Chapter 176 The Eternal Emperor Part 2
She didn’t remember stepping away from Xeris. Blinking, Daisy realized she was standing at the very edge of the crater, toes curled over the rim of the fused daisy circle scorched into the earth. The smell of wet clay and ash clung to her skin. She was utterly alone, and the sunlight still raw and bruised above Brightwater only heightened her sense of isolation. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears; fear froze her body, exhaustion made her body go rigid, and a hollow ache squeezed her chest. Every part of her screamed to run, desperate for safety, desperate for Xeris. But the chain in her blood had found new hunger. It wanted to see what came next, and curiosity—sharp, dangerous—rose to fight against her terror.
Varian returned with no warning. One moment, the air over the crater was empty; the next, his silver-clad form bled out from a rip in the world—tearing itself forward through a seam of stitched shadow. He didn’t blink or breathe. He just hovered, a meter above the ground, hands raised in greeting.
“Shall I show you?” he asked, and before Daisy could speak, the world fractured.
The sky above the city peeled away. Daisy saw through it as if it were glass. Images overlaid the real: a young man in threadbare robes, picking his way through an ancient archive, candles guttering around him. She watched his hands—so delicate compared to the black-clawed things he wore now—as they traced the lines of a flower etched on stone. The daisy. Beneath the carving, old script twisted and realigned into words she almost recognized.
The vision rushed forward. She saw the same man, now older, standing in the ruins of a temple, ringed by mirrors that reflected his face but not his shadow. He drew a knife across his palm, smearing blood onto the petals, chanting the first words of the chain. Power coiled up his wrist, the veins going black, and the man’s body convulsed. He smiled even as it happened, teeth splitting his mouth.
The vision split and multiplied—hundreds of Varian’s faces, each one older, more scarred, more monstrous. Some bore veins overtaking flesh entirely. In others, only the eyes changed: turning silver, then black, then hollow. Each time, the man collapsed or screamed or died. Each time, a new version rose from the corpse. Sometimes, he tore his essence free, leaving only a husk while shadows stitched him upright again. Other times, the chain pulsed, binding one life to the next, memory and will reforged. Death was not an ending for Varian—only a door. She sensed something in the chain’s magic pulling him back, patching soul and body, weaving him more tightly into the world and making him harder to destroy.
"Centuries. I searched for what you have—what you wield so easily."
The images sped up—a stutter of decades and centuries. Veilseekers in white passed the chain from hand to hand. Their faces were shadowed by hoods, their movements ritualistic. They were the hidden stewards of the world’s most dangerous secrets, charged with guarding the boundary between magic and madness. Each Veilseeker devoted a life to weaving wards, shaping fate, and ensuring the chain never fell into the wrong hands. Daisy saw her own ancestors among them: women and men with her chin, her nose, and the pattern of her jaw. Each one bore the black daisy somewhere—tattooed on skin, burned onto bone, or sewn into their hearts.
Then the vision narrowed: a single girl stood at the edge of a canal. Her hair was tied back with a dirty rag. Daisy recognized her, though she’d only seen the picture once—smuggled in a locket from Maribel’s hidden box. Her great-grandmother, the one who’d first come to Brightwater, who had survived the long walk, stood firm. She wasn’t lost or desperate. She was directed, purposeful. Two Veilseekers stood behind her, faces hidden, guiding her to a spot above the city’s deepest ley crossing.
"Every link—chosen. Your line refined for this moment, here at the world's heart."
Daisy tried to scream, but panic and realization smothered her—fear and suffocation collided so fiercely in her chest she could not force her voice out. Her desperation felt physical, like a cold grip on her lungs.
She saw her mother, Maribel, bent over a stove, bandaging Daisy’s hand. But this time, the memory was skewed: Maribel’s eyes flickered with silver as she worked, her mouth mumbling words Daisy couldn’t quite hear. Behind her, in the shadow of the door, a Veilseeker watched. Hands folded. Waiting.
The memory jumped. Daisy, as a child, alone in the cold, found the first daisy drawn on the alley wall. She had thought it was a game, a secret left by a friend. But in the vision, she saw the truth: every daisy was a signal, a breadcrumb drawing her to the pattern. They were not just marks left in secret. They were beacons, woven intentionally through her life. Each daisy was a warning and a guide, linking her to the chain's magic and reminding her who she was meant to become.
Her mind buckled. The black veins in her arms pulsed, swelling until her hands went numb. She felt her heartbeat echo in the soles of her feet and the roots of her teeth.
“You engineered me,” she spat, the words coming out warped. “You made me a lab rat.”
“Purpose. You lacked it. I gave you that.”
He waved one hand, and the vision vanished. The sky snapped back, the crater settling into the familiar hush of Brightwater at dawn. Daisy stood there, legs shaking, face wet with tears she hadn’t noticed.
He extended a veined hand. "Daisy, join me. Choose power over pain. Shape the world."
She stared at the hand. Conflict twisted in her—her own traitorous blood reached for it, every cell in her body yearning for an end to the hurt. Longing fought with distrust, horror battling with temptation, and she hated herself for feeling all of it at once.
The locket at her chest seared her, a pulse of white hot through the black. Daisy’s hand shot up, clutching it like a lifeline.
She glared at Varian, daring him to take another step.
"You feel it. The world's hunger. Why bleed for those who'd devour you? Create, don’t burn."
Daisy looked away, embarrassment and guilt tightening in her gut. She hated how much she wanted to believe Varian, and the shame pressed in with suffocating heat. A war raged inside her between hope that he was right and terror that she could so easily betray herself.
She saw the city—the actual city, not the visions. The market was still gutted, the square full of the dead. The only movement: a few crows picking at what the storm had left. She saw, in the distance, a line of children ushered by Ironclaw, their heads bowed, their hands painted with black daisies. She saw Delia’s clinic, the windows smashed, the sign burned. She saw every place she’d ever loved reduced to ash and gristle.
Numbness seeped through Daisy's bones, quickly replaced by a jagged ache. She wanted to look away from the ruin, but her eyes would not obey. Grief pressed down, sharp and breathless; her hands trembled, the urge to weep rising hot in her throat. Under it all was a churning guilt, as if she had called destruction down on her city. The scent of smoke and iron threatened to smother her. She felt stranded, memories of laughter and warmth already distant beneath the weight of what remained. All she could think was: I failed them. I failed all of them.
Her anger flared, burning the shame away. Daisy’s grief sharpened, replaced by the searing certainty of rage. She was done feeling powerless.
“I’d rather die,” she said, and the words cracked the stone under her feet.
Varian’s smile faltered. "Death is mercy. Living truth is strength."
He lowered his hand. "Will alone can't break the chain. Anchor it—or let the world burn."
He vanished again, a fold in the air. This time, there was no fracture, just a flicker of absence that left the world darker in its wake.
Daisy dropped to her knees at the crater’s edge, teeth bared against the agony ripping up her arms. Despair clawed at her, hopelessness rising as the veins reached her jaw, crawling into her mouth. She tasted the rot and the magic, and for the first time, realized just how close she was to surrender. Fear, pain, and a bitter yearning for escape warred within her, threatening to pull her under.
She thought of Oliver, her younger brother. His eyes were wild with fear as the chain in him already faded. He had always looked to her for strength. Now she was all he had left. She thought of Delia, her childhood friend and the healer who risked everything to patch up a world that would never thank her. Delia was stubbornly loyal even as everything else collapsed. She thought of Xeris, her mentor and fierce protector, dying but unbowed, waiting for her to make a move and trusting her to finish what he'd started.
Daisy shuddered, then forced herself to stand. The locket had left a blister on her skin—pain mingled now with new resolve. She pressed it flat, welcoming the sharp sting to ground her fear and transform it into determination. Against her terror and doubt, a fragile strength sharpened, pushing her to her feet.
“I am not a link in your fucking chain,” she said, to nobody and everybody.
The ley lines quivered, the crater flexed, and a new power rose up from below.
Daisy braced herself.
She would not let the world be rewritten in someone else’s hands.
She resolved to purge the world of its corruption, fully aware that she might be consumed in the process, and prepared to act on her decision.