The fire no longer sang for her.
It screamed.
What once bent to Lina's will now burned with a mind of its own. She could feel it—beneath her skin, in the walls of the throne room, in every flickering torch that refused to hold shape. The Heart was changing.
No… it was awakening.
And it no longer cared that she wore its crown.
Andra noticed it first. How her eyes dimmed during council. How the flames in her veins ran colder, less wild. How her power—once a storm—began to shrink.
"You're fading," he said, brushing the back of his hand against her cheek. "What did the Heart take from you?"
Lina clenched her jaw. "Nothing I didn't offer freely."
But that wasn't true. Not anymore.
Late that night, she descended to the chamber alone—the pulsing core where the Heart beat, quiet and bright, like a wound that refused to close.
She placed her palm on the molten altar. "I gave you everything," she whispered. "I became what you wanted. I ruled. I burned. Why are you pulling me apart?"
The flame rose, and this time, it spoke not in whispers, but in a voice that came from within her.
"Because you were never meant to stay."
Visions struck her like lightning—herself, screaming, burning alive from the inside. Her body crumbling, soul torn open, a vessel too full to contain what she had become.
And in the fire… her shadow.
Not the god. Not Andra.
Another her. The original. The first. The one who had chosen this fate before time.
She fell to her knees, fire dripping from her eyes like tears. "What am I becoming?"
Andra was there within moments, wrapping her in his arms as the Heart thundered beneath them.
"You're not losing control," he said fiercely. "You're becoming more than it ever meant you to be. You're not its queen anymore, Lina."
He pulled her closer, voice a vow. "You're its end."
She looked up at him, lips trembling, fire sparking in her breath. "If I destroy the Heart… I destroy everything."
His gaze didn't waver. "Then we'll burn with it."
The flames hissed, the walls shook—but there, on the floor of the chamber that birthed queens and devoured them, Lina rose.
Not broken.
Not fading.
Transformed.
The Heart had betrayed her.
Now it would learn what betrayal felt like—
When it came from a queen of fire, kissed by wrath, and loved by a demon who would let the world end for her.