Villain's Last Chance

The Codex pulsed in my hands, its weight far heavier than it should have been.

The vault was silent now, the echoes of battle fading into nothingness. The air still hummed with residual magic, sharp and electric against my skin. My breath came fast, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I had it.

The Revenant Codex.

But the moment of triumph was short-lived.

Cairon stepped closer, his gaze dark. "We need to move."

Marek still held his sword, his knuckles white around the hilt. His eyes flickered to the book, then to me. "That thing just unleashed enough magic to wake the dead. Literally. We're not alone down here anymore."

I knew he was right.

I could feel it.

Something had shifted the moment I touched the Codex, something vast and ancient stirring in the dark corners of the vault. The air felt thinner, pressing against me, charged with an unseen force.

And then—

A sound.

Not the distant echo of our own breathing. Not the settling of stone.

A whisper.

It slithered through the air, low and rasping, like the scrape of metal against bone.

I turned sharply, my grip tightening on the Codex.

The shadows at the far end of the vault twisted, deepening. The runes that lined the walls flickered once, then dimmed, as if something had reached into the vault and snuffed them out.

Then, from the darkness, a figure emerged.

Tall. Cloaked in tattered robes that seemed to move on their own, writhing like living things. The face beneath the hood was obscured, but the presence was suffocating, pressing against my mind like cold hands wrapping around my throat.

Marek muttered a curse. Cairon took a step forward, blade raised.

The whispering continued, curling through the air in a language I didn't understand but somehow felt in my bones. It coiled around me, probing, testing.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

And the figure spoke.

"You do not understand what you carry."

The voice wasn't just sound—it was inside my head, threading through my thoughts like a needle through fabric.

I swallowed hard. "That's funny," I said, keeping my voice steady, "because I'm pretty sure I do."

The thing in the robes tilted its head, as if amused. "No," it said simply. "You do not."

I felt a sudden, searing heat in my palm. I barely bit back a gasp as the Codex pulsed again, its magic pressing into me, wrapping around me like invisible chains. The figure's presence bore down harder, the weight of it making my vision blur at the edges.

Cairon shifted beside me, his blade still raised, but he said nothing. He was watching. Waiting.

I forced myself to stand taller. "Then enlighten me."

The silence stretched.

Then, slowly, the figure raised a skeletal hand.

The shadows behind it moved.

Shapes stirred within the darkness, forming into something almost human—almost familiar. My breath caught as faces flickered into focus. People I had known. People I had lost.

The girl from my childhood, her laughter now a hollow, distant thing. The commander who had taken me in, the light gone from his sharp, calculating eyes. My mother, her form twisting, flickering, dissolving.

All of them dead.

But they stood before me now, their empty gazes locked onto mine.

I felt the magic in the air shift, thickening. The Codex burned hotter in my grasp, as if reacting to the presence of these ghosts, as if it recognized them.

The figure in the robes took a step forward. "The Codex does not belong to you."

I clenched my jaw. "It does now."

A soft, rattling laugh. "You do not claim the Codex." The shadows thickened, closing in around us. "The Codex claims you."

A pulse of power slammed into my chest.

I staggered back, gasping, as the world seemed to tilt. The vault twisted around me, the air turning heavy, thick with something dark and suffocating. My grip on the Codex tightened, but it was like holding onto a burning brand.

I barely registered Cairon moving before he was beside me, a steady hand on my shoulder. His grip was grounding, his presence solid against the overwhelming weight of the thing pressing into me.

"Stay with me, Elara."

I forced myself to focus.

The figure in the robes stood motionless, watching. The ghosts around it flickered, their forms barely holding together.

Then it spoke again.

"You have bound yourself to something beyond your understanding."

I swallowed hard. "That seems to be a pattern with me."

The laughter returned, dry and brittle. "You will regret it."

Then—

The figure began to unravel.

The robes sagged, empty. The shadows around it collapsed inward, consuming it whole. The ghosts flickered once—then vanished.

And just like that, the vault was still.

I stood there, breath unsteady, the Codex still burning in my grip.

Marek was the first to break the silence.

"Well," he muttered. "That wasn't ominous at all."

Cairon didn't move for a long moment. Then, finally, he turned to me. "We need to go. Now."

I nodded, trying to shake off the lingering weight of whatever had just happened.

But as we turned to leave the vault, I couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted inside me.

The Codex had chosen me.

But at what cost?