Gold.
The first thing Mara experienced was gold, which gathered in her mouth like liquid sunlight and burned behind her eyelids.
The world burst in as she gasped.
Ethan looked over her, his face half-consumed by the void, his remaining eye wide with something between awe and terror. Her chest still hung the dagger, but she felt no pain.
Only... pressure.
She gripped the hilt.
"Wait—" Ethan's voice sounded like static.
Mara pulled.
The blade slid free with a sound like a sigh. Instead of blood, a thin stream of glowing gold curled in the air before vanishing.
Her hands were shaking. Not from fear.
From power.
…..
The void flinched.
Ethan staggered back as Mara rose, her movements too smooth, too perfect. The distant heartbeat of the Thirteenth Star matched the thumping of the golden light in her eyes.
"She's not yours anymore," the Star whispered in his skull. "She's mine."
Ethan clenched his empty hand. He felt his hunger twist and become suddenly unsure. He'd come to devour the Duskheir, to end this….
But the Duskheir was gone.
And Mara was...
"Ethan." Her voice echoed, layered with something older. She reached for him. "You're dying."
He was.
He could feel the emptiness swimming in and out of his left eye, which had reached his cheekbone.
Mara touched his face with her golden fingers.
…and the void screamed.
…..
Jarek reached the crater as the first scream tore through the air.
At the center, Mara stood with her back arched and her mouth pouring out golden light. Ethan squirmed at her feet, the void consuming him in uneven bursts.
And above them…
The sky split.
A fissure of emerald and gold, widening with every heartbeat. Through it, Jarek saw things, shapes too vast to comprehend, twitching in the dark between stars.
The Thirteenth Star's true form.
Mara turned. Her eyes locked onto his.
"Jarek." Her smile was too wide. "You brought the knife."
He had.
It was the same one he had driven into the hanging tree. Now it trembled in his grip, its edge stained with black sap that writhed.
Mara's eyes fell upon it.
Her smile faded.
"Oh," she whispered. "You understood."
…..
The pain was unbearable.
With his vision breaking into a thousand fragments of memory, Ethan scratched at his face as the emptiness engulfed his eyes.
Liora drinking from a god's skull.
The First Duskheir's hollow laugh.
Mara—no, not Mara, something wearing Mara, plunging a dagger into his chest.
A hand gripped his wrist.
Mara was kneeling in front of him, her golden eyes full of tears that stung his skin like acid.
"I can save you," she whispered. "But you have to let go."
Ethan choked. The void was in his throat now.
He managed one word.
"How?"
Mara leaned close. Her lips brushed his ear.
"Become the knife."
…..
Jarek felt the blade pulse in his hand.
He was now aware of what it was. Knew why the sap moved.
This was no ordinary steel.
Created from the same shadows that had previously restrained the Duskheir, it was a prison and key.
Mara turned to him, her golden light dimming.
"Do it," she said. "Before the Star's awakening is complete."
Jarek stepped forward. The heavens cried out.
He raised the knife…
and hesitated.
"Mara," he breathed. "Are you in there?"
Her smile was heartbreakingly human.
"Not for long."
…..
The crack grew wider.
Something stirred beyond it.
Mara pressed Jarek's blade to her own throat.
"For the line," she whispered.
Ethan let out a cry until his voice was muffled by the silence.
The blade slipped out of Jarek's hand.
The crater was flooded with gold.
The sky healed.
And the spot where Mara had been standing...
a single, gilded thorn.