The Eclipse Sanctum loomed like a festering wound in the earth, its sharp bck towers cutting into a sky choked by clouds colored like poisoned moss. Veyne Duskthorne stood at its entrance, the air thick with the stench of decay sweet and rotten, like fruit left too long in the sun. Small clouds of bck mist curled around his boots, recoiling as if they sensed something familiar in him.

  A woman emerged from the shadows, her face hidden behind a pale, featureless mask. High Priestess Selene. “You’ve come,” she said, her voice hollow, as though rising from a deep pit.

  Veyne’s fingers brushed the hilt of the Shadowveil, its faint hum steadying him. “You said the Sanctum could control the Blight.”

  “To tame a beast,” she replied, “you must first let it taste your blood.”

  She led him into the heart of the Sanctum, where the walls pulsed with sickly veins of bck and green. At the center of the chamber floated a crown jagged, twisted metal, its surface dull and hungry, as if it swallowed the light around it. Thorns lined its edges, sharp and wet with something dark.

  “This is the heart of the Blight,” Selene said, tilting her mask toward the crown. “The st breath of the god who cursed this world. Wear it, and its power will bend to you… for a time.”

  Veyne stared into the crown’s depths. For a moment, he saw fshes Zerith’s bright grin, Seraphine’s golden hair glowing in firelight before the images vanished like smoke. “What does it cost?” he asked.

  “Your humanity. Your memories. Everything they love about you.”

  He reached for the crown.

  The moment his skin touched the metal, the world vanished.

  He was fourteen again, knee-deep in the creek, Zerith’s ughter echoing as their wooden swords cshed. Seraphine sat on the bank, her golden braid shining in the sunlight, a book open in her p. She gnced up just as Zerith tackled Veyne into the water, drenching her skirt with the spsh.

  “You’re both fourteen idiots, learn to act like your age”, she said as she shook droplets off the pages, even though she said that she loves and admires their carefree and cheerful attitudes.

  Zerith grinned, holding up a frog slick with mud. “Look, Veyne! It’s your twin!”

  Veyne lunged, and they tumbled back into the water, ughter ringing through the valley.*

  The memory shattered.

  He was seventeen, standing in the northern woods beside Seraphine, her hands glowing silver as she pressed them to a Blight-cursed wolf. Its ribs jutted like broken spears, eyes weeping bck sludge. Zerith hovered nearby, his axe trembling in his grip.

  “We have to kill it,” Seraphine whispered, her voice strained.

  “No,” Veyne said. “It’s in pain.”

  The wolf lunged, Zerith had to swing his bde. Later, Veyne found him scrubbing blood from his hands in the creek, his shoulders hunched.

  “You hesitated today,” Zerith said quietly. “Why?

  Veyne stared at the scar on his palm a relic of their first spar. “Because it wasn’t the monster. We are.”

  Darkness swallowed him again.

  Three nights ago, they’d huddled around a campfire, passing a bottle of wine. Seraphine traced the stars inked on her arm, the newest one Veyne glinting faintly. Zerith nudged her with his boot, his smile sharp and warm.

  “Getting soft, Sera?”

  She tossed a pebble at him. “It’s a reminder, to keep you both breathing because with your recklessness you guys won't survive a day without me.”

  "Oh Reaallyyy?" Zareth replied with a chuckle. "That's rich coming from a maiden who can't even cook."

  Veyne softly smiled, memorizing the way the firelight turned Zerith’s messy red hair to copper and made Seraphine’s eyes gleam like moonlight. For him just being with his best friends filled him with joy and made him temporarily forget...

  His responsibility.

  The crown’s thorns pierced his skull.

  Pain exploded not in his body, but in his mind. The Blight flooded his veins like ice, shadows pooling at his feet, alive and restless. Memories crumbled like old paper, Zerith’s ughter faded to silence. Seraphine’s voice dissolved into static. The warmth of the campfire turned to ash.

  When Veyne opened his eyes, the thorned crown was fused to his head, its thorns dripping obsidian bck. Selene knelt before him, her mask cracked into a smile. “Rise, Thorned Crown.”

  He stood, shadows coiling around him like snakes.

  Something was missing, he felt "incomplete" as if he had lost his identity.

  He couldn't remember, "Zerith’s face what color were his eyes? Seraphine’s songs what words did she hum?"

  The holes in his memories had grown wider.

  Far north, Seraphine clutching the star tattoo on her wrist. The one beled "Veyne" flickered weakly, its light dimming as cracks spread across its surface.

  Zerith was already on his feet, his broadbde Stormhowl glinting in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

  She stared at the dying star. “He’s… slipping away.”

  Above them, the crimson star pulsed—once, twice—as the trees groaned, their bark splitting to reveal bck, pulsing veins. The forest began to scream.

  In the Sanctum, Veyne clenched his fist, shadows mirroring his rage. The scrying pool showed Zerith and Seraphine standing back to back, bdes raised against the twisting woods.

  Let them come, he thought, the crown’s whispers drowning out the st bit of his former self.

  Let him try.