A witch-wife whispered to her lord-husband. “Of all the paths we could have tread, here we are.”

  A pale, skeletal tremor travelled through his shoulders. “Here we are.”

  “What a pitiable old fool I have become,” she said.

  “No more than I,” he wheezed. Paused for a breath. Continued. “So this is what you foresaw.”

  “It was, My Lord. It is.”

  She leaned closer, lowering the ivory brow of her open skull until it rested against the brittle mask that had once cowed a thousand courts. Cracks met polished bone; two ruined crowns touched in feeble benediction. The laughter and schemes that had filled chapters of their shared life fled between those small motions, leaving only regret.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As am I.”

  She felt the faintest pressure—his failing hand trying to return the gesture. A single tear of condensed coolant beaded at the corner of his corroded mask and slipped away, catching the fountain light like a jewel as it fell. For but a breath, the hall belonged only to these parting lovers and the promise of destiny to come.

  “To the end, then, My Lady.”

  “An ending long overdue, My Lord.”

  “So long overdue… let us find our rest, then, at last.”

  “At long last,” she whispered, her voice breaking with her heart.

  Her fingers ghosted along the tattered folds of his ceremonial raiment, finding the hidden seam secreted there when they afeared a returning master devouring his own progeny. From within, she drew a glass phial no longer than a finger—its contents a dull, sloshing ink that caught no light. A dark liquid taken from a newborn so long ago now. She closed it in her fist, pulse hammering against the thin wall, and rose with the slow grace of a penitent.

  The Lord of Bones sagged, air leaving him in a sigh of final consent as she turned away, the phial concealed behind her back like a last surviving secret.

  A deathly quiet hung over the Ossein Basilica in the wake of the Immortal’s final pronouncement. The shimmering holographic apparition of the progenitor had just finished speaking, and in its silence, the vast chamber felt suddenly airless, tomb-like.

  Bee herself trembled on the cracked marble floor, her small frame rigid with fury and exhaustion. Her dark hair hung in damp tangles around her face, and in the spectral violet glow of the Immortal’s projection her tears shone like quicksilver. She bared her teeth, a snarl of grief and defiance twisting her youthful features. Anger held her upright where mere strength would have failed—anger at the lies spanning ages, at the injustice perpetuated to maintain them.

  The Immortal’s words still echoed in her skull, a cold and honeyed ultimatum that made Bee’s blood boil.

  You will forget what you have seen.

  You will tell the world nothing.

  You will preserve the charade.

  Bee’s hands curled into fists so tight her nails drew blood from her palm.

  Beside her, Vashante Tens rose shakily from one knee. The Eidolon’s mechanical joints hissed and locked as she forced herself upright despite the brutal blow she had endured. She hissed, caught between a sob and a growl. Still, she planted herself at Bee’s flank, camera-like eyes trained warily on the Immortal’s flickering image above.

  On Bee’s other side, Jhedothar drew his massive form to its full height with deliberate menace. The centaurian warrior’s four legs scraped bone against stone as he steadied himself, his chimeric musculature rippling under charred armour plates. His grip tightened around the haft of his ruby-tipped spear until the metal shrieked in protest. Fresh bruises darkened the leathery hide of his torso, and one of his antler-bearing temples bled freely down his cheek, yet Jhedothar’s gaze never left the Immortal. It was a stare of mingled hatred and awe—the look of a man witnessing his god commit unforgivable sin.

  All around them, Bee’s remaining allies nursed their wounds and shock. Even the Hand of Zolgomere, loyal to his misbegotten master, sagged, his one gauntlet-clad hand pressed to his chest as if to hold in the shattered pieces of his faith.

  In the shadows by the base of the throne steps, that slight figure stirred. The Wire-Witch stepped forward, emerging from darkness into the low purple light. A dozen fine loops of star metal coiled protectively around her slender form, glinting as they caught the fading luminescence.

  Her skull upturned towards the creator.

  The Wire-Witch lifted her gaze to her Mother’s image.

  Her face was that naked horror, that bare skull with its chrome teeth that belied a life unable to express herself. Unable to connect. Unable to share even the most furtive of glances with another.

  Yet when the Witch spoke, her voice rang out steady and clear, echoing against the Basilica’s vaulted bones.

  “Mother, please,” she said, each word trembling with raw emotion. “This has to end. You must stop… stop this perpetuation of lies and injustice. We cannot keep condemning the world to suffer for a false peace. No more, I beg you.”

  She stepped further into the open, one arm partly raised as if in supplication to the towering hologram.

  Yet beneath the plea in her voice was a blade of defiance. Bee could hear it. And clearly, the Immortal could as well.

  High above on the dais, the Immortal’s projection glowered down at her errant daughter. The gentle fa?ade the Immortal had worn moments before—the kindly smile, the soft eyes—fell away like a discarded mask. In its place was revealed an expression of cold, imperious wrath. The Immortal’s image crackled for a split second, the edges of her form spiked with static, as if her rage were too vast to be perfectly contained by the transmitter. When she spoke, her voice had lost all pretence of warmth. It reverberated through the Basilica’s rib-like columns, filling every crevice with cold-iron disdain.

  “End it?” the Immortal repeated in a voice like velvet stretched over knives. “You dare speak to me of ending injustice, daughter?”

  She descended a step from her illusory height, and though her form was light, each step seemed to clang like a hammer on an anvil in the stunned silence. Such was their forging of history, this day.

  “Shall I enumerate your own acts of justice for all those here?”

  The Wire-Witch visibly flinched but held her ground. Bee saw the older woman’s hand flexing behind her back, the titanium nails at her fingertips glinting as if ready to tear into truth or lie alike. But she noticed the Witch was concealing something…

  The Immortal pressed on mercilessly, her tone swelling from quiet fury to open thunder.

  “Who was it that unleashed the Pilgrim from his holy tomb, if not you?” the Immortal hissed, eyes blazing. At that, a murmur rippled through the gathered cohort—soft gasps and exchanged glances. Some present had not known this secret. Bee herself felt the hairs along her arms rise.

  The Immortal’s accusation did not stop there.

  “Who ignited the sanctuary of Cruiros, burning my temple quarter to ash and cinder? I smell the smoke of it still, daughter.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  A low growl of anger echoed from somewhere behind Bee—perhaps from Jhedothar or one of Lady Hash’s guardians. Bee felt a sickened lurch in her stomach, remembering the brazen aftermath, the charnel reek that choked the winds. She had never known what caused that disaster. Now she did, and the knowledge tasted bitter.

  The Wire-Witch’s chrome teeth parted as if to respond, but the Immortal granted no reprieve. Her voice rose to a scathing pitch, resonating with centuries of scorn.

  “Who turned the tower Ymmngorad against the Pale? Turning those here present against one another, all without a word of my command? Who orchestrated this misbegotten alliance by making them peck at each other until this rebellious young Lady stood on top?”

  “And who,” the Immortal continued mercilessly, her voice sharpening to a cruel blade, “destroyed the City of Sestchek—not at my command, but at her own whim?” She paused, savouring the flinch from her daughter. “You put eleven million souls to death, knowing full well the chaos it would unleash, knowing it would spark rebellions across the Pale and fracture what little peace remained. All so that your grand schemes might find fertile ground amidst the ruin you caused.” The Immortal’s lips curled in disgust. “Yet you have the gall to cloak your ambitions in righteousness as if morality were ever your motive.”

  Bee’s heart clenched; the layered politics of this war were showing their rot for all to see.

  The Immortal’s projection glared with triumph at the stricken silence her words had wrought. The Wire-Witch seemed to wither under the onslaught of truth—or at least, truth as the Immortal told it. Her throat worked, but no sound came. Her single outstretched hand slowly lowered, trembling, to her side. For a fleeting moment, she looked not like the dreaded Wire-Witch of legend but like a chastened child, raw shame carved into her posture. A silence, tense and suffocating, hung between Mother and daughter. In that silence, the weight of hypocrisy lay heavy in the air.

  Bee’s gaze darted from the Immortal’s looming figure to the Wire-Witch’s trembling form. She saw agony and resilience in the older woman’s posture. The Witch’s crimes, flung into the open, were terrible. But Bee could not forget that beyond these acts lay a desperate intent to end the Immortal’s tyranny. The Witch had walked paths of ruin trying to break an even greater wheel of suffering. And the Immortal—Bee knew—had orchestrated countless horrors of her own over uncounted lifetimes.

  None of them were innocent.

  Not the Immortal, not her rebel daughter.

  Perhaps not even Bee herself, after what she had done to reach this point.

  “Stop!” Bee’s suddenly cried out, startling friend and foe alike. Her chest heaved with each breath as she stepped forward out of Vashante’s steadying hand. Her black gown trailed her like a shade. She glared first at the Immortal’s hovering mirage, then at the Wire-Witch and all those gathered. Her vision swam with an imagination of every horror she had seen to reach this point, but her resolve burned through every fibre of her being.

  She was done watching these ancient powers fling blame while the world burned around them.

  “I don’t care!” Bee shouted, voice echoing off distant arches. “I don’t care who’s right or wrong anymore—Mother or daughter, prophet or tyrant. All of you, listen to me!” Her words came out in a feral rasp, thick with the passion of youth and the authority of someone who had suffered enough. In the stark silence that answered, even the Immortal was momentarily struck mute. The projection’s blazing eyes fixed on Bee, and Bee alone, as the young woman continued in a lower, trembling pitch.

  “The world is ending,” Bee said, her tone fierce with urgency. She flung an arm outward as if pointing beyond the Basilica’s confines to the ruination beyond. “None of us are blameless. I was sent here by my Mother to kill everyone with some—... bioweapon in my blood. Something I didn’t understand but I was all too happy to do. For her. And when that didn’t work I was aimless. I didn’t know who I was or what to do next. But look around you!”

  Bee threw her arms up, exploding with fervour.

  “Look at this place! We’ve made it normal for people to make games of murder and worse! We’ve taken their freedoms and their happiness and just set them against each other so we can argue over all this, only for you to tell us it’s all just a pointless lie!”

  “Everything is falling apart while you stand here and argue over blame!” Her voice cracked on the last word, and a tear escaped down the grime on her cheek, sparkling in the ghost light. “This can’t be all there is. We can’t just be born to be miserable and die! There can’t just be a day when it all ends—... This has to matter!”

  “So we don’t have time for this,” Bee’s voice cracked, her shoulders shaking. “None of us. Not anymore. We have to fix this. This has to mean something.”

  Each syllable dripped with the blood and desperation of the countless lives already lost. The silence that fell was absolute. Bee’s cohort stared at her with eyes laid bare—shock, admiration, even a sting of reprimand in some. Jhedothar’s lip curled, not in scorn but in a kind of grim respect. Vashante watched Bee with unguarded sorrow and pride, a sheen of moisture in her own eyes. Lady Isbet bowed her head, ashamed that they had almost been cowed into compliance. Even the Wire-Witch looked to Bee in astonishment, the younger woman’s outburst cleaving through her spiral of guilt.

  Behind the Immortal’s ghostly form, nearly forgotten until now, loomed the shadow of the Pilgrim. He stood at the far edge of the dais, an armoured colossus half-shrouded in the gloom beyond the hologram’s radiance. His helmeted head turned almost imperceptibly.

  High above, the Immortal’s projection regarded Bee with a darkening expression. For a heartbeat, she seemed taken aback that the child of her blood—her granddaughter, or so they said—would dare raise such a tone to her. But Bee could see that shock freeze over almost instantly into a patina of icy displeasure. The Immortal’s form drew itself taller, regality coiling about her like a snake preparing to strike.

  Before the Immortal could form a retort, a harsh, bitter laugh cut through the quiet. A laugh that issued not from Bee or the Immortal but from the Wire-Witch. Bee turned her head in time to see the Wire-Witch swiping at the tear tracks on her pallid cheeks with the back of one hand. What emerged from the Witch’s throat was half laugh, half sob, entirely hollow. The Immortal’s charges against her still hung in the air like the acrid smoke of Cruiros, but Bee’s audacity had given the Witch a renewed spark.

  The Wire-Witch straightened her back and fixed her eyeless gaze on her creator. Her sorrow had transmuted into a venomous scorn.

  “You hear that, Pilgrim?” the Wire-Witch called out suddenly, her eyeless gaze swivelling to the looming armoured giant on the dais. Her voice dripped with caustic irony, each word a deliberate provocation. “The Last Lady is right—the world’s end approaches while we squabble. But what of you, old warrior? Will you hasten its end by serving her lies?”

  The Pilgrim, called out so directly, turned his helm fully towards the Wire-Witch. In the uncertain half-light, his silhouette was fearsome: a giant encased in battle-worn armour, festooned with relics of a bygone crusade. His silence was as profound as the grave. The only hint of life was the faint hum of ancient servos as he inclined his head, listening.

  The Wire-Witch took a step closer to the dais, face upturned toward the Pilgrim. Bee’s heart hammered. But the Witch plunged on, voice rising.

  “Do you remember, Pilgrim?” she cried. “Do you remember what you told us when you took this domain? Those words you thundered as you crushed so many beneath your heel?” There was a wild glint in her hollow eye-sockets, a martyr’s fervour. She waved a single arm around in a gesture, addressing not just the Pilgrim but everyone present, forcing them to recall or imagine that bloody scene: The Pilgrim revived, wrathful and righteous.

  “You spoke of injustice then,” the Wire-Witch said savagely. “How you wanted to dispel her illusions and reveal the truth. How you would make her pay for broken pledges of old!”

  Bee saw the Pilgrim’s gauntlets clench at those words. The air itself felt charged, as if old wounds from a thousand-year crusade had been laid bare and salted. The Immortal’s avatar hovered, eerily still, watching this exchange with unreadable eyes.

  The Witch pressed on, relentless. “Where is that conviction now?” she demanded, voice dropping into a guttural sneer. “What did the Immortal promise you to make you her thrall, hmm? A cure for the rot that eats at your flesh? The restoration of your precious Axiamat?” She practically spat the sacred name. “Or perhaps merely the chance to kill again, to devour everyone with her blessing this time?”

  A growl rumbled through the hall—the sound of Jhedothar’s disgust at the notion. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the confrontation between the Witch and the ancient warrior. The Pilgrim’s silence deepened, impenetrable, as the Wire-Witch’s accusations hung in the air.

  For a long moment, the Pilgrim gave no answer. He did not so much as incline his helmet further. Behind the faceless visor, his thoughts remained a mystery locked behind layers of history and pain. Bee realized she was holding her breath. Some part of her, foolish or hopeful, willed the Pilgrim to respond—to deny the Witch’s words, to roar that he remained a champion reborn, not a pawn. But he did not. The legendary saviour of old said nothing, and in that nothing, an awful truth crystallized.

  The Wire-Witch’s taunt met only the voiceless void of the Pilgrim’s obedience. A bitter sound escaped her chrome teeth. For all his myth and might, the Pilgrim had chosen his side.

  High on the dais, the Immortal’s projection drew a slow breath and let it out in a soft sigh. It was a sound of finality.

  “Enough of this,” she declared, almost wearily. Her voice was low now, vibrating with dangerous resolve. “I see none of you will heed reason. Not my wayward daughter, not my dear granddaughter, nor any of you wretched fools.”

  Her eyes swept over Bee’s cohort like a laser, the kindness entirely gone, replaced by a distant loathing. “If you will not help me preserve what little higher order remains, then you are expendable. All of you.”

  Bee felt a cold spike of fear lance through her spine at those words. The Immortal’s figure raised one hand delicately as though about to snap her fingers.

  “Mother—” Bee heard the Wire-Witch gasp, alarm igniting in that single word. But the Immortal did not even spare her daughter a glance. Her raised hand clenched instead into a fist.

  “Remember,” the Immortal said softly, almost to herself. “I gave you a chance.”

  Then, her fist jerked down in a slicing motion. Invisible and instantaneous, the kill signal ripped through the chamber.

  “Now reap the consequences.”