"The Crown of lies"

The air in the Hollow's heart tasted of rust and decay, thick enough to choke on. Clara stumbled forward, her boots sinking into the pulsing black tendrils that writhed beneath her like serpents. The rot had taken on a new ferocity since she'd shattered her own reflection in the obsidian pool—an act that left her hands trembling and her reflection absent from every surface. Now, the sixth anchor loomed before her: a phantom Liam, his form flickering between the boy she'd loved and the hollow-eyed puppet the rot had made of him.

"Clara," the phantom whispered, its voice a perfect mimicry. Blood bloomed across its chest, mirroring the wound Aisling's dagger had left in the real Liam hours ago. "You did this."

She gripped the bone-white dagger—the one she'd pried from Elias's crypt—and lunged. The blade passed through the specter as if cutting smoke. It laughed, a sound like splintering glass, and the walls of the chamber shuddered. From the shadows, figures emerged: doppelgängers of Clara herself, their eyes voids of black rot, their mouths twisted in her own defiant snarl.

"Lies," Clara hissed, backing against a gnarled oak root that jutted from the earth like a ribcage. "You're not real."

"Aren't we?" the clones chorused. One lunged, clawing at her throat. Clara slashed, and the dagger bit deep. The clone dissolved into ash, but three more took its place.

Somewhere in the chaos, Aisling's voice cut through—a melody of ice. "You're too late, little Harlow."

Clara turned. Aisling stood atop the root, her crimson cloak billowing in the stagnant air. Beneath her, Liam lay crumpled, his breath shallow, his fingers clutching the wound she'd given him. Betrayal, it seemed, was a blade that cut both ways.

"Why?" Clara demanded, dodging another clone. "You swore to help us end this!"

Aisling's smile was a knife. "I am ending it. But not for you." She raised her hand, and the rot surged upward, coiling around her arm like a lover. "The rot doesn't feed on lies, Clara. It feeds on promises. The ones we make. The ones we break."

The clones froze mid-lunge. The phantom Liam dissolved, his final whisper echoing: You promised to protect me.

Clara's knees buckled. The memory struck like a shard of glass—Liam's hand in hers as they fled the car wreck, his voice pleading, Don't let go. She'd sworn she wouldn't. But the rot had been waiting even then, hadn't it? In the skid of tires, the crunch of metal. In the lie she'd told herself: It wasn't my fault.

Aisling descended, her footsteps leaving blackened blooms in the rot. "Your mother tried to sever the curse, too. She thought sacrificing herself would free the Harlow line. But the rot adapts. It learns." She pressed a hand to Liam's chest, and the rot seeped into his wound, knitting flesh with inky tendrils. "Now it wants a new heir. One strong enough to hold it… or become it."

Clara's dagger clattered to the ground. The clones closed in, their cold fingers brushing her skin. "You're the anchor," she breathed.

"The final anchor," Aisling corrected. "The rot and I are… intertwined. My betrayal, my regret—it's what sustains the curse. To destroy it, you'd have to destroy me." Her gaze flicked to Liam, now stirring as the rot pulsed beneath his skin. "But you won't. Because he's part of it now too."

The chamber quaked. Above them, the roots split, revealing a jagged crown of thorns floating in a shaft of poisoned light—the rot's true heart.

"Choose, Clara," Aisling whispered. "Let the rot claim you, or watch it claim everyone you've ever loved."

The clones surged. Clara grabbed the dagger and plunged it into the earth. A shockwave of pale light erupted, dissolving the doppelgängers. For a heartbeat, the rot recoiled.

But the crown of thorns was already descending.

And Clara, for the first time, reached for it.