CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: Zara Of The End

The moon had cracked.

It hung in the sky like a wounded eye—bleeding light instead of shadow, fractured along lines that mirrored the marks burned into Elira’s wrist. The Vale, once still and silver in the nighttime, now thrummed with the slow pulse of war magic. It moved through the trees. It clung to the stones. And at its center, beneath the heart of the broken sky, Zara stood alone.

Across from her, the Hollow Eye had taken shape once more—not just the cult, not just its followers, but the being they served. He had a face now. And a name.

Rael Orien. Once a general of the old world. Now void-touched, reborn through broken prophecy and hollow flame. His armor was made of bone and screaming shadow. His presence felt like gravity reversed—like falling upward into something that had no sky, no end.

“Zara Vale,” he said, voice like cracking ice across a lake about to break. “Step aside. The child is not yours to keep. She is a convergence. Let her open the Hollow fully. Let the old god