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The word sounded so familiar. It wasn’t until we began walking that a shiver of recognition ripped through my body.

That was one of the words hidden amongst Rythos’ drawings.

Nerves fluttered low in my stomach, but I tucked Helion’s blade against my chest, the leather sheath cool against my skin and followed them to my fate.

With every step, my feet sank into the soft sand while the rot thickened beneath us, spreading in dark, pulsing threads towards whatever waited at the heart of this place.

Leaves brushed against my skin as the sand beneath our feet gave way to a moss-covered forest floor, each step coaxing a faint glow from beneath our feet before it faded back to green.

I could feel the magic thrumming beneath my skin. Even in its sickly state, this island held a magic that made me feel a pang of wonderment.

I kept my gaze fixed on the temple as it grew larger through the trees, its pale spires flashing between branches while the island breathed around me. The crash of waves sounded against the shore on one side, while the whisper of leaves and hidden creatures stirred through the forest on the other.

Walking towards my death should have sent my heart racing, but with every step, my breath came a little easier.

The ground gave way to a steady incline, vines thickening around the trees as we climbed, their flowers hanging wilted from the stems as though something had slowly drained the colour from their petals.

I stepped through the last of the dense trees and my breath left me.

Ivory columns stretched impossibly high towards the sky, wrapped in dead flowering vines that climbed across white stone and spilled from broken balconies in curtains of what would have once been green and colourful.

Wide marble steps climbed towards an entrance built into the mountainside, the enormous archway framed by statues of gods whose faces had been softened by centuries of salt and wind. But that was unmistakably Helion’s smirk staring down at me.

Beyond them, the land dropped away sharply, overlooking an endless expanse of glittering ocean that seemed to merge with the sky at the horizon, oppressed sunlight scattering across the water in muted fragments.

Now, black veins crawled through the marble beneath our feet, climbing the pristine columns in thin, branching fractures while flowers withered wherever the rot touched them.

Beauty and death had grown together here, blending in perfect harmony and leaking out to poison the world.

Silence pressed down on us as we ascended the steps, Bryony and Ziola staying behind me.

The rot grew thicker with every step that carried me closer to the archway until I walked over top.

The throne sat exactly as it did in Rythos’ sketches and gooseflesh pebbled across my skin, every hair rising as if sensing that something was wrong.

Chunks of marble had crumbled off, lying scattered on the ground around it. Veins pulsated with darkness as if it were a living thing on the brink of death.

Just like Rythos.

Just like the kingdoms.

I tilted my chin, pulling Helion’s blade from my dress and discarding the leather pouch.

My knees bit into the ground, and I laid the knife on the altar’s step.

My voice came steadier than it should have, the song that haunted me my entire life spilling from me. I closed my eyes, feeling the steady flow of power in my chest and visualising the turquoise pool, plucking a single thread from it.

It appeared between my palms, glowing with the power of the sea.

My voice grew louder, threading through the notes of the ballad as if feeding it every broken piece of me as I laid the thread against the metal.

It sunk into it in a blinding flash of light and I let the song fade from my lips as I picked up the blade.

It shimmered with my magic.

A skill that Rythos had forced upon me would now be the very thing I used to take myself from him.

I walked up the two broad steps of the dais, a numb feeling spreading through me as I sat on the edge of the rotting throne.