Chapter 1462: Story 1462: Gate of Marrow

The chamber disintegrated into chaos. Shards of spire rained like razors, light bleeding from the cracks in the walls as the gate widened into a wound that would not close. The Monarch’s three skulls loomed above, screaming in a cadence that pulsed with the shard in Mira’s hand.

Elena shielded her face from falling debris, her lungs burning with dust and the stench of rot. She barely kept hold of her jagged shard-blade, her knuckles white with strain.

Mira stood in the center of it all, back arched, her veins glowing like molten rivers. The shard in her palm had fused deeper, spreading jagged lines up her forearm like crystal bone breaking through flesh. She shook violently, her voice overlapping with the Monarch’s as if they were already one.

“Through the marrow, the gate drinks. Through the vessel, the Monarch walks.”

Elena staggered toward her, refusing to let go. “Mira, listen to me! You’re still in there! Fight it!”

For a heartbeat, Mira’s head snapped toward her, eyes blazing blue fire. She looked unrecognizable—inhuman—but her lips trembled, and in that tremor Elena caught a flicker of her friend. “I… can’t hold it…” she whispered. “It’s eating me from the inside.”

The Monarch’s central skull tilted, dripping black ichor that hissed on the stones. “The vessel is complete. She cannot be severed without the gate devouring all.”

Elena’s heart lurched. Kill her, and risk the gate opening fully. Save her, and deliver her into the Monarch’s hands.

The spires cracked again, vomiting forth new horrors. Figures of twisted glass and marrow, their bodies hollow but filled with writhing light, crawled from the fractures. They bowed toward Mira, chanting in voices that grated like splintering bone: “Crown her. Crown her. Crown her.”

Elena slashed at them, her shard-blade cutting through their brittle frames, but each one shattered into blue dust that drifted into Mira’s skin, strengthening the glow in her veins. Every kill only fed the vessel.

“No, no, no!” Elena screamed, dropping to her knees beside Mira. She gripped her arm, desperate. The skin beneath her hand was hot, almost burning, but she didn’t let go. “You’re not theirs. You’re mine. Do you hear me? You’re Mira. You’re my friend. You don’t belong to them!”

For a moment, Mira’s veins dimmed, the light flickering uncertainly. Her breathing hitched. She turned her face toward Elena, human again in her sorrow. “Then… stop me… before I lose myself for good.”

The Monarch roared in fury, its three skulls writhing. Tendrils of darkness lashed outward, wrapping around Mira like chains. The gate pulsed, a living maw behind it, eager and waiting.

Elena tightened her grip on her shard-blade, tears streaking her dust-stained face. She raised it high, torn between love and survival. Mira’s eyes locked on hers—brown again, pleading, begging.

And then her veins blazed so brightly that her skin looked like glass about to shatter.

The Monarch’s voices thundered in triumph:

“The Vessel is crowned.”

The gate yawned wider, breathing cold across the chamber.