LOGINPOV: Lyra
I did not fall into darkness; the darkness folded itself around me and learned my name.
“Lyra.”
The voice did not echo, It did not vibrate, It simply existed, pressed against my thoughts like breath against glass.
I opened my eyes or perhaps I remembered that I had eyes.
Light surrounded me, but it was not light as I understood it. It was pearl-white, fluid, breathing in slow, deliberate pulses. The walls curved inward and outward, as though the space itself had lungs. Every pulse answered the next, a steady rhythm that brushed against my skin and then withdrew, patient and alive.
I lifted my hands.
POV: Kenny“I was not brave, I was afraid.”That was the first thing I remembered saying, though I did not know who I said it to.My eyes were closed, but I could still see. The dark around me was not empty, It moved, breathed, listened. Every time I tried to drift away, something nudged me back, as if the darkness itself did not want me to sleep.“Open them,” a voice said.It did not sound like mama or papa, It did not sound like anyone.“I do not want to,” I whispered.“You already did,” the voice replied.I opened my eyes, light and dark twisted together above me, folding and unfolding l
POV: KennyMama says brave does not mean you are not scared; it means you walk anyway.“I am scared,” I told Daddy.Kael’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, then loosened again. He did not look at me at first, he was watching the horizon, the cracked mountains of the Dead Lands stretching like broken teeth beneath a sky that never quite decided to be day or night.“You should be,” he said at last. “This place eats Kings.”I nodded slowly. “It tried to eat Mama.”His jaw clenched. “But it will not touch you.”&
POV: LyraI had become the cage, but cages rust.I felt it first as fatigue, the kind that did not belong to muscle or bone. It settled into thought itself, making each moment heavier than the last. The prison still breathed around me, pearl-white walls pulsing steadily, but the rhythm was no longer effortless. Each beat lagged, like a heart forcing itself to continue long after it should have rested.I pressed my palm against the living light.It trembled.“So,” I murmured, “this is how it begins.”The Void did not answer immediately. It had learned patience. That, more than anything, frightened me.
POV: KaelHope returned the moment the medallion screamed.It was not a sound meant for ears, It ripped through my chest, through bone and instinct and bond, sharp enough to make my knees buckle. I staggered forward, fingers clawing at the air as the medallion at my throat flared hot, its glow warping from steady silver into something jagged and uneven.Lyra.The song was wrong.I barely had time to register the distortion before Darius struck.Steel met steel in a spray of sparks, the impact reverberating up my arms. He had been waiting for the distraction of course he had. Darius never fought fair, he fought when it hurt most.
POV: The VoidShe thought mercy was a chain, but chains can be studied.At first, I was still.This is not the same as silence, stillness is an act, a decision. I folded myself inward and allowed the prison to close, allowing the walls of light and intention to press against my vastness. The medallion did not crush me. It contained me, the way a cup contains the sea only because the sea permits it.Lyra believed she had won by offering herself.She did not understand that sacrifice is a language I speak fluently.I observed her.That was the first change.
POV: AidenI survived treason, exile, and guilt, but survival has never felt like forgiveness.The healers said I was lucky.They said the stones should have crushed my ribs completely, that Corvin’s magic should have stopped my heart outright, that most wolves would have bled out before help arrived. They spoke in careful tones, as if luck was something fragile they might shatter if they named it too loudly.I did not feel lucky, I woke each day with the same image burned behind my eyes.Kenny’s hand slipping from mine.I lay on a narrow cot in the west wing infirmary, staring at the cracked ceiling while the smell of ant







