He was not screaming anymore.
The pain hadn't stopped.
He had simply become it.
Caelan's body hovered just above the ground now, limbs spread, eyes rolled white as silver flames traced along his spine. The spiral beneath him had grown, etched wider and deeper into the stone like a sigil being born into the world. Every ring pulsed with old power.
Kael and Raen stood frozen.
Even Velrath dared not approach.
Something ancient stirred in the Vault — a resonance that did not belong to blood or moonlight, but to memory, rising from a wound carved in time.
Caelan's breath caught as the final vision arrived.
But it wasn't a memory.
It was a warning.
---
He stood at the edge of the world.
Sky torn in half.
The throne room of Noctisfall flooded in black fire.
A spiral sun burned above — devouring stars, devouring gods.
And before it knelt a figure.
Crowned.
Not Kael.
Not Raen.
Him.
But not him.
A version of himself made of pure inheritance — too much blood, too much fate. A beast in the shape of a king. A curse disguised as prophecy.
Behind that crowned Caelan, bodies lay strewn — Seraphyne, broken. Velrath, burned to ash. The Kings, lifeless.
A single spiral glowed on his chest.
Whole.
And hungry.
---
Caelan's body snapped upright in the vault.
"No," he whispered, trembling.
He wouldn't become that.
He couldn't.
He reached for himself. For his core. For the fragment of will untouched by prophecy.
The pendant around his neck flared again — brighter than ever before — then shattered in a burst of silver heat.
The Spiral Crown above flared in response. One piece of it — the central ring — shot downward like a falling star and embedded itself in Caelan's chest.
His heart stopped.
Then started again.
Changed.
---
He landed hard on the stone floor, coughing smoke, muscles spasming.
But he wasn't broken.
He was…
Different.
Raen moved first, eyes narrowing. "What are you?"
Caelan slowly rose to his feet.
His shadow split behind him—one winged, one clawed.
But he bore no fangs.
No golden eyes.
Instead, his irises shimmered in a spiral of silver and dusk.
"I am not your son," he said.
Kael's brow creased.
"I am not your heir."
He looked up at the floating fragments of the Crown, which had begun to orbit again.
"But I remember her."
The chamber pulsed with quiet.
Velrath knelt.
Raen exhaled, almost a laugh.
Kael, at last, nodded.
"You are the Third Inheritance."
---
In the Temple of the Hollowfangs, far across the land, the moon cracked once.
In the ruins beneath the Ashmane fields, a bloodroot tree bloomed silver.
And deep within the Veil, something ancient opened one eye.
Caelan Duskwither had remembered what even the Spiral forgot.
And the world would not remain the same.