The throne of stones welcomed her with a groan, its jagged edges biting into Eleanor's flesh as she climbed. The grimoire lay open in her lap, its pages now blank, their secrets etched into her veins. Above, the sky peeled back like a scab, revealing the raw, pulsing void where the Door had once loomed. It wasn't gone. It was waiting.
The mirror-child stood at the base of the throne, her green eyes reflecting the Hollow's ruin.
"You could still run," she said, her voice a chorus of every life Eleanor might have lived. "Find a town that doesn't know your name. A world without stones."
Eleanor's scarred hand tightened on the arm of the throne. "And let it follow me? Let it feed?"
The child smiled, a flicker of Abigail's malice in her gaze. "All things feed, guardian. Even you."
The ground trembled. From the cracks rose the townsfolk—or what remained of them. Mrs. Darrow's barnacled husk, the baker's needle-toothed grin, Jeb Lowe's ledger clutched in a claw of fused bone. They circled the stones, their chant a wet, guttural drone:
"Guardian. Guardian. Guardian."
Eleanor closed her eyes. The grimoire's final truth burned in her mind: To end the cycle, become the lock.
Not the axle. The key.
She stood, the throne crumbling beneath her. The scars on her palm split open, viridian light spilling into the air like blood. The Door stirred, its presence a pressure against her skull, whispering promises of oblivion and power.
"You are mine," it hissed. "You have always been mine."
"No," Eleanor said. "You are mine."
She plunged her hand into her chest.
The pain was exquisite, a supernova of agony that unraveled her from within. Her ribs parted like petals, her heart a throbbing emerald lodged in a nest of tendrils. She tore it free, the third and final heart, its surface etched with the spiral-triangle.
The Hollow held its breath.
"Fool," the mirror-child snarled, her form fraying at the edges. "You'll destroy us all!"
"Yes," Eleanor said.
She crushed the heart.
The world unmade itself.
The Door screamed, its tendrils recoiling as cracks spiderwebbed across the void. The townsfolk dissolved, their ashes caught in a sudden wind that smelled of salt and funeral lilies. The stones shattered, their fragments orbiting Eleanor like planets around a dying star.
The mirror-child reached for her, tears of mercury streaking her face. "You could've been eternal."
"I am," Eleanor said.
She stepped into the Door.
*—She is infinite. She is the lock. She is the silence between stars.
The Door's hunger becomes her own, its whispers her voice. She feels the townsfolk's memories—Mrs. Darrow kneading dough, the sheriff's first arrest, Abigail's first lie—threaded through her like constellations.
The cycle is broken.
The Hollow is quiet.
And somewhere, in a world untouched by stones, a girl with auburn hair and ordinary eyes walks a sunlit path, her laughter unburdened by green-veined shadows.
Eleanor lets her go.
She has other doors to guard.—*
Epilogue
Blackthorn Hollow is a footnote now.
Hikers whisper of green lights in the woods, of a woman-shaped shadow that guides them back to the trail when the fog grows too thick. Scholars dismiss the grimoire's existence, though copies surface in fever dreams, their pages blank save for a single phrase: She remains.
And in the space between breaths, where the stars fall right and the hungry things stir, a door stands closed.
Its guardian waits.
Watching.
Always.
End.