Chapter 16

Lucian tells me he’s going to die like he’s announcing the weather. “We begin at the next turning of the Veil,” he says, voice flat, hands braced on the jagged armrests of the half‑healed throne. Cracks of frozen shadow still spiderweb through the obsidian where the Core tried to eat him. “The erasure will be…complete. You will walk away.” The word erasure makes my stomach turn. Not just death. Gone. No trace in the Book, no memory in any world. Like he never existed. “You...