Chapter 132: The Living Throne
The Broken Gate opened with the sound of breath being drawn in reverse, a long inhale from something ancient and distraught. The light was wrong here. It wasn’t dark nor light. But rather it was in between .
Isla stepped through first, Damian beside her, hand hovering protectively near her lower back. Behind them came Lucia, Brienne, Rohen, Leo, Alaine... and Marcus.
The whispers hadn’t stopped since they left the Veil’s edge. The souls followed Marcus like a second shadow, their murmurs growing louder with each step and each heartbeat. They weren’t ghosts but remnants.
Isla’s pendant pulsed, hot against her palm, a warning or a promise, she didn’t know which. But the child within her had stilled and that terrified her more than anything.
The chamber beyond was vast, carved from obsidian and bone. At its center stood three Thrones: one of fire and crystal, glowing like magma; one of bone and shadow, blacker than night; and one of twisted root and gleaming sap, alive with light and decay.
Cassian stood before them.
He was no longer the man and wolf they had once known. His form shimmered with power, too fluid, even, too perfect. The veins along his neck glowed a soft violet-white, like moonlight reflected in a pool of blood. The two figures flanking him, Sombrosi and Veyran, watched with hollow eyes, but said nothing.
Marcus stepped forward, flanked by his Remnants. The mist thickened behind him, echoing with memory.
Cassian tilted his head. “You brought the unborn gate to the very place that will unmake her. How poetic.”
Damian bared his teeth. “You don’t touch her.”
Cassian’s smirk curled cruelly. “That’s not up to you anymore, dear cousin.”
Then, with a shudder that came from the earth itself, the Thrones lit.
Each one pulsed, once, twice, thrice. A heartbeat made an echo in this foreign place.
“No,” Isla whispered. “It’s her. It’s my daughter they’re reacting to.”
Cassian nodded. “She’s the Living Throne. Through her, the old blood will decide.”
Lucia’s blade rang free from its sheath. “She’s a child. You won’t use her.”
Cassian didn’t even glance at her. “I’m not the one choosing.”
The light from the Thrones flared. A wall of magic rippled out and pushed the others back, leaving only Isla, Damian, and Marcus at the center.
“Do something!” Brienne shouted.
Damian reached for Isla, but his hand stopped inches from hers as power crackled in the air between them.
Isla gasped.
Visions hit her, three worlds.
A world burning, ruled by force.
A world in decay, ruled by silence.
A world teeming with life and death intertwined, ruled by chaos.
All of a sudden, one image pierced them all: a cradle on fire, a baby wrapped in light, a crown of roots on her brow and blood dripping from her tiny fists.
A voice filled her.
“You do not choose for me, Mama. You become.”
Isla’s body arched, her hands outstretched. Her pendant cracked in her palm. Light burst from her spine, spiraling out like wings.
Marcus fell to one knee. “She’s not choosing a throne,” he whispered.
Damian’s voice shook. “She’s replacing them.”
Cassian lunged forward. “No!”
But he was too late. Isla stepped into the center and reached toward all three thrones at once. They blazed, resisting, pulsing and rejecting.
She didn’t pull back.
Her body convulsed, power surging through her womb, through her skin, her breath. Flames wrapped around roots. Shadows bled into light. Bone cracked and the Thrones fractured.
A scream that was low, guttural and otherworldly, ripped through the chamber.
It was Cassian. The Thrones shattered all at once. In their place, Isla stood, hair flowing like fire underwater, eyes glowing not gold, but cosmic. Her skin pulsed with threads of life and death, fire and shadow, earth and void.
The whispers stopped. All the Remnants knelt. Damian was on his knees, breathless, as his hands clenched at his sides.
Marcus stood slowly. “The Living Throne,” he whispered. “She is the bridge between worlds.”
Isla turned slowly, her gaze meeting Cassian’s. “Your reign is over.”
But Cassian only smiled. “No. Yours has begun.”
He vanished, dispersed like smoke, leaving only silence and ash behind.
Isla turned to Damian. Her voice, though layered with magic, trembled. “I’m still me.”
He crossed the broken ground between them and caught her, burying his face in her neck, wrapping his arms around her like they were the only things holding him to the earth. “You were always more.”
As her belly pulsed again, the unborn gate stirring with awareness, Isla whispered against his skin:
“She won’t be ruled. Not by them. Not by prophecy. Not even by me.”
Marcus watched in silence and in the distance, the Veil whispered. Not in mourning this time but in reverence of what it had just witnessed and what was to come.