Chapter 19: THE MOUTH OF THE WORLD

The judge was gone in a second. One moment she was standing there, and the next, she was just a red smear on the giant tentacle. The screaming faces on the red limb began to wail louder. They weren't just making noise; they were calling my name.

"Aria... come home... Aria... join us..."

I felt a cold shiver go down my spine. The giant red eye at the bottom of the pit blinked. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen. The "Sea of Souls" wasn't a place to hide. it was a living, breathing monster that had been waiting for me to kill my parents so it could finally wake up.

"Run!" Kael shouted. He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the edge of the pit.

We didn't look back. We ran through the white trees, but the forest was changing. The ground was turning soft and wet, like we were walking on a giant tongue. The white bark of the trees began to bleed a thick, red juice.

"Where do we go?" I gasped. My lungs were burning. "The portal is closed! The judge is dead!"

"We find a way out, or we die fighting!" Kael yelled.

Suddenly, the ground in front of us burst open. Three more tentacles shot out of the earth. They were covered in those horrible, tiny faces. One face looked like the high priest. Another looked like Seraphina.

"You can't run from yourself, Aria!" the Seraphina-face screamed from the tentacle. "You belong to the hunger!"

The tentacle whipped toward Kael. He raised his sword, the silver light flashing, and sliced through the meat. A spray of hot, stinking blood hit the ground. The tentacle roared, a sound that shook my very bones.

"Aria, use your power!" Kael pleaded. "I can't hold them all off!"

"I don't have any!" I cried. I looked at my burned hands. The skin was black and peeling. I felt empty. The Sun-Eater was gone. The Shadow God was gone. I was just a girl again.

"You are never empty," a voice whispered. It wasn't Seraphina this time. It was my own voice, but it sounded older. Wiser. You didn't lose the power. You just stopped being afraid of it.

I looked at the red eye in the pit. It was watching me. It didn't want Kael. It wanted the thing inside me. It wanted the girl who had survived the Abyss.

"Kael, get behind me!" I commanded.

"What? No!"

"Trust me!" I stepped forward, facing the tentacles.

I didn't try to call on the fire. I didn't try to call on the shadows. I just opened my heart to the pain. I remembered the cold nights in the Abyss. I remembered the look on Kael’s face when he betrayed me. I remembered the hunger.

"You want me?" I screamed at the red eye. "Then come and get me!"

I didn't push the power out. I pulled the world in.

The red trees began to wither. The blood on the ground flew into my skin. The screaming faces on the tentacles turned pale as I drained the life right out of them. My "Power Absorption System" didn't flash a warning this time. It just hummed a low, steady note.

LEVEL 100 REACHED. SOUL MERGE COMPLETE.

I felt my hair grow long and sharp. My fingernails turned into silver claws. I wasn't a monster, and I wasn't a human. I was the Queen of the Sea.

I raised my hand and pointed at the tentacles. "Vanish."

A wave of pure, clear energy shot from my fingers. It wasn't black or gold. It was the color of the moon. It hit the tentacles and turned them into harmless water. The red eye in the pit let out a final, bubbling groan and began to sink back into the darkness.

The ground stopped shaking. The white forest went quiet.

Kael walked up to me, his sword lowered. He looked at me with a mix of love and fear. "Aria? Is that you?"

I turned to him. My eyes were a soft, glowing silver. "It's me, Kael. All of me."

I felt a strange peace. The revenge was over. The parents were dead. The monster was back in its hole. We were finally alone in a new world.

"We can build something here," Kael whispered, reaching out to touch my hand. "No kings. No judges. Just us."

I smiled. It was the first real smile I had felt in years. "Yes. Just us."

But as our fingers touched, the silver light between us turned a dark, bruised purple.

Kael’s face twisted in pain. He fell to his knees, clutching his chest.

"Kael? What's wrong?" I asked, kneeling beside him.

"The... the soul you gave me," Kael gasped. "Seraphina’s soul... it’s not fighting me anymore. It’s changing."

I looked at Kael’s neck. A small, golden mark was appearing on his skin. It was the mark of the Sun-Eater.

"Aria..." Kael looked up at me. His eyes were no longer blue. They were the same golden yellow as the king's. "I think... I think the ritual didn't just save me. It made me the new king."

Before I could say anything, a line of soldiers in silver armor walked out from the shadows of the white trees. They didn't look like our old guards. They looked like statues.

They all knelt in the dirt, their heads bowed.

"All hail the Sun King," the soldiers said in one voice.

Kael stood up slowly. His face was cold. He looked at me, but it was like he was looking at a stranger.

"Aria," Kael said. His voice was deep and powerful. "I have to go back. The kingdom needs a ruler. And the law says the Sun King must have a queen."

"I'm not going back to that palace, Kael," I said, my heart freezing.

"You don't understand," Kael said. He reached out and grabbed my wrist. His grip was like iron. "It's not a request."

He pulled me toward the soldiers. As he did, a golden crown appeared on his head, and a black crown appeared on mine.

The two crowns were connected by a heavy, invisible chain.

"We are bonded now, Aria," Kael whispered into my ear. "Until the end of time. Whether you like it or not."

I looked at the man I loved, and I saw a stranger wearing my father's face.