Chapter 1003
“My chair!” Julian yelled. One of the treads had snapped on a fallen rock. He was stuck.
Liam didn’t think. He seized Julian by the back of his jacket, hauled him clear of the chair, and threw Julian’s arm over his shoulder.
“Move your legs if you can — drag them if you can’t!” Liam roared.
They scrambled toward daylight. The entrance was closing, the hydraulic system failing as power died through the structure.
“Slide!” Alistair shouted.
They threw themselves beneath the descending stone slab. Skye scraped her back raw on the rock. Liam shoved Julian through the gap and rolled out after him. Alistair came last, his boot catching for a heartbeat before he wrenched it free.
The door slammed shut behind him, sealing the tomb forever.
The ground imploded. The thermal stress had compromised the entire cavern’s structural integrity, and the peak of the mountain sank inward — a massive sinkhole swallowing trees and rock as the hollowed chamber below gave way. A column of dust rose into the night sky like a burial shroud.
𝖨𝗇𝘵𝗲ոse 𝗋𝗈𝘮a𝗇𝖼𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗀а𝗹𝗻𝗈𝘃𝘦𝗹ѕ.c𝘰𝘮
They lay on the damp earth, gasping, covered in dirt and blood.
Skye rolled over and looked at the devastation. The Administrator. The pod. The legacy. All of it buried beneath a million tons of rock.
“Is it over?” Liam asked, coughing.
Julian pushed himself upright against a tree and looked out over the ruin of his family’s land.
“The head is cut off,” Julian said. “The Administrator is dead. The original Elena is destroyed.”
“But the body remains,” Alistair said, reloading his weapon. “Ouroboros is a network. Without a leader, they’ll scatter. Or they’ll fight each other for the crown.”
Skye got to her feet. She was bruised, bleeding, and running on nothing. But she felt lighter than she had in years. The cage was gone. The original was gone. She was no longer a copy of something someone else had tried to build.
“Let them fight,” Skye said. “I have the key. I have the map. And I know their secrets.”
She looked at Liam. He was pressing his palm against his side, the hand Julian had cut still bleeding — the sacrifice that had opened the door.
“Thank you,” Skye said softly.
Liam looked at his hand, then at her. “I didn’t do it for the legacy, Skye. I did it for you.”
“I know,” Skye said. And for the first time in a long time, she believed him.
She turned to Alistair. He was watching her with that steady, fierce gaze that never seemed to waver.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Skye said. “Oracle Holdings just declared war on the underworld.”
“We’re ready,” Alistair said.
Julian stared at the dust settling over the ruins, his expression unreadable as the silence reclaimed the mountain.
“The King is dead,” he whispered.
Skye turned to the horizon. The first light of dawn was breaking over the ridge, pale gold spreading across the dark sky like a wound slowly healing.
“Long live the Queen,” she said.
.