61 Stark

Stark is yanked from sleep into the shadow realm, where he faces Nocturn, the nightmare god tied to Meryn’s powers and Stark’s ancestral oath. Nocturn appears stronger than before and violently subdues Stark, enraged that Stark disobeyed the command to reunite the Seven Tears. Stark questions why Nocturn can act now; Nocturn claims the Tears’ proximity weakens the prison that held him.

When Stark silently resolves to help Meryn separate and hide the Tears, Nocturn senses the defiance and explodes with fury. The god releases Stark only to hurl a torrent of shadow through him. Stark wakes in their chamber, but his body is possessed; he watches, powerless, as Nocturn forces him to move.

Nocturn uses Stark’s hands to recover the Dire Blade shards from Meryn’s bag, fusing them with shadow into a whole sword, then discards it. He wrenches each Tear from its setting—the crowns, necklaces, and Killian’s ring—and lays them in the star pattern from Meryn’s mother’s journal. As Stark tries to intervene, the alignment completes; reality fractures and three distant, earth-shaking booms erupt, with the sky warping into impossible colors.

Meryn awakens to the aftermath and asks what happened. Stark, devastated, admits the truth: his family’s oath is not to the Sturmfrosts but to Nocturn. He warns that the dark god has returned, revealing both the betrayal entangling his lineage and the escalating threat unleashed by the Tears’ assembly.