Chapter 1467: Story 1467: The Vessel’s Claim

The shards spun like a cyclone of knives, dragging air and dust into their orbit. Their glow thickened, weaving threads of marrow-light that reached hungrily toward the nearest living flesh. Toward Mira. Toward Elena.

The Monarch’s broken voices hissed through the storm.

“Choose or be chosen. The marrow endures. The marrow devours.”

Elena tightened her grip on Mira, anchoring them both against the pull. Her body screamed with pain—burnt, torn, half-broken—but her will was iron. She would not let Mira be bound again.

But the shards knew her thoughts. They hungered for the heart most resolved, the vessel most willing. And Elena’s defiance marked her as prey.

The first shard pierced her arm.

She gasped, teeth gritted as blue fire flared under her skin, racing toward her chest. Another shard embedded in her thigh, then her side. Each one vibrated, burrowing like living glass. Mira’s eyes widened, horror cutting through her weakness.

“No!” she rasped, clawing at the shard lodged in Elena’s arm. It burned her fingers, searing her palm, but she didn’t let go. “Not you. It can’t be you!”

“Elena!” Mira’s voice cracked, desperate. “It’ll eat you alive—don’t—”

Elena forced a ragged smile, blood trickling from her lips. “Better me than you.”

The shards swarmed, sensing her surrender. Their song rose, an unbearable chorus of marrow hymns vibrating against bone and thought. Elena’s vision blurred as light poured into her veins, filling her lungs with fire. She felt her heartbeat falter, then surge, pounding in rhythm with the shards.

The Monarch’s skulls bellowed triumph, their disintegrating forms dragging toward her.

“Yes… yes! The marrow accepts! The vessel opens!”

And then—something shifted.

Mira, still clutching Elena’s burning arm, pressed her forehead against hers, forcing their gazes to lock. Her voice, trembling but unbroken, cut through the marrow’s hymn:

“No. Not alone.”

Elena blinked, dazed. “Mira—”

Mira drew the shards’ fire into herself, the cracks in her glasslike chest flaring wide. Her body, already half-fractured from the crown’s destruction, became a conduit. The marrow-light poured between them, splitting, confused, fighting for dominance.

Elena screamed, trying to push Mira back, but she wouldn’t release her. Their hands locked, their blood mingled, their veins braided with burning light.

The storm faltered. The shards hovered, caught in the pull of two vessels bound by oath and love, unsure where to root.

The Monarch shrieked, its voices fraying into madness. “Impossible! One vessel! One throne! Not two—never two!”

But the marrow sang differently now. Not a hymn of domination, but of fracture, of division.

Elena realized it with a shock. “We can’t stop it… but we can split it.”

Mira’s crystalline gaze locked with hers. Pain wracked her body, but her smile burned fierce. “Then we break it together.”

The shards screamed as if alive, pulled in two directions at once. Their edges blurred, their light unraveling into twin currents—half pouring into Elena, half into Mira.

The Monarch howled, writhing as its essence was torn apart. Its three skulls cracked down the center, ichor spilling like rivers of night.

For the first time since the gate opened, the marrow screamed in fear.

And in the heart of the storm, Elena and Mira bore its fire—together.