Crows poured from the broken stone in a living flood, their feathers slicing Jacob's skin like paper cuts. The roots surged forward, wrapping around his limbs, prying his fingers open to reclaim the key.
Eleanor—or the hollow thing that had been her—grabbed Jacob's face. Her void-mouth moved soundlessly, but the words burned in his skull:
"You're the hollow king. You always were."
The crows descended.
Beaks tore at his clothes, his hair, his skin, not to devour but to adorn—weaving feathers into his wounds until he glittered with onyx plumage. Their talons pricked his scalp in a grotesque coronation, each drop of blood that hit the stones sprouting another writhing root.
Before him, the Priest removed his mask, revealing—
Jacob's own face.
Older. Weathered. Eyes hollowed out by centuries of cycles.
"Welcome home," the Priest said with Jacob's mouth.
The ossuary throne room stretched around them, its walls pulsing with embedded bodies—dozens of past Jacobs and Eleanors and Emilys, their skeletal hands reaching as if to drag him into the stone.
The real Emily crouched at the Priest's feet, her true form unveiled: a skeletal girl with too-long limbs, her ribcage housing a squirming mass of crow chicks. She smiled with needle-teeth.
"You were always the best liar," she crooned. "Even convinced yourself you were the hero."
The Priest extended a hand.
"The Crow needs a new hollow king. Will you wear the mask willingly this time?"
In the darkness beneath the bone throne, Jacob saw it—the first mask, the original.
Carved from his father's skin.