Chapter 4

The weight of their words pressed down on me, heavier than all those centuries in the Wailing Chasm.

Five hundred years.

I remembered the cold, the endless screaming of tormented souls, the despair that ate at my mind day after day.

I remembered clinging to the image of Malakor and Kael, believing in their love, their eventual vindication of me.

That hope was the only thing that kept me sane.

And it was all a lie.

They knew. They let it happen. My own husband. My own son.

I found myself drawn to Malakor' s private study later that day, when he was out.

I wasn' t sure what I was looking for. Solace? Answers? More pain?

The room was opulent, filled with artifacts and scrolls.

He had always claimed he was "too burdened by duties" for personal mementos of our life together, no portraits of me, no little keepsakes.

My eyes fell on a locked cabinet, one I' d never paid much attention to.

Driven by a desperate need, I found the hidden mechanism to open it.

Inside, there were no state papers, no official documents.

It was filled with sketches of Lyra.

Lyra in regal poses, Lyra laughing, Lyra looking thoughtful. Dozens of them, all drawn with a loving, almost worshipful hand.

And poems. Passionate, yearning poems.

Written by Malakor. For Lyra.

My stomach churned.

He had never written a line of poetry for me. Never sketched my face.

His heart, it seemed, had always belonged elsewhere.

The betrayal cut deeper than I thought possible. It wasn't just about protecting Lyra from the Conclave, or preserving his power.

It was about her.

This was the truth of my marriage, of my life. A carefully constructed facade hiding a rotten core.

The last vestiges of my naive devotion shattered.

A cold resolve began to form in the pit of my despair.

I thought of the Cipher of Thresholds. My ancestral artifact. Hidden away in the old Guardian' s sanctuary, a place only I knew how to access.

A pathway between realms.

A way out.