The sound wasn’t a sound at all, it was silence breaking. Cael looked down. Arianna’s hand was buried in his chest up to the wrist, black energy rippling from her fingertips, devouring everything it touched.His golden blood spilled over her arm, sizzling against her skin. She didn’t flinch.Her eyes, no longer fully hers, glowed like burning voids. The Crown hovered faintly above her, reshaping itself in threads of shadow that pulsed with her heartbeat.He tried to speak. No air came. Only a wet gasp. “...Arianna…”Her expression didn’t waver. “Don’t say my name.”The words shattered him more than the wound. The black energy spread through his veins like molten ice. His aura flickered, his knees buckling.Arianna leaned close, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered, “You should’ve let me go, Cael. You chained me to your guilt. Now I’ll chain you to oblivion.”The void responded to her voice, rippling like a living ocean. Every pulse of darkness seemed to drink from his life, from