Chapter sixteen

The moment the Gate fully opened, the world bled.

Reality twisted. The valley howled. Darkness didn’t pour from the tear—it poured into it, like a mouth inhaling, ready to consume. Lyra stood at the center of a vortex of wind, magic, and bone, her silver-flamed hands stretched wide, anchoring the protective stakes the Vowbound had carved into the ground.

“Hold the circle!” she shouted over the chaos.

Veera’s voice came from somewhere behind her, breathless. “One of the wards just snapped! We’re exposed on the west flank!”

Kaelen snarled, his wolf tearing through a pair of Hollowed beasts slithering on limbs far too long to be natural. Blood sprayed the earth. His eyes glinted silver beneath the full moon.

“Lyra!” he shouted. “They’re breaching faster than we can kill them!”

“I know,” she ground out, voice ragged. “But we’re not trying to stop them—we’re trying to draw him out.”

As if summoned, the Sovereign’s laughter cut through the storm like glass across skin.

“You think I’ll fight you alone, little fireborn?” he purred. “You think I’ve come this far just to fall to a girl still learning what her blood can do?”

Lyra turned slowly to face him. He stood just inside the tear, half-shadow, half-corpse. His antlers twisted with blackened gold. Eyes empty as a dark void. And behind him—spirits screamed. Thousands. Maybe more. Each soul fed into the writhing power coiling around him like smoke.

She lifted her chin. “No. I think you came here because you're afraid I’ll remember.”

That froze him.

“Afraid I’ll remember what Elira saw before she fell. That the Hollowed weren’t born. They were bound. And you—”

She stepped forward, the wind splitting around her.

“—are not a god. You’re a remnant.”

The Sovereign hissed.

“Silence!”

He flung his hand, and a wave of darkness exploded outward. Lyra threw up a shield of moonlight. The forces collided midair, crackling and howling, but her magic held.

For now.

Behind her, Kaelen shifted back to his human form, blood staining his arms and chest.

“You can’t hold him alone.”

“I’m not.”

And she wasn’t.

The ground beneath the Gate cracked.

From the Vowbound’s circle, the earth opened and a second rune pattern flared, one not drawn by mortal hands, but woven by time itself.

The Hidden Seal.

Passed down through Lyra’s bloodline.

She didn’t speak the incantation.

She became it.

Her eyes lit silver-white, her voice low and ancient.

“By fire forgotten, by name forsaken, I call what sleeps beneath.”

The Gate screamed.

And the Sovereign staggered.

“You don’t know what you’re awakening!” he shouted, voice panicked for the first time.

“Don’t I?” she whispered.

---

The field exploded.

Light and dark clashed in midair, forming whirlwinds that tore trees from their roots and sundered stone. The Hollowed creatures screamed, twisted, and were flung into the tear, devoured by the very void they served.

The Sovereign stumbled backward, clutching his head.

“No… no, this is not the way—”

But it was.

From the cracked rune beneath the Gate, a shape rose.

Female.

Clad in flame and bone. Her face hidden by a crown of ash.

Elira.

Or rather—the last echo of her power, preserved by blood and sacrifice.

The echo turned to Lyra.

“Daughter.”

Lyra trembled. “I didn’t mean to call you.”

“You didn’t. It did.”

The echo’s head tilted, and her voice deepened, darkened.

“The Gate remembers. The Gate chooses. And now… it unbinds.”

Kaelen grabbed Lyra’s arm. “You have to stop it...whatever this is—”

But Lyra couldn’t move.

The seal had broken.

The power she carried surged up her spine, flooding her with memories not hers,visions of blood rituals, shattered altars, wolves being burned alive to fuel locks no one ever meant to open.

And the Sovereign—

He screamed.

Not in fury.

In fear.

“No! You said I’d rule—!”

The echo turned to him.

“You were promised reign. But promises die.”

She raised her hand—and the Sovereign’s body began to fracture.

Black cracks opened across his limbs, his antlers, his chest.

“Lyra,” Kaelen hissed. “You have to close the seal. Now. Before she destroys everything!”

Lyra fought to move.

Fought to breathe.

But the magic was no longer obeying her.

It fed on what she carried.

It wanted her blood.

She fell to her knees.

And then—

A child’s hand touched hers.

The Seer.

She had walked into the center of the storm, barefoot, untouched by the battle. Her pale eyes shone with calm.

“She isn’t meant to finish it,” the girl said. “You are.”

Lyra blinked.

“What?”

“She’s a shadow. You’re the flame.”

The girl pressed Lyra’s palm into the earth.

And then there was stillness.

The world paused.

The Gate shivered.

And Lyra saw.

Not with eyes.

With soul.

She saw Elira's last breath. The sealing. The betrayal. The Sovereign rising not from power, but from grief and broken vows.

She saw her own birth—moonlight weeping through the forest. Her mother chanting the old names. The curse not placed on her, but through her—as a key.

And she saw the future—

A world ruled by fear.

Or a world rebuilt.

The choice was hers.

Her lips moved.

The spell left her.

“I am not your vessel.”

She rose to her feet.

She lifted both arms.

And with a single word

“Bind.”

—light consumed the Gate.

---

The Sovereign shrieked as his body shattered into dust, sucked screaming into the seal. The echo of Elira dissolved into flame, scattering like ashes on wind.

The tear closed.

The sky cleared.

Silence.

Then—

One bird cried.

One breath.

And the world exhaled.

---

Hours passed.

They buried the dead.

They healed what could be healed.

Lyra sat alone at the edge of the ridge, watching the sun rise over the hollowed field.

Kaelen joined her, limping slightly.

“You did it,” he said.

“No,” she whispered. “We did.”

He smiled faintly.

“There’ll be more battles.”

She nodded. “But not like that. That was the first war. The last tether.”

He took her hand.

“No more curses.”

“No more echoes.”

They sat in silence as the first light of dawn touched the seal.