Chapter ten

The wind howled through the ruins of Nightshade Keep, carrying with it the scent of blood, ash, and change.

Lyra stood atop the fractured steps of the once-mighty stronghold, her cloak whipping around her like black fire. Below, Accord soldiers and surviving allies combed the rubble, salvaging weapons and burning the cursed remains. But their eyes flicked to her often.

She had shattered the Rift.

She had survived the curse.

And now, something inside her burned hotter than ever.

Behind her, Kaelen approached with slow, measured steps. The gash across his shoulder had been bound, but blood still leaked through the linen. His power was quieter now, grounded. He was no longer cursed but he was no less dangerous.

"You feel it too," he said.

Lyra didn't turn. "The magic... it didn’t leave. It’s in me now. And it won’t settle."

“It’s not meant to.” He stepped beside her. “Residual Rift energy doesn’t fade like ordinary magic. It fuses. Latches. Evolves.”

She closed her eyes. “It whispers. I don’t understand it yet, but I know it wants to move. To reshape.”

Kaelen was quiet for a long moment. Then: “You’ll have to learn to wield it. Before someone else tries to take it.”

Her gaze sharpened. “You think they’ll try?”

“I know they will.”

That night, the Vireyan Accord held a temporary assembly among the ruins,what remained of the leadership, mages, healers, and neutral packs who had survived the collapse.

They stood in a circle around a blazing pyre lit for the fallen. Elder Ysara addressed the gathering, her white robes stained with soot and her voice steady.

“The Rift is gone,” she said. “But the void it leaves behind is vast. We must ask: What grows in its place?”

No one answered.

Ysara turned to Lyra. “You carry the seed of that answer now.”

Lyra stepped forward. Her hands trembled slightly, though she kept her face composed, She was clearly scared and unsure of herself.

“I didn’t choose this magic,” she began, “but I will not let it twist into something cruel. The power that fueled the curse is still alive. If left unchecked, it could become worse than the Rift ever was. I won’t let that happen.”

The silence that followed was tense.

Then a mage from the eastern coven—a tall man with extremely pale skin—stepped forward. “And if you lose control?”

Lyra met his eyes. “Then I expect every one of you to stop me.”

After the assembly, Kaelen escorted Lyra back to a makeshift shelter nestled inside the hollow of a broken stone tower.

She collapsed onto a cot, her muscles aching, her blood humming with magic that wouldn’t sleep.

“You stood your ground,” Kaelen said.

“I feel like I’m barely holding it,” she replied. “They’re watching me. Not because they trust me. Because they’re waiting to see if I explode.”

Kaelen sat beside her, his voice low. “Then give them no reason to doubt you. Train. Learn. We have time now.”

A knock interrupted them.

A young Accord courier stepped into the tower, her face pale, her hand was trembling with fear.

“There’s someone you need to meet,” she said. “A girl. From the northern edges. She came through fire to find you.”

The girl stood at the perimeter of the Accord camp, wrapped in a tattered crimson shawl.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve, with tangled black hair and eerie, pale eyes. At her feet, the earth had frostbitten—despite the mild air.

Lyra stepped closer, wary of the unknown identity. “You came looking for me?”

The girl nodded. “They told me you carry the Rift’s end.”

Kaelen’s jaw tensed. “Who told you that?”

“The dreams.” The girl blinked. “And the dead.”

Lyra knelt. “What’s your name?”

“Serin.”

Lyra reached out but before she could touch her, a jolt of magic struck the air between them. Not hostile. Not wild. But ancient.

Kaelen’s eyes narrowed. “She’s marked.”

Serin tilted her head. “You are too.”

Serin was housed in the inner circle of the Accord’s temple ruins, watched closely by the spirit-weavers. She didn’t speak much, but when she did, it was with startling clarity, she spoke of dreams, visions, and symbols long forgotten by even the Accord’s oldest seers.

“She’s connected to something,” Lyra whispered to Kaelen as they watched the girl from a balcony. “I don’t think she’s Hollowed but she’s not normal either.”

“She might be a bridge,” Kaelen said.

“To what?”

“Something older than the Rift.”

In the days that followed, Lyra resumed her training although it was nothing like the usual trials of a wolf coming into their power. What she wielded now was unstable and formless,it was laced with memory and wrath.

Each time she summoned it, the magic took shape differently, it could be a blade of moonlight, a wall of living flame or a whisper that could split stone.

It frightened her.

And yet... it felt like home.

Kaelen sparred with her, never holding back. “You need to control it even when you’re afraid,” he told her. “Especially then.”

“You speak like you know how it feels.”

“I do,” he said quietly. “The curse lived in me for years. It never stopped whispering.”

Lyra paused. “And now?”

Kaelen’s gaze lingered on her. “Now you’re louder.”

Serin’s abilities began to surface quickly. Without training, without warning, she conjured glyphs in her sleep and spoke in the dead tongue of the Hollowed.

One night, she wandered from the Accord grounds, she went unnoticed, until Lyra sensed a pull in her gut.

She and Kaelen tracked her into the forest and found her standing in a shallow pool of silver water, whispering to the trees.

“They’re coming back,” Serin murmured. “The ones the Rift silenced.”

Lyra stepped forward. “What do you mean?”

Serin turned to her, eyes completely white. “The Hollowed were not born. They were freed.”

Then she collapsed.

Back at camp, the news grew worse.

An entire scout patrol had vanished on the eastern border. No signs of a fight. No blood. Just ash.

Kaelen read the report aloud. “It’s the Hollowed. Or something like them.”

Lyra stared at the sky. “The curse is broken. But the infection isn’t gone.”

“We ended one war,” he said. “But another’s already begun.”