The Bargain

The darkness after the candle died was not empty. It had texture. Weight. It surrounded her, endless, yet watchful.

Something stirred behind the door. Not air. Not wind. Something older, exhaling…

She could not move. Her legs had locked, her lungs had seized. The voice still echoed. Or it had never stopped.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Hoarse from long silence. Amused.

“Hello, child. Why have you awoken me?”

She tried to answer. Her throat closed around the words.

The darkness pressed against her like cold water, making her shiver. She could feel it on her skin, in her lungs, behind her eyes. Not the absence of light. Something thicker. Something that watched.

You came here, she told herself. You spoke the words. You wanted this.

She opened her mouth. What emerged was barely a whisper. “I am Ilyra. Daughter of…”

The voice cut across her, almost gentle. “Ilyra Aurelios. Fifth child of Empress Livia and Emperor Tiberius. Youngest of five. Overlooked. Unremarkable.” A pause. The darkness seemed to shift, to resettle. “I know your blood, child. I have been pressed beneath the weight of it for centuries. Your grandmother. Your grandfather. The ones before them, and the ones before them. All their crowns. All their oaths. All pressing down.”

She felt those words settle into her. The tombs above. The generations of dead. All of them sealing this door with their remains.

“So,” the voice continued, “you read the words your ancestor tried to burn. You crawled through the dark to find me. You spoke the invocation that wakes the bound. And now you stand in my prison, uninvited.”

Silence. The kind of silence that expected an answer.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “Yes.”

“Why?”

The question hung in the textured dark. She could feel his attention like pressure against her skull. Not hostile, exactly. Curious. The way a scholar might examine a strange insect before pinning it to a board.

“Because…” She swallowed. “Because I have no other choice.”

A sound in the darkness. It might have been a laugh.

“There is always a choice, child. You could have stayed in your chambers. You could have accepted your place. You could have grown old and overlooked and died forgotten.” The voice was closer now, though she could not tell from which direction. “Yet you came to me. The debt-keeper. The thing beneath the crowned dead.”

The air shifted around her. Not movement. Attention, sharpening.

“What do you want, child of the betrayer?”

The betrayer.

She knew the history, or thought she did. The first Empress. The founding. The bargain that purchased an empire. But the texts she had read spoke only in fragments, in implications, in shapes where truth should have been.

“My ancestor wronged you.” It was not a question.

“Your ancestor swore to me.” The voice had changed. Still hoarse, still ancient, but something harder underneath. “She asked for an empire. I gave her one. And when she had it…”

Silence.

“She buried me.” A pause. The darkness seemed to resettle around her. “Did you feel them as you climbed? The dead. Crown after crown after crown, pressing down.”

She felt the enormity of it. Not guilt, exactly. She had not done this thing. But inheritance pressed down on her nonetheless.

“I am sorry.” The words felt insufficient. “For what she did.”

Another sound in the darkness. This time, clearly a laugh.

“Sorry.” The word seemed to amuse him. “Child, do you know how long I have waited? Your apology is a single breath in a millennium of silence. It means nothing.” A pause. “But you did not come to apologise. You came to bargain. So bargain.”

She found her courage. Or perhaps her desperation. Either way, she began to speak.

“The empire is-” The words stuck. She swallowed, tried again. “My family sent soldiers. To a bread riot. People were starving, they were only asking for food, and my family-” Her voice cracked. “They killed a man. He went back into the fire. He was saving children.”

She was crying, she realised. She had not known she was crying.

“I begged my mother.” The words came in pieces now, broken things. “For mercy. For anything. She said I understood nothing of ruling.” A breath. “She is wrong. They are all wrong. But I cannot-” She stopped. Started again. “I have no power. No voice. No one hears me.”

The darkness listened.

“I want the power to change this realm. To claim the throne and use it for good. To make the empire what it should have been.” She lifted her chin, though there was no one to see. “That is why I woke you. That is what I want.”

Silence. Long enough that she began to wonder if he had withdrawn. If she had bored him.

Then the voice spoke again, and there was something new in it. Interest.

“Good,” he repeated, as if tasting a foreign word. “And you believe you can define it?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

“Your ancestor believed the same. She wanted victory. She wanted an empire built on her terms. She wanted to reshape the world according to her vision.” A pause. “She succeeded. And then she sealed me in the dark and told herself it was necessary.”

“I am not her.”

“No?” The voice was closer. She could feel breath on the back of her neck, though nothing stood behind her. “You descended into forbidden places. You read forbidden texts. You woke something older than your bloodline because you believed you knew better than those who came before. Because you believed the ends would justify the means.” A breath in silence. “That is exactly what she believed.”

She wanted to argue. To insist she was different. But the words stuck in her throat.

“And yet,” the voice continued, and the pressure eased, “you are brave. Or desperate. The distinction rarely matters. You came to me when no one else remembered I existed. You asked for what you wanted instead of running when I answered.”

Something shifted in the darkness. Not the voice, but the quality of the attention. Less predatory. More… assessing.

“I will listen,” he said. “Tell me of these siblings who stand in your way.”

And she did. Not her plans, not her reforms. Just the names. The crimes. The cruelties she had witnessed and the ones she had only heard whispered. In the darkness, without a face to judge her, the words came easier than they ever had.

He listened. Not the way her tutors had listened, waiting to correct her. Not the way her family listened, already planning their response. He listened as though every word mattered.

When she fell silent, the darkness was different. Warmer. Less hostile.

“You see clearly,” the voice said. “More clearly than I expected.”

Warmth bloomed through her unbidden.

“I could help you,” he continued. “I have knowledge your scholars have forgotten. I have patience your rivals do not possess. I could guide you. Teach you. Clear the obstacles from your path.”

Hope kindled. Fragile, dangerous hope.

“You would do this? Help me claim the throne?”

“I would.”

“Why?”

When he spoke again, something stirred beneath the patience. Hunger, perhaps.

“Because you asked.”

She waited for more. The darkness offered nothing.

“And because I am… curious.” A sound that might have been a sigh. “What has the sun done with the empire I gave it?”

She understood. Or thought she did. A prisoner, offering aid in exchange for freedom. It made sense. It was almost reasonable.

“And the price?”

“Yes.” The word hung in the darkness. “There is always a price.”

What do you want from me?

A long pause. The darkness seemed to thicken around her.

“What was promised. A share of the Crown’s power. A seat at the table your ancestor denied me.”

She hesitated. This was vast. This was the empire itself.

“I cannot give you the empire.”

“Did I ask you to?” His voice was patient now. Almost gentle. “I am asking for what was promised. Partnership. Your ancestor feared me because she could not control me. She sealed me away rather than share what I had helped her build. I am asking you to be… wiser.”

Her mother. Her siblings. The courtiers who smiled while plotting, the nobles who bowed while scheming. Partnership. A voice in her councils. Someone who would stand beside her instead of behind her, waiting for her to fall.

“You would guide me? Truly?”

“I would give you everything you need.”

The words hung there, generous and vast. She found herself leaning toward them.

“I would teach you what I know,” he continued. “How to read the currents of power. How to move without being seen, speak without being heard, act without being suspected.” A pause. “Your family treats you as invisible. I could make that invisibility a weapon.”

Invisible. She had been invisible her entire life. And this thing, this ancient power, was offering to help her use that very thing against them.

“You wish to change the realm,” he continued. “I wish to see it changed. Our paths align. Your ancestor betrayed me because she feared what I would do with power. But you…”

The darkness shifted. She felt his attention sharpen.

“You I can work with.”

She was afraid. But beneath the fear, something else. Relief. The terrible relief of being understood, even by a monster.

“If I agree,” she said slowly, “what happens?”

“What always happens.” His voice was almost gentle. “An oath is spoken. A promise kept.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is the only answer there is.” A pause. “Words of binding. Your oath to mine. Unbreakable.”

“And then?”

“Then we begin.”

She waited. The darkness pressed patient against her skin.

“Begin what?”

“Everything you came here for.” A pause that felt like a smile. “When I am ready, I will come to you. Not in darkness. In light. Where you can see me clearly.”

Begin. The word felt enormous. Final.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you crawl back through the passage. You return to your chambers. You continue to watch your family tear the empire apart while you stand powerless to stop it.” The voice was not cruel, but it was absolute. “Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes. And I wait for the next one of your blood desperate enough to find me.”

Tobias. The roof coming down. Her mother’s face at the council.

You understand nothing of ruling.

That might be true. But nothing would change unless she was willing to act. Unless she was willing to pay a price.

“What are the words?”

The darkness stirred.

“If you want my aid,” he said, “you must give me what you are.”

She waited for him to explain. He did not.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.” Something shifted in the air, in the quality of the silence. “An oath. Your word. Unbreakable.”

Her soul. The word hung unspoken between them, but she felt it. She should have been more frightened than she was. But she had come too far to turn back now.

“Tell me the words.”

“Listen carefully. Speak them exactly as I give them.”

She listened. The words were old. Weighted. The kind of language that bound.

“Repeat after me,” he said. “I give to you all I am…”

“I give to you all I am…”

“…and all that shall be mine…”

“…and all that shall be mine…”

“…in life and in death…”

“Let my soul be your anchor…”

“…my crown your hand.”

“In exchange you will raise me high enough to change this realm.”

The words hung in the darkness. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then her chest shifted.

Not pain. Displacement. As if a hook had settled behind her ribs, cold and heavy and irrevocable. She gasped, her hand flying to her breastbone, but there was nothing to feel. Only a coldness spreading through her, settling into her bones.

She stood in the darkness, feeling weak. Her hands trembled. The cold behind her ribs did not fade.

“It is done,” he said. And his voice was different now. Less hoarse. Stronger. As though her words had fed him after centuries of starvation.

“It is not enough to speak.”

His voice echoed in the chamber. The darkness was different now. Less hostile. More… present.

“Blood to blood,” he continued. “Your line owes me. Your blood pays.”

“You want me to…”

“Blood on the stone.”

She reached for the small knife at her belt. The one she used for cutting book bindings, opening letters. Her hands were steadier than she expected.

The blade was cold against her fingertip. She pressed. A bead of blood, black in the darkness.

“Let it fall.”

She held her hand over the floor. Let the blood drip onto the stone beneath her feet.

The moment it touched the floor, she felt the sigil wake.

Something ancient shifted. The weight that had been pressing down since she entered this chamber lifted, just slightly. She could breathe again. The darkness thinned. And for a single, terrifying moment, she glimpsed him.

Not his form. Not his face. His presence.

Vast. Patient. Grinning.

Something that had waited centuries for this moment. Something that was finally, finally free.

Then the sensation faded. The darkness became merely darkness again. The air lightened. She could hear her own breathing, ragged and too fast.

“It is done.” His voice was different now. Almost human. Almost warm. “The oath is sealed.”

“What now?” she whispered. Her finger throbbed. The cold in her chest pulsed with each heartbeat.

“Now you wait.” A pause. “I will come to you. Not here, not in the dark. In the light, where you can see me clearly. Where I can walk among your court and none will suspect what I am.”

She did not understand. But she was too exhausted, too overwhelmed, to ask.

“I will find you,” he said. “Then we begin.”

Then we begin. The words echoed strangely in the chamber, as though they had weight, as though they would be spoken again.

“Go now, child of the betrayer. Go back to your chambers. Sleep. And when you wake, remember what you have promised.”

She tried to speak. To ask more questions. But he was already fading, not leaving exactly, but withdrawing. The attention that had pressed against her for hours was receding, pulling back behind the sealed door, leaving her alone in the darkness.

Alone, but changed. She could feel it. Something was different now. Something fundamental had shifted in the architecture of her soul.

She turned toward where she thought the passage was. Her finger throbbed. Her legs shook.

Time to climb.

The passage. Easier going back.

Torches flickering. The strange effect localised to the chamber. She crawled, emerged, stood shaking. Cold. Dust. Alive.

The tombs. Her ancestors. She did not look at their names.

Corridors. Grey light. Dawn. Had she been underground all night?

Longer. It felt like years.

Her chambers. She did not remember walking. One moment the crypts. The next, her bed. Rumpled covers. Hours ago she had been a princess.

Now…

Her finger. The cut. Real. Still bleeding slightly. She pressed it against her shift until the bleeding stopped.

The cold behind her breastbone. Still there. Like a stone she had swallowed.

Bed. Covers.

Same ceiling. Same walls. Same light through the curtains.

Different.

Everything.

Did she really…

The cut pulsed. Real.

The darkness. The voice. The words she spoke.

I give to you all I am…

Already fraying. Impossible. Fever-dream. Grief-madness. Her mind conjuring horrors in the aftermath of Tobias.

She should return. Check.

So tired.

Sleep pulled at her.

He said he would find me.

She let go.

By the time she woke, even that would feel like dreaming.