Chapter 158: The Seal’s Burden
Chapter 158: The Seal’s Burden
I couldn’t breathe.
Even as the vision of the woman faded back into the shimmering black of the Reflection Pool, her words echoed in the hollows of my mind.
You will become the gate. The tether. The last ward.
Not a warrior.
Not a queen.
Not a mate.
A lock.
A seal.
A sacrifice.
Alec gripped my shoulders, his face pale beneath the lantern light. “Evelyn—look at me.”
I forced my eyes to meet his, though every part of me wanted to collapse under the weight of what I’d just been told.
“You heard her,” I whispered. “There’s no fight. No final battle. Just… me. Standing between the world and the darkness.”
“No,” Alec said, voice low and sharp. “There is always a choice.”
Seris stepped forward, arms crossed over her chest, her silver eyes unreadable. “Not all choices are fair. Some are forged by legacy, others by necessity.”
Daria scoffed behind her. “That’s easy to say when it’s not your life on the line.”
“No,” I said softly. “She’s right. I was born into this for a reason.”
Alec’s voice was tight with desperation. “Evelyn—stop.”
But I couldn’t.
Not when I felt the pull of something ancient in my blood. The mark on my chest pulsed again, like a second heartbeat.
“I’ve always felt it,” I said. “The wrongness in the world. The crack in the veil. I thought I was broken for feeling too much, for hurting when others didn’t. But I wasn’t broken. I was connected. To all of it.”
Alec shook his head. “You don’t have to do this. We’ll find another way.”
Logan stepped closer. “Maybe there is another way. What about the other seals? The monoliths?”
Seris answered. “The other monoliths are dormant. The Fifth is the last, the one that anchors them all. If it fails…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
We all knew.
The world would fall.
That night, I stood alone beside the Reflection Pool.
Everyone else slept, or at least pretended to.
I stared at the water, which now shimmered with pale silver light, reflecting not the chamber above, but stars—real stars—as if it had opened a window to the night sky above the world.
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
The pool did not respond.
But something stirred in me. A warmth. A presence.
Not the darkness.
Something older.
The First Flame.
The same force I’d felt back in the mountain sanctuary when the monolith answered my blood. When the Firstborn appeared.
You are not the end, it whispered. You are the beginning of something new.
Tears burned in my eyes.
“Then show me how.”
When I returned to camp, Alec was waiting.
He didn’t say anything.
He just opened his arms, and I walked into them, burying my face in his chest.
“I’m scared,” I said.
He held me tighter. “So am I.”
“I’m going to do it.”
His breath caught.
I looked up at him. “But not alone. I want you with me.”
He nodded, his jaw tight, his eyes storm-dark. “Then I’m with you. Always.”
We didn’t sleep that night.
We just held each other, our hearts beating in time.
Because when dawn came…
I would no longer be Evelyn Storme.
I would become the Fifth Seal.