Lord of the Foresaken-Chapter 195: THE GOBLIN QUEEN’S EVOLUTION

A faint hum — like a choir of broken glass trembling on the verge of shattering — hovered over the ruined keep where Shia knelt. The moon was a thin sickle tonight, slicing through clouds of gray ash left behind by the Consciousness Drain. Beneath that grim light, the goblin warrior wiped drying blood from her cheek and tried to quiet the storm inside her skull.

Reed was near, issuing terse orders to the survivors. Shia caught only fragments: fortifications on the outer ring, quarantine protocols, a new triage ward for the half-dead revenants. But her own heartbeat drowned out most of his words, because something else throbbed louder than fear or fatigue.

A second pulse.

It wasn’t her heart; it beat somewhere deeper, lodged between mind and spirit. Ever since she had plunged her hand into the Rift hours ago — trying to sever the Drain’s tendrils before they devoured Reed’s soul — an alien warmth circled her nerves. Now it flared again, threatening to ignite.

Focus, she urged herself. Breathe.

When she opened her eyes, the night had changed.

Where corpses lay in ragged heaps, she no longer saw flesh and bone. Instead, shimmering silhouettes floated above each body — ghostly strands of memory twisting in slow spirals, pale gold and dimmer grays. Soul residue. A hundred unlived futures. They billowed whenever torchlight flickered, as if afraid of shadows.

Shia gasped. The residue pivoted toward her, drawn to the sound like leaves to a storm’s eye... and then dissolved. Only a lingering echo of sorrow remained on the wind.

So this was Soul Sight.

She felt Reed’s presence behind her before he spoke. "You’re shivering."

"I’m seeing things," she whispered, choosing her words carefully. "Not hallucinations. Truth."

Reed’s gaze was steady. His black armor still crackled with runes that hadn’t settled since the Drain’s backlash. "Describe it."

She explained in broken sentences until her throat burned. When she finished, Reed was silent for a long time, trying to weigh the revelation against every cosmic rule he’d broken to keep his army alive.

At last he touched her shoulder. "Whatever gift the Rift forced on you... learn it. Master it. Because the dead will not stay buried much longer."

His tone was calm, but Shia sensed what he didn’t say: We cannot afford another unknown.

Hours later, the war-camp’s watchfires dimmed, and Reed retired to the strategy hall. Shia remained outside, pacing the broken battlements, letting Soul Sight open wider.

Strings of emerald-colored light rose from the torches, weaving into a spiderweb overhead — threads of willpower belonging to every living goblin, human, and beast in camp. Each strand quivered with tension; any wrong pressure would snap them all.

By instinct, Shia reached up and brushed the nearest filament. It responded to her touch, thickening into a braid of vivid green glass. More threads rallied to it, latching together until a pulsing cable stretched across the night sky.

The Emerald Network was born.

A voice burst inside her mind: ...can anyone hear me?!

It belonged to Kess the scout, stationed three leagues away on the north ridge. Shia nearly dropped to her knees. The Network was carrying thoughts — no, entire memories. Images of a fresh ambush flooded her head: skeletal war-priests resurrected mid-charge, their hollow eyes burning yellow.

Stay hidden, Shia sent back, uncertain if the words would travel. They did. Kess’s relief trickled through the cable like warmth. I’ll warn Reed.

She turned, but the world lurched.

Every color inverted. Darkness blazed white, while torchlight became void. A colossal eye cracked open in the fabric of reality, its iris swirling with jaundiced light. Rings of prophecy unfurled around the pupil — countless timelines overlapping, each stamped with the same sigil:

∞

Scenes spilled forth faster than thought: cities resurrecting themselves after genocide; oceans choking on reborn leviathans; stars snuffed out by civilizations that refused to die.

Shia watched herself in a hundred futures — sometimes triumphant, sometimes screaming under mountains of undead. But in every vision, a single truth remained constant:

If resurrection becomes universal, nothing ends — therefore nothing matters.

The Yellow Eye Prophecy drove a spike of ice through her stomach. No mere omen, this was a cosmic ultimatum: existence must keep its price, or meaning itself would rot.

A ragged tear appeared beside the eye, and from it stepped a figure. At first Shia thought it was Reed. Same height, same bearing. But where Reed’s aura ignited like wildfire, this doppelgänger bled absence—un-Reed, carved from missing pieces of the universe. Its smile curved upward in impossible angles.

It regarded her, then crooned in a voice deeper than gravity. "Guardian, your burden begins now."

Wind ripped across the ramparts. Stone shrieked. Shia braced, but un-Reed raised a finger, and the world froze between heartbeats. She alone could move.

He leaned close. "Preserve memory, yes. But will you preserve suffering too?" One by one, he recited the names of everyone she had buried—her original clan, her half-siblings, even the pet rook she’d fed as a child. Each name flared above his palm, then winked out like candles smothered by invisible fingers.

Shia’s lungs locked.

"Erase the past," un-Reed urged. "Set your people free from pain. All it costs... is letting them forget why they fight."

She understood the temptation was bait. If memories were stripped, the dead could rise forever without consequence — a playground for the gods who fed on infinite do-overs.

Shia spat at his feet. "We remember because pain is proof we were alive."

Un-Reed’s smile widened, skin tearing at the corners of his mouth, exposing starlight and tomb-dust beneath. "Then carry their screams." He thrust a shard of yellow crystal toward her chest.

Pain detonated.

She collapsed, clutching her sternum. The ramparts slammed back into motion: roaring wind, crumbling mortar, alarm bells. But the doppelgänger and eye were gone, as if erased by dawn that hadn’t come.

Shia crawled to her knees, trembling. Beneath her fingers, a faint glyph glowed on her breastplate — the same ∞ symbol, etched in pulsing gold. It pulsed once for every heartbeat in the camp, binding her to their collective memory.

The Living Memorial. Souls would anchor to her now, feeding her Sight while chaining her to their grief. And if she faltered... the glyph would split, releasing torrents of raw remembrance to drown the world.

She forced herself upright.

Guardian. Memorial. Burden.

Then let me be iron, she thought, dragging in a ragged breath. I will not break.

She hurried toward the strategy hall. Voices inside argued over maps and casualty scrolls. Before she crossed the threshold, a tremor raced through the Emerald Network — a thousand strands snapped at once. Kess’s mental scream cut out mid-word.

Shia seized the doors, bursting into the lamplit chamber. Reed, Vanya, and three field captains looked up, startled.

"There’s an ambush." She spoke so quickly her words blurred. "North ridge scouts—gone. War-priests with yellow eyes—"

Reed swore and pivoted to the map table. "Numbers?"

"Unknown." She pressed a palm to the glyph. "But they’re coming through the Rift. Right now."

As if summoned, the castle’s warding bells shrieked outside. Earth rumbled beneath their boots; dust poured from the ceiling.

Vanya summoned her chronal blades. "Teleportation runes at the ready, then. We can flank—"

"Too slow," Shia said. "They’ll overrun the outer wall in minutes."

Reed’s jaw clenched. "Give me options."

Shia inhaled, feeling the glyph burn hotter. "I open the Network wider. Share everything I see with every soldier at once. No delays, no blind spots."

"That much feedback could kill you," Vanya warned. "Mind-burn at best."

Reed’s eyes flicked to Shia. In them she saw pride, fear... and reluctant consent. He understood the stakes.

"Do it," he said. "We’ll hold the line while you guide us."

Shia nodded, stepping back toward the doorway. She closed her eyes and imagined the emerald strands thickening, merging into luminous arteries that stitched the army together. Her hair—the once-simple raven locks now tinged with ghostly green—unfurled like living threads, latching onto the fortress spires and the iron-shod boots of every warrior below.

Awareness exploded into her mind. She tasted the metallic panic of new recruits, the cold resolve of veterans, the iron tang of Reed’s determination. She felt every heartbeat.

And then she felt the enemy.

Not just war-priests. Something else stalked behind them, wearing armor of molten memory, wielding a spear forged from the bones of forgotten gods. It radiated hunger for endings that never end.

Shia forced her voice across the Network. Hold formation delta-seven. Archers, aim for the runes on their foreheads. Mages, invert revival glyphs—

But the spear-bearer lifted its weapon. The tip glowed with the same symbol carved over Shia’s heart: ∞. With one thrust, it hurled a javelin of pure oblivion through the night—aimed straight at the keep’s central tower.

At Reed.

Shia screamed a warning, but the projectile was already mid-flight, warping space around it like a stone shattering a mirror.

She could reach him—if she severed every thread binding her to the army, collapsing the Network into a single, desperate leap.

She hesitated. One path saved Reed but left thousands blind. The other preserved the army but doomed the man whose dream had given them purpose.

A Guardian’s Burden: choose who remembers and who survives.

She gritted her teeth, muscles coiling.

The world slowed... and stopped on the edge of choice.

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