The road to the tomb was less a road and more a half-forgotten scar on the land, a path cut through gnarled trees and brittle thorns. Every footstep they took stirred ancient leaves and whispers long buried under silence. The Codex, strapped tightly across Mary's back, pulsed now with a deeper rhythm—more insistent, like a heartbeat building toward rupture.
They were two days from the battlefield where Mary had broken the tether between the Herald and his hive-thralls. In those days, the sky hadn't lightened once. It hung perpetually overcast, as though the world had agreed to shroud itself in mourning.
"I thought the Blind Queen was a myth," Loosie said, stepping around a rotted log. "Like the Moonless Knights or the City Beneath Salt."
"She was real," Lela said. "Or at least the Codex thinks so."
Mary turned to them both, her eyes shadowed by sleeplessness. "She wasn't called the Blind Queen because she was physically blind. She chose to blind herself."
Loosie frowned. "That's worse."
"She had visions," Mary said. "Of what the world would look like if He ever crossed the threshold into it. She saw everything—entire nations drowned in ash, time bending around cities, people rewritten mid-breath into something else. She tried to warn the early kings, but they banished her. Said she'd been touched by madness."
"They always say that about prophets," Loosie muttered. "Until their bones are all that's left."
The forest deepened. The trees began to lean closer together, their branches curling like claws. Insects were nowhere to be heard. No birds. No wind. Just the crunch of feet and the ever-present weight of something ancient pressing down.
Mary paused at a carved stone half-buried in the dirt. She knelt, brushed away the moss, and revealed the faint impression of a crown carved into the rock's surface.
"We're close."
They continued, and after another half hour of trekking, the trees abruptly fell away. Before them stretched a wide valley, its floor cracked like old parchment, and at its center: a ruined cathedral built from white marble now faded gray. Time had clawed at its once-pristine spires. Vines choked its pillars, and a portion of its roof had collapsed inward.
The tomb of the Blind Queen.
As they approached, Lela took point. Her sword shimmered faintly, alert to nearby blood magic. "I don't like this. There's no guards, no traps, no creatures. It's too... quiet."
"It's not quiet," Mary whispered. "Listen deeper."
They stopped. For a moment, all was still.
Then—faint and far below the frequency of hearing—something hummed. A thrum that Mary felt in her bones rather than in her ears. The Codex answered it, vibrating softly in sync.
"She's still singing," Mary said. "Even in death. The Queen built her tomb as a ward. Her song has kept him at bay for centuries."
They entered through a broken archway. Inside, columns rose like petrified trees, supporting sagging beams and a ceiling decorated with faded frescoes.