로그인Lyra POV
The trip back to the Sunken Grove was like a funeral without a body. The man being carried between Jake and Elara was a walking corpse. He was a shell with a scary absence that made the air around him feel thin and fragile. Every step away from SwiftRun territory took me deeper into a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from.
Kenny didn't say anything, and a small, scared ghost held on to my hand. He wouldn't look at Kael. That painful, searing rejection was a new scar on his young soul. My heart felt like it had been ripped apart, and every beat was a painful reminder of what I had lost. The silver-and-gold bond that had kept me steady and guided me was gone. There was a huge hole in its place, and the silence was so deep that it hurt my chest.
Lyra’s POVThe sound I made tore the sky open.It ripped out of my chest like the world itself had reached inside me and demanded proof that I still belonged to it. The breath burned. It scraped my throat raw as it forced its way out, violent and uncontrollable, and for a heartbeat I thought I was dying all over again.Then the ground caught me hard.My palms hit first, my knees slammed down next. My chest followed, and the air punched out of my lungs so fast my vision went white. I choked, dragging air back into myself in broken gasps that tasted like ash, light, and living earth.I was alive.The realization hit harder t
POV: Aiden“The texts never mentioned a child.”The words left my mouth before I could stop them. They sounded wrong in the quiet archive, too loud, too alive for a room filled with dead history.I stood alone between towering shelves of stone and iron, ancient tomes stacked so tightly they looked like part of the walls themselves. Dust clung to my hands and sleeves, my eyes burned from days without real rest, but I did not care because sleep felt undeserved.I pressed my fingers against the open page again, reading the same line for the fourth time.No record of inheritance through blood and bond, no mention of offspring, no deviation.“All of you
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.







