Chapter 115: Secrets Uncovered
The night pressed down like a heavy shroud over the shattered empire, the weight of countless unspoken truths thick in the air. Cambria stood atop the Watchtower’s highest battlement, the wind tearing through her hair, the scent of ash and blood mingling with the cold. Below, the once-proud capital lay in ruins an empire fractured, a people left trembling in the shadows of their own fears.
Maddox joined her in silence, his boots scraping softly against the stone. His face was drawn, eyes hollowed by too many sleepless nights, too many battles fought not only with sword and strategy, but with loyalty and doubt.
"We’ve held them off for now," he said at last, his voice low, as if afraid to disturb the fragile stillness. "But Knox’s forces regroup with every hour. And those dark stars, whatever they truly are, keep falling. Each one brings more horrors."
Cambria didn’t answer at first. Her gaze remained fixed on the distant horizon where the sky bled with dawn’s first pale light, though no warmth came with it.
"I can’t keep fighting a shadow, Maddox," she whispered. "There is something we’re missing. Something that Seraphine planned for, that Knox fed, that even my father feared."
Maddox hesitated, then drew from his coat a folded parchment, old and brittle at the edges. "We found this in the vault beneath the citadel. One of Lucien’s private records. I didn’t want to show you until we could verify it... But there’s no time left for caution."
Cambria took it with trembling fingers. The seal had been broken long ago; the ink faded, but the words carved deep into the parchment still sang of betrayal and sorrow.
To whoever reads this:
If you have come to this place, you walk in the ruin of my making. The God Engine was never our salvation. It was our chain. Seraphine Vale’s true design was not conquest. It was the rebirth of herself, her bloodline, through the destruction of all that came before. The Flame That Devours was but a key. The Engine, the lock. And the soul she meant to free... was never mine. It was hers.
There is a chamber beneath the Hollow Crown where the first flame sleeps. The flame that no king could bend. If Seraphine wakes it, the world burns. If she binds it, the world dies.
Forgive me, my daughter.