The Keeper of Broken Things lived in a palace of shattered dreams. Not metaphorically – the walls of her domain were literally constructed from fragments of abandoned hopes, failed ambitions, and forgotten promises. They shifted constantly, rearranging themselves like pieces of a kaleidoscope, each new configuration telling a different story of loss and regret.
Malakai stood before the palace's entrance, which was currently shaped like a cracked mirror that reflected versions of himself that had never been – could never be. In one reflection, he wore the crown of the giant-kings. In another, he stood beside Elara as an ally rather than an opponent. In a third, he was nothing but shadow and starlight, having fully embraced the power that his brother sought.
"Are you going to stand there all night, counting might-have-beens?" The Keeper's voice drifted through the fractured doorway, sharp as broken glass and soft as fallen leaves. "Or will you finally tell me what the Crown-Shard showed you?"
The last time he had visited this place, he had been desperate for answers about his brother's plans. The Keeper had given him the Crown-Shard freely – too freely, he now realized. Everything in her realm had a price, even if that price wasn't immediately apparent.
Malakai stepped through the doorway, careful not to touch any of the reflective surfaces. Inside, the palace was both larger and smaller than it appeared from outside, its dimensions following rules that had more to do with emotion than physics. Collections of broken things lined the walls: shattered swords that had failed their wielders at crucial moments, torn pages from books that would never be finished, fragments of promises that had crumbled under the weight of reality.
The Keeper herself sat in a chair that seemed to be constructed from compressed regrets. She appeared young, but her eyes held the weight of eons. Her hair was the color of forgotten sunsets, and her skin bore intricate patterns that might have been tattoos or might have been cracks in reality itself.
"The Crown-Shard," she prompted again, holding out a hand that sparkled with crystallized time. "What did it reveal when you used it?"
"You knew," Malakai said, not moving closer. "You knew what would happen when I drove it into the Weeping Cliffs. You knew it would resonate with the giant-kings' original purpose."
The Keeper's laugh was like wind chimes made of broken promises. "I know many things, Starweaver. Some of them are even true." She rose from her chair, her movements liquid and uncertain, as if she couldn't quite decide which dimension to occupy. "But knowledge isn't what you came for today, is it? No... you came because you finally understood what your brother truly is."
Malakai's hand went to his chest, where the amulet containing the drop of godblood pulsed with warning rhythm. "The transformation. When he disappeared into the void – that wasn't an escape. It was an emergence."
"Very good." The Keeper clapped her hands, and the sound echoed strangely, as if coming from multiple versions of reality at once. "Your brother hasn't just been studying the Old Ones. He's been becoming one. Slowly, methodically, one sacrificed principle at a time." She tilted her head, studying Malakai with eyes that seemed to see through time itself. "But you already suspected that, didn't you? Ever since you found the first signs of the change in the Archive's restricted sections."
The memory surfaced unbidden: scrolls turned to ash at his touch, their contents transformed into impossible geometries that hurt to look at. Equations written in his brother's hand that solved for variables that shouldn't exist. And underneath it all, a subtle wrongness that spoke of something vast and hungry wearing Elara's thoughts like a mask.
"I need to know how to stop him," Malakai said quietly. "Not just delay him, not just seal him away. Stop him. Before he succeeds in transforming completely."
The Keeper's smile was a thing of broken moonlight. "Ah, but that's not quite true, is it? What you really want to know is whether he can be saved." She gestured at the walls around them, and images began to form in the fractured surfaces: Elara and Malakai as children, learning the arts of starweaving. The two of them standing before the Consortium of Timekeepers, defending their research. The moment when everything changed, when Elara first touched the forbidden texts that would set him on his current path.
"Your brother chose his fate," the Keeper continued, her voice gentler now. "One small decision at a time, one rationalization after another, until the path became a canyon became an abyss." She turned away, moving to a cabinet made of crystallized doubts. "But you're right about one thing – he must be stopped. The Old Ones were never meant to have agents in our reality. The very concept threatens the stability of existence itself."
She withdrew something from the cabinet – a small box that seemed to be made of compressed darkness. "The giant-kings understood this. It's why they created the Seal in the first place. Not to imprison the Old Ones, but to establish boundaries between what is and what must never be."
"The Crown-Shard showed me that much," Malakai said. "But it didn't show me how to enforce those boundaries once they've been breached."
"No, it wouldn't." The Keeper opened the box, revealing what appeared to be a simple key made of tarnished silver. "That knowledge was kept elsewhere, in places even the giant-kings feared to tread." She held up the key, and in the fractured light of her palace, it seemed to absorb shadows rather than cast them. "This is the Key of Unmaking. It was forged from the last breath of the first star that ever died, and quenched in the tears of gods who foresaw their own endings."
Malakai felt the power emanating from the key – a deep, primordial force that made his very essence want to unravel. "What does it open?"
"Wrong question." The Keeper's smile turned sharp. "Ask rather: what does it close?"
Understanding dawned. "It can seal the paths between realities. Cut off the Old Ones' influence completely."
"More than that," the Keeper said. "It can sever the connection between your brother and what he's becoming. Return him to what he was." She paused, and her next words carried the weight of prophecy. "But using it has a price. The kind of price that changes the one who pays it."