Instead, he stepped backward.
He died smiling. Three weeks later, a fisherwoman pulled a skeletal hand from her nets. Around the wrist bone, fused to the calcium-white phalanges, was a tarnished golden bangle. It was cold. It was silent.
He’d cornered a lone Etrean Inquisitor—a woman who had been hunting him for a month, immune to the Bangle’s influence because of a forgotten, painstakingly inscribed sigil on her silver cuirass. She was out of tricks, her sword broken, her back against the chasm. He could have just killed her. It would have been clean. sovereign bangle deepwoken
He felt the first crack on the fourth day.
The breaking point came at the Obsidian Arch. Instead, he stepped backward
Kaelen felt the Bangle’s suggestion before he even formed the thought. Make her dance , it whispered. Make her dance until her feet bleed. It would be funny.
He laughed. It wasn’t his laugh. It was too cold, too sharp. Around the wrist bone, fused to the calcium-white
You don’t give the orders anymore , it seemed to say. I am the Sovereign. You are merely the hand that wears me.