Silence. The King’s presence presses against the wards, testing them, searching for another crack.
The dead have been asking for centuries. The voice returns, harder now. Colder. They have begged and pleaded and screamed for acknowledgment. The living have ignored them. The death wardens have silenced them. The Council has burned them before they could finish speaking their truths. We are done asking, mourning witch. We are done trusting the living to give us what we deserve.
I don’t have an answer for that.
Because the King isn’t wrong. The dead have been ignored. Silenced. Erased. Every pyre the death wardens light is a denialof closure, every mass grave a monument to grief the living refuse to process.
But drowning Blackreach in corpses won’t give the dead what they need. It will only create more of them.
You can hear me. The King’s voice shifts. Becomes calculating. Becomes the voice of an entity that has spent centuries contemplating strategy. Through these wards. Through the suppression that was supposed to silence you. Do you know why?
I don’t answer. Don’t need to. The King will tell me regardless.
Because you are more powerful than they know. More powerful than you know. The magic in your blood is older than these wards, older than this city, older than the wars that created me. You could speak for all of us, mourning witch. You could be the voice that finally makes the living listen.
“By forcing them?”
By giving them no choice. The King’s voice caresses the words. The same way they gave us no choice. The same way they dumped our bodies in pits and covered us with lime and forgot our names.
The mark beneath my collarbone intensifies with sudden heat.
Not warning. Recognition. The King has touched on a truth that resonates with the magic binding me to Drokhar—the Ashwalker, the man who lit more of those pyres than anyone else.
Tell him we offer absolution.
The words come soft. Gentle. A whisper that cuts deeper than any scream.
Tell him if he comes to us willingly, we will spare the city. No more risings. No more attacks. The dead will rest—truly rest—if theAshwalkersurrenders himself to our judgment.
My heart stutters.
“You want me to deliver a message?”
I want you to make a choice. The King’s voice drops to a murmur, intimate and terrible. The man whose mark burns alongside yours has silenced thousands of us. His blood is the price of peace. His death is the payment that will let the forgotten finally rest.
“No.”
The word comes out before I’ve finished thinking it. Instinct. Refusal. The same primal response that made me raise my wrists for his iron restraints in the compound, trusting a monster because the mark told me he was mine.
You would let the city burn for him?
“I would find another way.” My hands shake, but I don’t take the words back. “There has to be another way. You want acknowledgment? You want your names spoken, your truths heard? I can give you that without blood. I can?—”
You cannot give us anything from inside this cage. The King cuts me off. You are as helpless as we were. Silenced. Forgotten. Waiting for someone else to decide your fate.
The comparison stings because it’s accurate.
But you are not alone, mourning witch. TheAshwalkercarries your mark as you carry his. He will come for you. He will fight through every barrier the Council raises, burn through every ward that stands between you.
A pause. The King’s presence shifts, and I feel it smile—not with any physical mouth, but with the weight of centuries of patient waiting.
And when he does, we will be ready.
“Leave him alone.” The words come out harder than I intended. Possessive. Protective. “Your quarrel is with the Council, with the system that created you. Not with one man.”
He is not one man. The King’s voice hardens. He is the hand that lit the pyres. The symbol of everything the living have done to us. His brother understood this, in the end.
My blood freezes.