The Siege Without Mercy

Selene

The gates fell before dawn.

Not with fanfare or fire, but with silence. Her revenant engineers had studied the throne's weaknesses—its veins of old magic, its cursed mortar—and unstitched it like thread.

Selene gave no war cry.

She walked through the breach.

The court behind her followed: bone-knights in plated horror, witches of drowned cities, beasts with oaths branded into their skin.

Kael remained near—but quieter now. He had seen her mercy die in the courtyard. What walked beside him was not Valeria reborn.

It was vengeance in bloom.

Inside the Hollow Throne

The throne's halls were wrong.

Stairs led nowhere. Doors opened into screams. The walls moved when no one looked.

The Queen had turned her palace into a labyrinth of punishment.

Selene moved through it with her eyes half-closed, lips moving in ancient syllables.

"I've walked this place before," she said.

Kael glanced at her. "When?"

She didn't answer.

Because the last time she walked here—she wasn't herself. She was a girl named Valeria, shackled in grief, searching for Liora's soul.

Now?

She was here to take back what the Queen stole.

The Queen

She watched them enter.

Saw Selene breach the third gate. Saw her tear through the Thousand-Eyed Wardens. Saw her walk untouched through rooms meant to melt gods.

"She remembers too much," the Queen whispered.

One of her mage-lords stepped back. "Shall I release the Saint?"

The Queen said nothing.

Then—

"Yes."

He blinked. "But—"

"She will break Selene."

The Queen's face twisted with something like fear.

"Or she will join her."

Kael

They stopped in the Gallery of Echoes, where the screams of the Queen's past victims played in endless loop. Kael leaned against the wall, breath catching.

"I don't know how you stand it."

Selene stared up at the blood-painted ceiling.

"I hear my own voice in here."

"What do you mean?"

"I screamed in this place. I died in this place."

She closed her eyes.

"And I swore, if I ever came back—I'd burn it to ash."

She turned to him.

"Tell the court: No prisoners. No mercy."

Kael's face hardened.

"Yes, my Queen."

The Saint

Chains broken. Cage shattered.

She stepped out of the dark like fire uncoiled. Her eyes were not gold anymore—they were black with memory.

She wore her scars like armor.

And in her chest, her heart beat Selene's name.

She would find her.

And when she did—blood or mercy would decide the world's fate.