INICIAR SESIÓNNyra's POVI don't remember leaving my own body, exactly. I remember the mark going cold beneath my palm, colder than it had ever been, and then the training yard simply wasn't there anymore.I stood somewhere else entirely, somewhere that looked like Ashveil but wasn't, the cottages twisted at angles that hurt to look at directly, the sky the wrong color, bruised purple bleeding into black. A woman stood in the center of it, small, dark-haired, her back to me, and something in the shape of her shoulders made my chest ache before I understood why.She turned, and I saw my own daughter's face, except grown, years older than she'd ever had the chance to become, her eyes the same storm grey as mine except lit from within by something silver and vast and utterly without mercy."You let me go," she said, and her voice carried no accusation, only a terrible, patient sorrow. "He needed only a little more time. You could have given him that.""I tried," I said, though my voice made no sound i
Riven's POVI'd spent months learning to read her, back before any of this, back when doubting her had been my full-time occupation. I understood, better than most in this stronghold, exactly how much distance now stood between the woman training alone in that yard and the one I'd watched throw herself between Mogra's strike and my own exposed throat.The pack noticed too. I heard it in the quiet murmurs that followed her through corridors she used to walk with her chin high, defiant even when half the stronghold still doubted her. Now they simply watched her pass, uncertain, some of them frightened by a grief they didn't fully understand, others simply saddened by the visible absence of someone they'd come to respect.Corin asked me once, hesitant, whether Nyra was going to be alright. I didn't have an honest answer that wouldn't frighten a boy who still trusted adults to know things they didn't actually know.I watched Kade fray at the edges too, exhausted from weeks of gentle, pati
Kade's POVI left Riven waiting at the door longer than I should have, unable to make myself release Nyra's hand, unwilling to leave her alone with a silence I no longer trusted to simply pass on its own."Give me an hour," I told him finally. "Whatever Vaela has to say, it will still be true in an hour."Riven nodded, understanding, and withdrew without argument, and I stayed until the sun had fully risen, until Nyra finally, wordlessly, rose from the bed and walked toward the training yard alone, leaving me no choice but to follow at a distance, watching her the way I'd watch a wound I didn't know how to treat.That became the shape of the weeks that followed.She trained alone now, refusing Corin's tentative attempts to join her, refusing anyone's company at all, running through forms with a mechanical precision that had none of the fire I remembered from before. She ate alone too, when she ate at all, small amounts pushed listlessly around a plate until I stopped counting how many
Kade's POVThere was no council session called to discuss this funeral. No political fallout to manage, no fractured pack loyalty requiring careful navigation. Just grief, small and complete, gathering in the same courtyard where we'd buried her once already, months ago, in front of two hundred witnesses.This time, fewer than a dozen attended.Orlanna stood closest to the small grave, her hands folded, her expression carrying the particular exhaustion of a healer who had done everything possible and still lost. Riven stood beside her, silent, his jaw tight in the way it went whenever grief threatened to overwhelm his usual composure. Draven stood a little apart, close enough to be present, far enough to give Nyra whatever space she needed, understanding better than most exactly how grief could make even well-meaning nearness feel like an intrusion.Corin came too, uninvited but welcomed, holding the small carved wolf he'd offered Nyra weeks before, though this time he laid it gently
Kade's POVWe didn't go to Vaela that night. Riven understood, without needing to be told twice, that whatever message waited would still be waiting in the morning, and some things mattered more than urgency.I found Nyra back in our chamber hours later, sitting by the window the way she used to sit on the parapet, watching nothing, her hand resting absently against her own collarbone."It's different," she said, before I'd asked.I crossed the room and looked down at the mark, and understood immediately what she meant. The silver glow that had pulsed steady and warm since her return from death, through every crisis, every battle, every fragile moment of hope we'd stolen between disasters, had dimmed to something barely visible at all, a faint, exhausted flicker instead of the living light it had always carried before."Orlanna should see this," I said."Orlanna's already seen it. She doesn't have an explanation." Nyra's voice carried no anger, no grief even, just a flat, hollowed exh
Kade's POVI never said the words. Not once, in all the days that followed, not even in the private hours when grief and exhaustion stripped away every careful filter I usually kept between what I felt and what I let myself say aloud.I never said I told you so, and I understood, even as I bit the words back time after time, that my silence had become its own kind of accusation anyway.I found her three days after the loss, sitting alone in the small chapel where I'd once refused to let her body be moved to the crypt, her own hands wrapped tight around her knees, her eyes fixed on nothing."You should be resting," I said, though the words felt hollow even as I spoke them."I've done nothing but rest since it happened." Her voice carried none of its usual fire, flat and distant in a way that frightened me more than any argument could have. "Rest didn't save her, Kade. I don't know what resting now is supposed to accomplish."I sat beside her, careful, uncertain of my welcome in a way I
Nyra’s POV I was dreaming again, but this time, it wasn't just gory, confusing, repeated visions. No. It was much different. The forest floor was painted scarlet, a reflection of the moonlight, bloody red. As I walked across the woods, I felt like the trees were living, breathing even, and tryin
Kade’s POVIt's been 3 days since the attack from the deathly dark beings called Wraithborn. Ever since that night, Nyra has been unconscious. I've called in expert healers from around the quarter, yet none of them have been able to bring her back. They kept saying the same thing, "she'll heal, jus
Kade's POV"For someone who's always yapping about one thing or another, your silence is very unusual."She didn't utter a word. I'd been asking her the same questions since we met, but she hasn't bothered to answer any."What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?"She stood firmly in front of me, chin up,
Nyra's POV Boom!We heard an explosion outside, and the Earth beneath us shook. It felt like the Earth's bones were being shattered into pieces. The wolves howled in response, and claws were drawn; steel clashed against steel. It was a full-blown war; the wolves were ready to go aura for aura.I







