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I could feel it—viscerally, excruciatingly—as the ancient magic of the pool began to piece me back together.

It was an agonizing reconstruction. Stitch by magical stitch, the torn muscle in my lower abdomen was pulled together, stitched with glowing threads of light that burned like molten iron. The cracked ribs in my chest were snapped back into alignment with sickening pops, the star-iron decay left by Vaelthrys scathed away from my bone, burned into ash by the raw, purging tide of the Goddesses.

Every scar I carried, every burn from the trials, flared to life, burning through my skin as if the ink were being carved anew with a blade of fire.

I thrashed against the silver water, my hands clawing at my throat, my vision going entirely white with pain as the pool rebuilt my flesh cell by cell, bone by bone, forging my body into a vessel strong enough to carry the full weight of the prophecy.

I can’t... I can’t take this... my mind wept, the agonizing heat threatening to fracture my mind into a thousand pieces.

Through the blinding haze of pain, a figure materialized in the silver before me.

I stilled, my arms floating weightlessly in the shimmering liquid, my eyes wide as I stared through the translucent gloom.

The figure moved without displacing the water, drifting toward me with a quiet, weightless grace that defied the violent turbulence of the pool.

It was Soren.

He didn’t look like the pile of black ash he had crumbled into on the sand. He didn’t look bloodied or broken. His form was constructed from radiant silver light, his dark eyes soft, gentle, and filled with a timeless, serene peace that quieted the screaming of the Goddesses around us.

He floated inches from my bare, trembling frame.

I reached out a hand toward him, my mind choking on a sob. Soren... Soren, I’m sorry... I’m so sorry...

Soren did not speak. A small and infinitely beautiful smile touched his lips—the same unselfish, gentle smile he had given me in the medical wing before the world fell apart.

He raised his right hand.

His palm—the palm he had cut with his own dagger to seal the blood pact—glowed with a deep, pitch-black light that cut through the pool.

Soren stepped closer, leaning over my floating body, and pressed his open hand directly onto the open, burning wound in my lower abdomen.

The moment his hand touched my flesh, a shockwave of cold, absolute peace detonated through my core.

The blinding agony of the pool vanished instantly, replaced by a deep stillness that settled straight into my marrow. I watched through the water as Soren’s hand burned his mark into my skin—a permanent, dark handprint, black as a starless night, branding itself over my lower stomach where the spear had struck.

The black handprint throbbed once, twice, sealing the torn tissue beneath it completely, locking the blood inside my body, creating an impenetrable, dark barrier that neutralized the last remaining trace of Vaelthrys’s poison.

He had given his life on the sand to save me and now, his lingering spirit had bound itself to the sacred pool to ensure I survived the cure.

Soren lifted his hand from my stomach. The black handprint remained, smooth, dark, and forever etched onto my skin. An eternal shield forged from the ultimate act of loyalty.

He looked at me, his warm, dark eyes holding mine for one final, precious second.

Soren offered a single, quiet nod.

Guarded to the end, Princess, his voice whispered, not in my ears, but in the deepest, quietest corner of my heart.

Then, slowly, gracefully, his form began to dissolve, breaking apart into millions of tiny, glowing stars that merged back into the sacred liquid of the Mani Vatn, leaving me floating alone in the quiet, shimmering deep.

FIFTY-FIVE

The sacred currents of the Mani Vatn did not ask permission; they spat us out.

The silver abyss surged beneath my boots, a monumental wave of primordial power driving my body violently upward through the lightless gloom. My lungs burned with a fierce demand for oxygen as the dense liquid thrust me toward the light.

Caspian.

Through the shimmering, translucent silver, my eyes locked onto a shape floating weightlessly ten feet above me.