Novels by Diamond

Lyra’s POVThe Rift no longer felt empty. Every vibration of the black glass beneath my feet, every whisper of the silver veins, reminded me of what I had to become. Kael had been right. I needed training. Not tomorrow, not later but now.“Focus,” Kael said, standing a few paces away. His eyes glimmered, unreadable, dangerous. “You feel the bond, don’t you? You can hear it, the rhythm beneath your skin. Let it guide you. Control it, or it will control you.”I clenched my fists. The mark on my palm burned, throbbing in time with his heartbeat, as though my body had no choice but to follow his lead. I took a deep breath and tried to still the chaos inside me.“Good,” Kael said. “Now, feel the Rift. Not just beneath your feet. Around you. In every shadow, every vein of silver. Sense the pull of life and death. Sense the energy of the world. Bend it. Shape it.”I tried, the Rift responded, small at first. A ripple in the black glass beneath me. A shiver along the edges of the silver veins

Lyra’s POV“Lyra.”Kael said my name again, but this time there was strain beneath it. Not anger. Not command. Something tighter.I stared at him, my thoughts colliding too fast to separate. The Seer’s words still echoed in my skull, heavy and poisonous. Theft. Punishment. A goddess’s heart.“You stole from her,” I said. My voice was steady, though my hands were not. “From Selunara.”Kael’s expression hardened instantly.“No.”The word was sharp. Absolute.I almost believed it.“You are wrong,” he continued. “I would remember something like that.”“That is what she said,” I replied. “Not me.”His jaw clenched. “Seers lie.”“She showed me,” I pressed. “She showed me you reaching for it.”Kael took a step toward me, then stopped. His eyes flickered, dark fire stirring beneath the silver.“I sought power,” he said. “Yes. I sought immortality. I wanted freedom from the moon’s leash. But I did not steal her heart.”The Rift pulsed faintly underfoot.I swallowed. “Then why am I hollow?”Sil

Lyra’s POVThe Rift made mornings feel like a cruel jest. Not that I had much choice. Between the whispers of the dead, Kael’s looming shadow, and the persistent hum of the mark on my palm, I had long forgotten what freedom felt like. I crouched on a shard of black glass, trying to decide whether my life had become a cosmic joke or a sentence I would never escape. The answer was probably both.“Lyra.” The voice came soft as mist but sharp as a knife. It made the hair on my arms rise. The kind of voice that knows your thoughts before you do and despises them.I spun, expecting Kael. The Rift stretched empty in every direction. Black glass cracked beneath pale light. Silver veins pulsed faintly beneath my feet. It was the sort of place where shadows could devour you while the air mocked your heartbeat.“I am not dying yet, am I?” I muttered. My voice sounded like a mouse squeaking in a lion’s lair.Then she appeared.The Seer of Duskwraith stepped from the haze as though the storm had t

LYRA’S POVThe Rift seemed calm. Silver veins pulsed faintly beneath my boots, like a heartbeat pretending to sleep. Quiet, but only in appearance. The air felt tight and expectant, as if the world itself were holding its breath, waiting for something to go wrong. Waiting for me to slip, for Kael to snap, or for something far worse to crawl out of the cracks.I sank to my knees, the cold glass biting through my clothes. My arm throbbed where my mark had flared, a stubborn ember that refused to fade. I wanted to hate it. I wanted to punch something, preferably the Rift, maybe Kael. But instead, I just shivered. The silence pressed in on me. It was not peaceful. It was watchful. Patient, yet demanding.Kael knelt beside me, hands hovering over the Rift, posture unreadable. But I noticed a hesitation, a tension in his jaw that made the shadows around him pause. It was subtle, but enough to set my nerves on edge.“You’re quiet,” I said, narrowing my eyes.He did not answer. He only looked

LYRA’S POVThe Rift screamed.Not with sound—no. This was worse. The glass beneath us split open in jagged lines, silver veins flaring so bright they burned against my vision. The air thickened, pressing against my chest until every breath felt stolen, like I’d sunk too deep underwater and forgotten how to swim.Something inside the crack moved.Then it pulled itself free.It didn’t crawl. It didn’t climb.It unfolded.Reality bent around it, as if the Rift itself wasn’t sure how to let the thing exist. Limbs stretched where there shouldn’t have been space, folding and reforming in impossible ways. Its surface shimmered like broken mirrors dipped in moonlight, reflecting not the world, but fragments of me. My face twisted in fear. My hands glowed with silver light, dripping—blood?—spilled across reality itself.I froze.My mark ignited.Pain shot through my arm, white-hot, as if fire had been poured into my bones. I dropped to one knee—and Kael did too.He sucked in a harsh breath, sh

Lyra’s Pov I woke to the kind of silence that presses down on your chest and makes you feel like the world itself is holding its breath. The Rift stretched endlessly around me, black glass cracked with silver veins that pulsed faintly under the pale light. Even after everything that had happened, it still felt alive, and not in the “oh, isn’t nature beautiful” kind of way. More like, “if you sneeze here, the universe might eat you” alive.I blinked, muscles stiff from yesterday’s training with Kael, and immediately regretted it. My wrist throbbed from the mark, still glowing faintly, and my chest felt tight. It was one thing to survive the Reaper’s awakening. It was another to survive training with the guy who had literally been dead for centuries and looked like he could kill me with a raised eyebrow.“Good morning,” I muttered to myself, rubbing my arms. “Or, you know… bad morning. Or apocalypse morning. Whatever.”The Rift seemed to answer with a subtle shimmer beneath my feet. Th