Chapter 324
The palace groans like a living thing.
Darklite veins stretch across the floor in thick, branching streaks now, crawling up the columns and bleeding into the glass walls. What was once polished, pristine crystal—an architectural marvel of the Eastern Twilight—is turning into a conduit. A weapon. A mouth.
Beneath my bare feet, I feel the hum—low, constant, primal. It isn’t just energy. It’s a heartbeat.
A being.
Leviathan.
He’s waking.
And we’re standing inside his coffin.
Shoal doesn’t move as chaos blooms around him. He watches the uprising with unnerving calm, his gaze drifting over the crowd of stunned nobles and armed guards, the women of my bloodline now wielding weapons scavenged from fallen soldiers, and the rising courage of people who had, until now, only known how to bow.
Axel kneels, clutching his head like he’s been split open. Delphi’s blow shattered Lily’s control, but whatever she did to him, it left cracks in more than just the bond. He looks at Wake—eyes wide with shame and pain—as if he’s realizing he betrayed him all over again.
Lily doesn’t look at Axel. She only looks at Shoal.
The way she stands beside him, half-smiling, is terrifying. She’s not grasping for power anymore. She already has it. She’s finally gotten what she’s always wanted: him, this, and the end of anyone who tried to cage her as human.
Wake puts a hand on Axel’s shoulder. “It’s not over yet.”
Axel nods, but he doesn’t speak. Not yet.
A deep tremor rolls through the palace, rattling the Darklite like wind through hollow bone. It comes from beneath us this time. Far below, where the ocean grows black and eternal, something massive is moving.
“Do you feel it?” Shoal asks the crowd. His voice echoes unnaturally now, deeper than before. “He stirs. He hears me.”
The sky is fully eclipsed. No light filters down from above. Only the falling meteors offer flashes of silver fire, and even they seem to avoid the palace now, veering off like they’ve been warned.
Cora steps up beside me, sword glowing, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a connection. This is a summoning.”
Miore’s voice cracks from behind her. “No. It’s worse. He’s… taking.”
We all freeze.
I close my eyes. Reach out.
And I feel it.
The palace isn't just a conduit. It’s a syringe. The Darklite running through these walls—infused into the very bones of Estellis—is being drained, drawn down and funneled into the chasm below, like blood from a wound. The Ether churns. The sea boils. And deep, deep below—
A thought. A presence.
A hunger so vast it has no shape. No voice. Only need.
Leviathan.
The thought is so loud in my mind it nearly drowns me.
I stumble. Wake catches me.
“He’s not just waking,” I breathe. “Shoal is feeding him. Or worse—feeding off him.”
Shoal lifts his hands and throws back his head. His armor gleams brighter, the Darklite crawling over his skin now, threading into his veins. He glows from within, not with Ether—but with something deeper. Older.
“He answers!” he cries, triumphant.
Wake steps forward. “And when your body can’t hold it? When it rips you apart like it did the Elder Kin you created? What then?”
Shoal turns to him, breathing hard. “Then I ascend.”
Wake doesn’t even flinch. “Or you die.”
“I’ll be remembered.”
“You’ll be mourned.”
Shoal’s laugh is hoarse. “Still better than being forgotten.”
A low rumble shakes the floor.
The walls begin to pulse. One of the massive glass panels cracks. The light inside the room dims further as the palace’s energy is drained into the chasm below, swallowed by the vast, unseen mouth of the being long buried.
Lovelace finally rises from the dais, clutching the armrests. “Stop this,” he hisses. “You’ll bring ruin to all of us.”
Shoal doesn’t even look at him. “You already did that, old man. The moment you decided blood purity mattered more than vision.”
Petra steps forward now, for the first time since the chaos began. Her voice is quiet. “Shoal… this isn’t the way.”
He turns to her. And there, for a brief moment, the mask slips. Just a little.
He looks tired.
“I tried to do it your way,” he says. “Do you know how many times I begged them to listen? To change?”
He looks to the Heirs, one by one. Miore. Nuala. Lile. Elanora. Wake.
Then to me.
“You all had your chance.”
He lifts his arms once more—and the palace begins to crack.
This time, not just from below.
From within.
I reach deep into myself, past the fire, past the static, past the white-hot rush of fear and fury. Past even Electra. Into the heart of the Ether.
And I stop time.
The entire world freezes. Shoal still stands with his arms raised, his mouth open. The soldiers are statues. The meteors in the sky hang motionless. The cracked glass hovers mid-fall.
It’s silent.
Even the Ether goes still.
And then they come.
Electra appears first, radiant and cold, her hair drifting in a wind that doesn’t exist.
Nu follows, eyes old and mournful, his hands dripping with black water.
Then the others.
Gods of water and wrath. Of creation and storm. All the old powers, flickering and dim.
“Why didn’t you stop this?” I ask them. My voice shakes. “You knew this was coming.”
Electra steps forward. “We did what was necessary. We sent warnings. Showed you all that could be. But it’s always been up to you to understand.”
“Understand what?” I demand.
“That our time is ending.”
Tangaroa’s voice is deep. “We were never meant to stay this long. Not as gods. We were guardians. Nothing more.”
I stare at them. At their fading forms. At the ghosts of what were once worshipped.
“Then why make us Heirs?”
“To prepare you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” Ægir gestures toward the frozen moment, to Shoal mid-ascent. “To choose.”
I stare at them.
“All this time… I thought I was supposed to stop him.”
Electra shakes her head slowly. “No, Phoebe. You were meant to steer him.”
The memories come fast and sharp—every dream I’ve had, every vision, every alternate version of this moment that ended in blood. They weren’t warnings. They were choices. Paths not taken.
“What happens if I fail?”
Lightning sparks inside Electra’s ghostly frame.
“You won’t.”
Time resumes with a rush.
The glass shatters.
The ground splits.
And I run toward Shoal.
The Ether sings in my chest.
I reach him.
And instead of striking—
I link.
My hand slams against his chest—and I pour my power into him.
Wake screams my name.
But I don’t stop.
Because Shoal was never the enemy.
He was the test.
And I finally understand how to pass it.
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