Page 83 of Shattered Jewel

Because if you’re reading this, I’m not alive anymore.

You must know by now what our father did, what he was. He was a ruler of this sordid, elite society, a Sovereign of the Court. They cloaked his true title under layers of deceit, but it’s a truth that can no longer remain hidden. And just like it was for him, the Court had its claws in me, too.”

My jaw nearly hits my kneecaps.

“No Mavvy,” I shakily whisper to the screen, “I did not fucking know Dad was a part of the Court.” My heart does the entire plummet to the floor when I clarify with a thick tongue, “A Sovereign.”

Swallowing and blinking rapidly, I read on:

“Let me start with Dad. The kind, caring father we idolized from old photographs and Mom’s stories? That was merely one face he presented to us. His true existence was spent ascending the ranks of the Cimmerian Court to become one of the Sovereigns. I didn’t learn this truth until my own violent initiation at 16 years old.

They say they have no names, just the three Sovereigns, but that is a lie. They’ve given themselves titles: the High Sovereign, the Scourge Sovereign, and the Silent Sovereign. A trinity of the damned.

Still, I resisted believing Dad could have been party to their depravities. At least until I uncovered copies of the esoteric texts he pored over—the Court’s demonic scriptures detailing their fundamental doctrine: Truth in Shadows. You see, they don’t just crave the power, wealth and infamy the ruby Heart promises. Their obsession is rooted in an ancient occult belief that possessing the legendary jewel will finally unlock the long-sought path to the Exalted Regent.

The missing girls cases? Those go back just as far, a sickening pattern of sacrifices made in service of their cause. At first, it was just girls accused of being witches—those “lucky” few who contained the dark magic they sought. But as the centuries passed and it was no longer acceptable to burn, torture and maim village women, their desperation for the Heart’s power mounted, and they grew...indiscriminate. Unbound from any code of honor.

That’s why they had Dad killed when you were a baby. He finally recognized the Court’s rituals for the evil they truly were, and was planning to spirit Mom and us away. I have reason to believe he was a turncoat, spying on his own Court and providing the information to an influential outside source—possibly the FBI. The other two Sovereigns viewed his defiance as a threat that needed snuffing out. But not before ensuring a bloodline replacement—my initiation—to maintain their reputational façade of being a noble legacy society.

[Illegible for one line].

Down into the hidden underground chamber where our ancestor Sarah Anderton was tortured and killed over 200 years ago.

That night, they forced me to witness a girl stripped bare and lashed to the ancient altar amid robed, chanting figures. The blade they pressed into my trembling hands, I was to use in carving their symbols into her flesh as the first sacrifice of my initiation. Her agonized screams... the blood...

When I hesitated, they turned their cruelty on me without mercy. The first lashes were bittersweet mercies compared to the burnings, the etchings, and mental tortures that followed. Rites designed not just to break my body, but to shatter any remnant of the fragile soul Dad hoped to shield. I endured until the light inside me was gone.”

The screen blurs and I realize I’m crying, hot, angry tears dripping onto the keyboard. I take a deep breath, reminding myself of Maverick’s strength, his resilience. He wouldn’t want me to crumble under the weight of his revelations.

Wiping my tears away, I refocus on Maverick’s words.

“Scholars say that knowledge is power. But right now knowledge feels like a serrated knife splitting me open from inside out. Knowledge that I’m caged by unpredictable monsters... Monsters our father allowed me to be fed to...

Because here’s the really fucked part: the Court’s entire goal in finding the ruby Heart is to summon some ancient, evil entity they call the “Exalted Regent.” Not demon, not god ... something far worse that they’ve worshiped for over 300 years now. They think possessing the ruby’s full power will finally rip open a permanent portal so this monstrosity can physically enter our world.

All those missing girls cases going back centuries, those were practice sacrifices leading up to their precious ritual, warm-up attempts at calling out this nightmare bastard, because they believe they can’t actually summon him until they have the 2 keys, ruby the Heart of the Exalted Regent, and—[handwriting too illegible], which they believed no longer existed, but they got their facts wrong. It very much exists. To your detriment, Ellie.”

A cold chill slices down my spine at his words. My focus snags on the illegible writing, too crumpled and smeared for me to read clearly.

“Dammit, Maverick, what’s the second key? Why couldn’t you have just typed this?”

But I force myself to move on.

“After the nightmare of that night, I was dead-set on taking those depraved occult fucks down from the inside. I started by obsessively decrypting all the ancient texts and codes the Court treated as gospel, looking for any clues they’d missed about the ruby Heart’s whereabouts.

Turns out Dad had been secretly compiling his own research before his murder, data pointing to the ruby being stashed away centuries ago by Sarah Anderton herself. The very woman the Court persecuted as a witch was the one who’d kept their precious relic from their grasp.

It took years of following Dad’s fragmented trails, but I finally traced the ruby Heart’s hiding place to a forgotten subterranean vault beneath campus.

I also found Sarah’s grimoire in a forgotten section of TFU’s library. Anderton’s writings gave clues about how she concealed the ruby. Apologies to our ever-great grandmother, but I ripped out those pages so no one, especially the Sovereigns, could ever find this vault after I did.

I couldn’t risk giving those sadistic bastards that kind of power, not after witnessing firsthand the depravities they’re willing to commit for their beliefs. If the Sovereigns found the Heart in its complete form, the requirements to their final ritual would be met.

And I swear, Ellie, where Dad failed, I would not. Something that monumental had to be permanently kept from their grasp. So I made the hard call to take a sledgehammer to that priceless ruby relic and shatter it into two separate pieces, putting one in Gram’s old costume pieces of jewelry where a gem was missing.

The other piece, I placed back into the vault as a curse to keep the Court forever baited. Even if they somehow managed to find it, without the other, it’s powerless to them. And the necklace ... Gram’s been keeping it safe, unknowing of its importance. I’ve left enough false trails to keep the Sovereigns and even Gram off balance, but I’m worried about how long this can hold them at bay.

[illegible]

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