The corridors leading to the vacant throne had never been meant for mortal feet. Elara felt this with every step—the crystallized walls breathing with accumulated time, the air thick with the pressure of divine power that had nowhere to go. Her borrowed time flickered at the edges of perception, creating echoes of herself that walked paths she hadn't taken yet. One echo turned to look at her with eyes that had seen what happened next, and its expression was not hope. She ran faster. The throne was waking. She could feel it—a hunger that had waited centuries for new prey, reaching out with whispers only divine blood could hear. Cassian and Veyrn were already on their way. She had to reach them before the throne did. Each breath burned in her chest. Crystallized walls showed reflections of a thousand possible futures, each one splintering into the next—fragments of what might be bleeding into what was. She caught glimpses of herself in the surfaces: older, younger, dead, victorious, broken. The temporal echoes were growing stronger. Her unstable power pulled at the edges of reality, drawing moments from her future into the present. Don't look at them. Don't listen. Every future you see is a debt you'll have to pay. An echo of herself stepped out from a corridor that didn't exist yet. This Elara was older—gray threading through dark hair, lines carved deep around eyes that had seen too much. The echo opened its mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Only a warning shape formed by lips that trembled. Elara pushed past. She didn't have time for her own ghosts. The corridor split ahead. Three paths, each one shimmering with possibility. She reached for her power, that forbidden ability to borrow from her own future, and felt the familiar vertigo of pulling time forward. Just a glimpse. Just enough to see which path wouldn't kill her. The debt settled into her bones immediately—joints aching, skin prickling with the sensation of hours being stripped from her life. She saw herself taking the left passage and collapsing three steps in, temporal echo consuming her from the inside. She saw herself taking the right passage and emerging into a chamber where Veyrn already sat the throne, his eyes hollow with the throne's hunger. She saw herself taking the center path and— The vision fractured. Too many possibilities. Too much debt. Center it is. Her boots struck the crystallized floor in a rhythm that matched her racing pulse. The walls here were older, the time encrusting them thicker. She could feel the weight of centuries pressing in, each moment that had ever passed through these halls still lingering like smoke in still air. Somewhere ahead, she heard footsteps that weren't her own—Veyrn's forces on a parallel path, racing toward the same destination. She couldn't let them reach it first. The corridor widened into an antechamber, and Elara stumbled to a stop. An ancient wayshrine had been carved into the wall, left by pilgrims who had walked these paths when the gods still sat their thrones. A basin of clean water caught the crystallized light. Beside it, a fresh cloak lay folded, left for travelers who might need shelter. Her hands were shaking. She hadn't noticed until now. The throne's pull had been growing stronger with each step, that insidious hunger reaching for any consciousness that came near. She could feel it at the base of her skull, a pressure that tasted like copper and prophecy. The water in the basin rippled without wind. Elara crossed to the wayshrine and plunged her hands into the basin. The cold shocked her skin, sharp and clean. She hadn't realized how much archive dust coated her fingers until she watched it swirl away, dark threads dissolving in the clear water. She cupped water to her face, letting it run down her cheeks, her chin, dripping onto the crystallized floor. For one breath, she was not a woman racing to stop a catastrophe. She was simply clean. Simply present. Her reflection stared back at her from the stilling water. The face that looked back had aged beyond its years—new lines around the eyes, hair that had thinned from the temporal borrowing, a weariness that had settled into bone. She had stolen hours from her future to save the present, and the debt was written on her skin. "You can do this." She spoke to her reflection, her voice rough. "You have to. They don't know what they're walking into." The fresh cloak smelled of rosemary and something older—something that smelled like memory, like the herbs her mother used to keep in their small kitchen. She pulled it around her shoulders, and the rough weave settled against her skin like an embrace. For a moment, she felt held. Protected. Then she tied the cloak and ran. The final corridor stretched before her, longer than it should be, the perspective wrong in ways that made her stomach lurch. The throne's presence pressed against her consciousness, no longer a whisper but a voice—a voice that spoke in a language older than gods, promising everything she had ever wanted. Power. Knowledge. The ability to rewrite every wrong choice she had ever made. She understood now why the claimants couldn't resist it. Her borrowed time flickered again, and another echo appeared—this one walking beside her, matching her pace. This echo was younger, unmarked by the debts Elara had already paid. It turned to her with tears in its eyes and mouthed a single word: Run. "I am running," Elara gasped, her legs burning. "I'm running as fast as I can." The echo shook its head and pointed ahead. The corridor ended. A great door loomed before her, carved with symbols that moved when she wasn't looking directly at them. She could hear voices beyond—two voices, raised in argument, their words distorted by the door's ancient magic. The throne's hunger beat against her mind like a second pulse. She threw her weight against the door. It groaned, resisted, then gave. The throne chamber opened before her. The space was vast, larger than any room had a right to be, the ceiling lost in shadows that seemed to breathe. Walls of crystallized time surrounded her, just like the corridors, but here the reflections were clearer—showing not just possible futures but past moments, gods who had walked these halls, processions of divine power that had fed something waiting at the center. The throne sat on a raised dais, and it was nothing like she had expected. Not gold, not silver, not any material she could name. It looked like it had been grown rather than built, its surface rippling with something that might have been light or might have been thought. It breathed. She could see it now—the slow expansion and contraction of something that had waited centuries to feed again. Cassian stood on one side of the dais. Veyrn stood on the other. Both of them turned to look at her as she stumbled through the door. "Elara." Cassian's voice was strange, distant, as if he was speaking from the bottom of a well. "You shouldn't be here." "Stop." She forced the word out between gasps. "Both of you. I've seen the Prime Vellum—I know what it is. It's not a throne." She stepped forward, her legs threatening to give way. "It's a mouth." Veyrn's lip curled. The rival claimant had always looked at her with the contempt reserved for insects, but now there was something else in his expression—something hungry that wasn't entirely his own. "Pretty lies from a mortal pet. Cassian, control your creature." Cassian didn't respond. His eyes were fixed on the throne, his face slack with an expression Elara had never seen on him before. Longing. Terrible, desperate longing. "I can hear it," he said softly. "It's been calling me my whole life." "It's not calling you to rule." Elara moved closer, her voice rising. "It's calling you to feed it." The throne's surface rippled. The movement was slight, but she caught it—a shiver of anticipation, like a mouth preparing for a meal. The hum at the base of her skull grew louder, and she could almost make out words. Almost understand what it was promising. "The pantheon didn't abandon their thrones," she said, forcing each word through the pressure building in her head. "They were consumed by them. The Vellum showed me. Every god who sat here was eaten from the inside out. Their power, their consciousness, everything they were—it fed that thing." Veyrn laughed, but the sound was hollow. "Fables. The gods abandoned us because we were unworthy. The throne chooses the worthy." "The throne doesn't choose anything." Elara reached the edge of the dais. "It waits. It hungers. And when someone with divine blood sits down, it takes everything." "You expect us to believe—" Veyrn started. "I don't care what you believe." She turned to Cassian, whose hand had begun to drift toward the throne's arm. Not in acceptance—she could see him fighting it, see the terror in his eyes—but like something was pulling him. "Cassian. Look at me. You know me. Have I ever lied to you?" His gaze shifted to her face. She saw him—the man who had risked everything to protect her, who had told her she was more than a tool, who had looked at her aged face and still reached for her hand. Then the throne's pull tightened, and his eyes drifted back to the seat. "It knows me," he whispered. "It knows what I am. What I could be." "It knows you're food." Veyrn moved first. The rival claimant stepped toward the throne, his hand extended, ambition and the throne's hunger merging into a single drive. "If this is true, then the first to sit claims the power. If it's a lie, then I take what is mine by right." "No!" Elara lunged forward. She wasn't fast enough. But Cassian was. He caught Veyrn's arm, yanking him back from the dais. For a heartbeat, they struggled—two divine bloodlines, two claimants who had spent years fighting for a throne that wanted to eat them both. The throne's hum spiked into a shriek, and Elara felt something tear in her mind. Her borrowed time cracked. Echoes poured through the fracture—versions of herself from moments that hadn't happened yet, each one screaming a different warning. She saw Cassian sit. She saw Veyrn sit. She saw herself sit. She saw the throne consume them all, one by one, their bodies hollowing out as something ancient and hungry fed on their divine essence. "Elara!" Cassian's voice cut through the visions. He had thrown Veyrn back and now stood between the rival claimant and the throne, his chest heaving. "What did you see?" "Death." She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to hold herself together. "All of it. All of you. The throne doesn't stop at one. It wants a pantheon. It wants—" She broke off, gasping. The throne's whispers had found her, even without divine blood. It was offering her something now—time. All the time she had lost, all the years she had borrowed, returned to her. She could feel the promise sinking into her thoughts like water into dry earth. Come. Sit. I will give you everything that was stolen. "It's in my head," she breathed. "It's—Cassian, it's trying to reach me too. It wants anyone with power. Anyone who can feed it." Cassian's face went pale. He understood. His own power, his divine blood, the very essence of what made him a claimant—it was all bait. The throne had been calling to him his entire life, not because he was chosen, but because he was edible. Veyrn rose from where he had fallen, his eyes wild. "Lies. All of it. You want the throne for yourself, mortal. You want to—" "Look at it." Elara pointed at the throne, at the way its surface had begun to move more quickly, ripples spreading outward like water before a storm. "Look at it and tell me that's a seat. Tell me that's something meant to hold a person." The throne's breathing had quickened. Its surface no longer looked like stone or metal or anything solid—it looked like a membrane, stretched over something that was trying to get out. Or trying to pull them in. Veyrn hesitated. For the first time, uncertainty flickered across his features. The throne's hunger was undeniable now, pressing against all of them, promising everything while hiding nothing. Cassian's hand drifted toward the throne's arm again. He wasn't fighting it this time. His expression had gone slack, his eyes fixed on the seat with the look of a man who had found the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life. "Cassian." Elara moved toward him, each step an effort against the throne's pull. "Don't. Please." "I've spent my entire life wanting this." His voice was distant, dreamy. "Everything I've done, every choice I've made—it was all leading here. How can it be wrong? How can something that feels this right be wrong?" "Because it's not your feeling." She reached him, grabbed his arm, felt the muscles trembling beneath her fingers. "It's not your want. It's the throne's hunger, reflected back at you. It's not calling you because you deserve it. It's calling you because you'll taste good." His hand was inches from the throne's arm now. She could see the struggle in his face—the part of him that had heard her, that believed her, fighting against the part that had been promised everything it ever wanted. "Elara." He said her name like a prayer, like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. "I don't know if I can stop." "You have to." She tightened her grip on his arm. "You have to, because if you don't, I'll lose you. Not to death—to that thing. It won't just eat your body. It'll eat everything you are. Every memory, every choice, every moment that made you Cassian. And what comes out won't be you. It'll be—" "Empty," he finished. His hand trembled over the throne's arm, so close that she could see the heat rising from its surface. "I'll be empty." Behind them, Veyrn laughed again—but there was no conviction in it. The rival claimant had backed away from the dais, his ambition warring with the survival instinct that had kept him alive through years of succession war. "This is a trick," he said, but his voice shook. "This has to be a trick." "The trick," Elara said without turning, "was everything that came before. The succession war. The claimants. The artifacts. All of it was a menu. The throne was choosing its next meal." Cassian's hand hovered. His fingers twitched toward the throne's arm, then pulled back, then drifted forward again. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The throne's whispers had become a roar, filling the chamber with promises that drowned out thought. "Elara." Cassian's voice was barely a whisper. "I need you to do something for me." "Anything." "If I can't stop—if my hand touches that thing—promise me you'll run. Don't try to save me. Don't try to pull me back. Just run." "No." She stepped closer, putting herself between him and the throne, breaking the line of sight. "I'm not leaving you. We stop this together, or we don't stop it at all." His eyes focused on her face. She saw him clearly—the man beneath the claimant, the person who had chosen her over the throne once before. His hand was still trembling, still caught between the throne's pull and her presence, but something in his expression shifted. "The Prime Vellum," he said slowly. "You're sure? It showed you—" "It showed me everything. The original pantheon. The first feeding. The throne woke up hungry, and it ate them one by one. And then it waited. For us." The throne's surface shuddered. A sound emerged from its depths—not a voice, not quite, but something that might have been disappointment. Or anticipation. Because Veyrn was moving again. The rival claimant had circled around them, his eyes fixed on the throne with an intensity that had nothing to do with reason. The throne had found a weaker mind, a hungrier heart, and it was pulling him in. "If you won't take it," Veyrn said, his voice thick with want, "then I will. Someone has to. Someone has to end this." "Veyrn, no—" But he was already reaching for the throne's arm, already stepping onto the dais, already giving himself to the hunger that had waited centuries to be fed. And Cassian's hand shot out to stop him. Both claimants touched the throne at the same time. The chamber exploded with light.