway, leaving his sister trapped between states...neither alive nor dead, neither shadow nor flesh. The "First Shadow" was just a child's abandoned echo, growing twisted and hungry in the dark.
Lirya...the real one...hadn't been teaching Selene how to control the power.
She'd been showing her how to finish what Alaric started.
Kael's hand found Selene's, their matching wounds pulsing in unison. "You don't have to..."
Mara's granddaughter stepped into the silver flames.
And the archway sang its final note.