Maul was no mere man. He was a cosmic parasite, the ultimate predator of the soul. To let him in was to be hunted forever; he was a shadow that never detached, a whisper that never fell silent.

I could have just moved the book, she whispered to the empty air, her voice cracking with the onset of her burgeoning madness. One simple motion. The book off the stone, the portal gone. Instead, I threw my axe like a fool.

She had tried to kill a nightmare with steel, and now Zilla—her only true friend—would pay the price for her incompetence.

Voices drifted through the thick, unnatural fog. Amanda retreated into the gloom, her eyes wide and bloodshot, twitching as the figures emerged.

“As you all know,” Isha said, her voice carrying an affected, regal grace that seemed absurd in this wasteland. She walked as if she were trailing silk robes rather than pirate rags. “I was a princess of the High Courts once. My older sister was my sworn guardian, bound by blood and crown.”

Hagar, whose back was a map of scars from her years in the slave pits, let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “A princess? You’re delusional, little sister. When was this? In a dream you had while scrubbing the decks?”

Isha stopped, looking at her sister with a chilling, hollow intensity. “It’s because they wiped us, Hagar. They scrubbed our minds like dirty floorboards. But the truth is waking up.”

“Enough!” Hagar snapped, her hand instinctively flying to the hilt of her sword. She had spent her life as a slave so that Isha wouldn’t have to; she had fought, bled, and killed to keep that ‘princess’ persona intact, even if it was a lie. “You’re imagining things. Why would a wretch like me be a guardian to anyone?”

“Because you’re the eldest,” Isha insisted, her eyes shimmering with a dangerous nostalgia. “It was your duty. We weren’t always scavengers and pirates, Hagar. We were more.”

Hagar’s expression softened for a flickered second before hardening into stone. “Really?”

“Yes,” Isha whispered. “Really.”

Trailing behind them, Hondo stretched his weary back, his eyes scanning the horizon with a cynical gleam. “I don’t know about all that ‘destiny’ talk. I’ve been a captain for as long as I’ve had a pulse, and that’s enough for me.”

The trio stepped out of the mist and froze.

There stood Amanda, looking half-starved and entirely lethal, her axe twitching in her hand. Behind her, the portal shimmered like a bruised lung, exhaling a cold, rhythmic dread.

“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales, Isha,” Hagar laughed, though the sound was devoid of mirth. She pointed her blade at the shivering woman by the altar. “Look what the fog dragged in.”

Her gaze shifted to the portal, and the color drained from her face. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and old blood. “What is that?”

Amanda didn’t answer. She only stared at them with the eyes of someone who had seen the end of the world and realized she was the one who had invited it in.