Emerald bled from the sky.
With its light warping the ruins below, the thirteenth star stretched like a waking beast. Stones drifted in the air.
Fire burned without heat. The voices of the marked children rose in a hymn that echoed through the bones.
With his robes flaring in the starlight, Dain spread his arms.
"At last," he breathed.
This time, Mara's scar widened as she drank the light instead of bleeding from it.
Strands of emerald energy slithered into the wound as the star's light bent toward her.
…..
He kept thinking about what Dain had said.
The first success.
Veyra's memories rushed defensively, but Ethan forced himself to look past the pain and her guilt to the time she had stood over that tiny, motionless body.
Not a corpse.
A vessel.
And in its chest…
It was the same thorn as his own.
…..
The edge of the dagger sank into his palm.
Whispers of his ancestors arose from the blade.
"One final cut."
"Cut the line."
"Break the cycle."
With a smile, Dain turned.
"You feel it, don't you? The pull of your true purpose."
Jarek's hand was trembling.
The dagger wasn't meant for Dain.
It was meant for Mara.
A shape formed as the emerald light gathered above them.
...a woman of living brilliance, with eyes that are twin voids and hair that falls like falling stars.
The marked children collapsed to the ground.
Dain dropped to his knees.
"Eris," she muttered.
Something was destroyed in the air by the name.
…..
She recalled.
Not a memory of her own...
Eris's.
The first Dawnheir.
The first betrayal.
The moment she stabbed the Thirsty King in the chest with the original thorn, not to stop him, but to become one with him.
With the visions tearing through her, Mara gasped.
The black cup is overflowing.
Dain's hand guiding hers.
The other Dawnheirs scream as the fusion starts.
Her scar completely burst, forming a gaping jaw that let out a cry in response to Eris's voice.
"I REMEMBER!"
…..
In his hand, the hybrid thorn exploded.
Gold and black fragments punctured his chest, piecing together a fresh reality from Veyra's shattered memories.
The Watchers were not her creation.
She had stolen them.
Ethan roared as the final piece clicked into place,
he wasn't the first success.
He was the first victim.
…..
When the Starlit Scholar stood up, his robes burned away, revealing a body of the same emerald void as Eris.
He chuckled and said, "You believed the Thirsty King to be the enemy all along." He was just the ingredient."
He gestured to Mara, who was now floating above the earth with her scar completely changed into a spinning whirlpool.
"The door is open. The feast has begun.
…..
The dagger found its mark.
Not in Mara.
within himself.
With a sound like glass shattering, the blade sank into his chest.
Dain let out a cry of anger rather than triumph.
"NO! The line must—"
Jarek twisted the knife, splattering the ritual stones with his Ravenscroft blood.
"Stop here," he exclaimed.
The thirteenth star stuttered.
…..
Ethan moved.
Not toward Mara.
Not toward Dain.
Toward Eris.
The woman's wrists were encircled by his void, starlit hands.
"You don't remember your name," he whispered. "You stole it."
With Veyra's memories still fresh in his mind, he revealed the truth that the Dawnheirs had sacrificed their lives to conceal.
"You were never Eris."
"You're the cup."
…..
The star cried out.
Mara fell.
Dain fell apart.
And twelve forgotten names descended from the sky.
…the true Dawnheirs.