The candle had burned halfway down when Seliora finally rose to fetch more water. The soft click of the door closing left Myrren alone with the sound of her pulse and the faint hiss of wax.

The room exhaled. Then, shifted.

Air drew tighter, colder, the way it always did before the tether stirred. Myrren’s fingers twitched against the coverlet, and the thin gold bruise around her wrist pulsed once, twice, then yanked, as though an invisible chain had hooked bone.

She gasped, half-choked on the scent that rushed in: cypress and ink.

Not a dream. Not Spiral Dust. Him.

The shadow detached from the wall and became Corven. He moved like someone who’d been standing there for hours, waiting for her to wake. His coat hung open, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and along the inside of each forearm the candlelight caught on ink so dark it shimmered blue.

“You’re awake,” he said quietly. His voice carried the calm of a man walking through a nightmare he’d memorized.

Myrren pushed herself upright, the blanket clutched to her chest. “Seliora, she’ll be back..”

“I know.” He stepped closer, shadows folding around his boots. “That’s why we don’t have long.”

The tether burned again, more insistent. Her breath trembled. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No one ever should.” His gaze slid to her wrists. “You saw the chains this time, didn’t you?”

The words struck harder than they should have. She glanced down at the faint bruises circling her skin, the residue of Spiral Dust still smearing the sheets. “They weren’t real.”

Corven’s expression didn’t change. “They were. Just not in this loop.”

He raised his hands slowly, palms outward. Ink coiled up his arms in links and loops, each line too precise to be natural. In the candlelight, the markings looked alive, chains etched beneath his skin, the same pattern that had bound her in the trial.

Myrren’s throat closed. “What did you do?”

“Survived,” he said simply. “Every spiral leaves its mark. You only remember the bruises. I keep the rest.”

The tether pulsed between them, heat to her, cold to him. For an instant she saw both versions of him, the warden in shadow and the man who had once bled light through her nightmares.

Her voice broke the silence. “How many times?”

Corven’s eyes lifted, gray and endless. “Enough to know this isn’t the first time you’ve asked me that.”

Myrren stared at the ink crawling beneath his skin. Each chain link shimmered faintly with its own pulse, like veins filled with shadowlight. The scent rising from him was impossible, metal, cypress, a trace of burnt foxglove. Her own poison recipes haunted him.

“I thought the tether was born when you pulled me from death,” she whispered. “That night in the kitchens. The explosion..”

He shook his head. “That was only when you noticed it. The bond existed long before. Each time the spiral resets, it finds us and tightens the chain.”

She wanted to laugh, to deny him, but the bruises around her wrists flared blue in the candlelight. “Then why show me this now?”

“Because you’re starting to remember. The Spiral Dust didn’t just drag you through hallucination, it tore open the wall between loops.” His tone sharpened, almost a warning. “Every time you see me differently, it’s because one of us is bleeding through from before.”

Her breath caught. “Bleeding through?”

He unrolled a strip of linen from his wrist, revealing a fresh line of ink still wet and glistening. “These are not tattoos, Myrren. They’re burn-ink, poison mixed with binding shadow. Each loop, the Veil marks me anew to ensure the tether reforms. Their Seers called it mercy.”

She reached out before she could stop herself, fingers brushing the edge of the newest chain. The ink was hot, almost fevered, and when her skin met his, a faint hum rippled through the air. For a heartbeat she saw flashes, different courts, different deaths, her own hands bloodied, Corven dragging her through fire and rain.

She jerked back, gasping. “I saw..”

“Fragments,” he finished for her. “You always see them when you touch me.”

Myrren clutched her wrist, dizzy. “Then it’s true. The Queen’s trial, Thane’s light, it’s all repeating.”

Corven’s jaw tightened. “Yes. But each time, it bends a little further toward ruin. The Queen isn’t ignorant; she’s a keeper of fragments. She uses them to shape which ending suits her.”

That stole her breath. “You mean she knows?”

“She knows enough. She isn’t the architect, but she keeps the doors open for the Veil. Every monarch has.” His voice dropped, rough with bitterness. “I was the proof that their prophecy could be engineered. The perfect warden, half-light, half-shadow, loyal until the chain breaks.”

The candle flickered, and in the brief darkness she saw his expression unguarded: exhaustion, resignation, longing.

“Why tell me?” she whispered. “If it’s doomed, why make me remember?”

“Because forgetting kills you slower.” He leaned closer, his breath brushing her cheek. “And because every time I’ve tried to save you, you chose him instead.”

Her pulse tripped, anger and sorrow colliding. “And you think showing me chains will change that?”

He gave a faint, humorless smile. “No. But maybe you’ll stop mistaking devotion for salvation.”

For a long moment neither spoke. The tether between them pulsed again, faster now, matching her heartbeat. She could smell herself on him, frostmint and smoke, poison and memory.

When she finally met his gaze, the truth struck her: he wasn’t warning her. He was confessing.

The silence between them deepened until the candle guttered low, its last flame quivering like a pulse between their shadows. Myrren’s throat burned; she wanted to look away but couldn’t.

“Corven,” she said softly, “if what you’re saying is true, if this has happened before, then what ends it?”

He studied her for a long moment, the flicker of the candle catching silver in his eyes. “Every spiral ends the same way,” he murmured. “With your death, and my failure to stop it.”

Her breath hitched. “You can’t know that.”

“I do.” He stepped closer, until she could see the faint ridges of ink raised under his skin, the way the chain wound up his forearm and across his collarbone like a living serpent. “You’ve died a hundred ways, by light, by poison, by crown, and I’ve carried the memory of every one.”

The words struck with the weight of confession and curse. “Then why keep trying?”

“Because,” his voice cracked then steadied again, “each time you reach for me, I think it might be the last. That maybe this is the loop we break.”

Her pulse hammered. “And if we don’t?”

His mouth curved, a sorrowful echo of a smile. “Then I’ll burn with you again.”

The candle snapped. Darkness rushed in.

The tether between them flared to life, no longer a thread but a radiant chain of shadowlight spanning the space between their wrists. It pulled taut, humming with power, alive. She saw his ink scars ignite in answer, each link glowing as though her heartbeat ran through him.

“Corven,” she whispered. “It’s binding us.”

“I know.” He caught her wrist in his, guiding her palm to his chest. Beneath her fingers his heart stuttered once, twice, and she felt the tether’s rhythm sync to her own.

The scent changed, no longer cypress and ink, but frost and ash, the same scent that haunted her visions of the gallows.

“Tell me what it means,” she pleaded. “Please.”

His breath brushed her temple. “It means the spiral’s closing. Every mark, every scar, every poison has led us here.” His voice dropped lower, almost tender. “And this time, it ends with you.”

The chain flared once more, white, then black and the candle’s smoke twisted into a spiral that climbed the ceiling like a whispering crown.

Myrren tried to speak, but the tether yanked her forward, light and shadow snapping together.

Darkness swallowed the room.