The land grew cruel beyond the trees.
Northward, the forest thinned into ash flats where nothing dared root. Black sand crunched underfoot like bone meal. The sky no longer bore clouds—only smoke trails and distant flares, like stars dying mid-scream. The Redborn walked alone, though not unwatched.
The freed prisoners had not followed. Some offered tearful gratitude, others fled into the forest like deer uncaged, but none chose to stay. None could. The air around her grew heavier the farther she went, as if the world sensed her and recoiled.
Above her, crows circled—mute, silent things with eyes that gleamed too bright to be natural. One swooped low. She looked up.
It cawed once, then shattered mid-air—feathers evaporating in a burst of bloodless smoke.
She didn't flinch.
The blood within her churned restlessly, not in warning, but anticipation.
He waits here.
She didn't know how she knew—but the thought felt true.
The path led her to the spire.
It jutted from the earth like a tooth half-gnawed by time—its surface not entirely stone, but something that pulsed faintly beneath a skin of black iron and red crystal. Massive chains, long rusted, hung from clefts in its height. Each link bigger than a man's torso. A gate of bone and brass hung ajar, its hinges moaning with every gust of wind.
She entered.
The interior swallowed all light but her own. Her blood shimmered faintly beneath her skin, casting ghost-light against ancient murals etched into the walls—depictions of battles lost to memory, gods with blades in their chests, and a figure shrouded in thread and string, pulling marionettes made of kings and beasts.
At the spire's center was a hall.
Circular. Grand. Silent.
And waiting within it—
A throne made not of wood or gold, but stitched together from broken swords, dolls, and bones. Upon it sat a figure.
Slender. Draped in a coat of living silk that shifted color as it moved. A porcelain mask covered the face—half-smiling, half-sorrowful—beneath a crown of thin wires that danced in unseen currents.
One hand rested on an armrest shaped like a weeping maiden.
The other held nothing—but every thread in the hall connected to it.
The Redborn stopped just within the chamber.
"You're not surprised," she said.
The Puppeteer tilted his head.
"No," he replied. His voice was soft, melodic. Male, though it danced dangerously close to something else. "I dreamed of your steps long before your feet touched the world."
"What am I to you?"
"A tragedy."
She narrowed her eyes. "Whose?"
He chuckled. It sounded like a music box winding down.
"Mine. Yours. Theirs." He gestured upward, where no gods waited. "But perhaps not yet. You've taken your first strings. The blood has tasted fire. That changes things."
She took a step forward.
"Did you kill them? The gods?"
The Puppeteer looked at his empty hand. "No. You did. Or you will. Time is a marionette, too—tugged in loops, sometimes snarled. Sometimes severed."
She frowned. "I don't understand."
"You will."
Silence settled between them. The blood in her veins throbbed, but did not stir. There was no threat here. Only tension. A pull.
"Why does it call to you?" she asked. "The blood. My blood."
The Puppeteer rose.
He descended the throne steps slowly, threads trailing behind him like a cloak of living light. Up close, the mask's eyes were hollow—but she felt seen.
"Because I helped make it."
The words struck her like a hammer to the chest.
Her legs faltered. She caught herself.
"You...?"
"I was there when the Fool wept over your husk. When the Harlequin stitched your name into the last drop. When the gods died screaming your true name, and the world tried to forget it." He smiled beneath the porcelain. "I remember."
Her heart raced.
"Then tell me."
The Puppeteer reached out.
His fingers brushed her cheek—cold as death, but gentle.
"I could," he whispered. "But then you'd be mine."
She stepped back, breath shallow.
"You want to control me."
"No," he said, voice like silk over steel. "I want to love you."
Her blood surged—heat, panic, confusion. The pull inside her twisted into something darker. Something intoxicating.
"Stay," the Puppeteer said. "And I will give you everything—your past, your purpose, your power. You will not need to wander. You will rule."
She hesitated.
Then shook her head. "Not yet."
The Puppeteer bowed, as if pleased. "Good. The best puppets are the ones who cut their own strings."
As she turned to leave, his final words followed her:
"When you bleed again, remember this: I am the only one who will not fear you."
Outside, the spire pulsed.
In the distance, the sky burned.
The war had begun.