The Hollow was quiet.Too quiet.For days after sealing the Rift, the forest had fallen into an unnatural stillness. The trees barely swayed. No wolves howled beneath the moon. The wind passed through the valley like a ghost, carrying the scent of old stone and distant fires.Elira knew better than to trust silence.It had always been the prelude to something elseâchange, arrival, or loss.She stood at the edge of the reflecting pool in the heart of the Hollow, her fingertips brushing the waterâs surface. The moonâs reflection wavered, though the wind did not blow.Theron approached, wrapped in his dark cloak, face half-lit by torchlight.âItâs too still,â he said.âI know.âNaeriaâs voice rang out behind them. âThe stars have stopped moving again. They held steady for three nights.ââThat hasnât happened sinceâŚâ Elira turned.âSince the beginning,â Naeria finished grimly. âSince your return from Aeltharuun.âA beat of silence.Then Naeria continued, voice lower, more reverent.âThis
The fire wouldnât go out.Elira had tried to smother it with magic, with silence, even with sleepâbut still it burned in her chest. Not pain. Not sickness. Just a persistent heat, slow and steady, like her very blood was responding to something far away.She paced the perimeter of the Ember Court at dawn, wind thick with ash and tension. Every step she took echoed too loudly in the stone corridors. Every breath carried the scent of the old blade fragment that pulsed inside her satchel like a second heartbeat.The Rift was stirring.And it was calling her name.---Theron found her in the outer garden, eyes locked on the shifting horizon.âYou didnât sleep.ââI canât,â she replied without turning. âEvery time I close my eyes, I see it.ââThe Rift?âShe nodded.He took a step closer. âThen we face it. Together.âElira exhaled. âTheron⌠What if going to it breaks me?ââWhat if not going to it breaks the world?âShe met his gaze.There were no answersâonly choices.And Elira had made hers
The sky was no longer familiar.Since her return, Elira had watched the stars every night, and they were shifting. Slowly, deliberately. One by one, constellations twisted into new alignments. Ancient maps turned into riddles. The Hollow pulsed differently now. Not wrong, just changedâlike it was stretching in anticipation of something long denied.The world was waiting for a name.And it was hers.---In the weeks following her return from Aeltharuun, Elira had become something more than a guardian.Not royalty, though the Seabound called her their queen reborn.Not a goddess, though magic bent toward her like gravity.She was simply Eliraâflame-keeper, tidewalker, and balance-bound soul. The Hollow accepted her more fully now, allowing her to access its deeper layersârunes that hadnât glowed for centuries now lit beneath her fingers. Her voice, when raised in command, echoed through stone and shadow.But with power came disruption.Spirits stirred uneasily.The elder wolves, once di
The waves rolled in a rhythm older than time, carrying with them the murmur of forgotten gods. Aeltharuun pulsed with quiet life beneath the starlit waters above, each ripple of the ocean sky overhead reminding Elira that she was no longer in any realm she had known.She stood on the islandâs high ridge, barefoot, wind cutting through her cloak as sea-mist clung to her skin. The Seabound had led her to a place they called The Heart of the Drowned. It was not a place of worshipâit was a place of reckoning.Below her, nestled in the center of the isleâs lagoon, floated a massive circular platform of blackstone and pearl. Sigils carved into its edges glowed faintly in time with her pulse. It was calling to her. Not in words, but in sensationâa magnetic pull in her bones.âYou must go alone,â said the Seabound leader, who had since revealed her name: Ysvienne.âI expected that,â Elira replied.Ysvienne studied her. âOnce you enter, the memory will unfold. You must walk its path. But know
The dreams began again.But this time, they were not filled with fire or shadow.This time, they were wet.Salt kissed her skin in sleep. Winds howled over endless waves. And somewhere beyond a shifting sea, a voice called her nameânot in warning, not in longing, but in invitation.âEliraâŚâWhen she woke, the scent of brine lingered in the air, and the horizon was no longer still.Something had changed.---Three days had passed since the final Blood Moon faded.Three days of calm.Too calm.The pack had settled back into cautious rhythmâguard rotations, spell maintenance, training drills. But beneath the surface, everyone felt it: the shifting weight, the way magic tugged slightly to the east now, toward the unseen ocean beyond the Shadow Range.Theron stood at the edge of the southern bluff with Kael and Rowan at his side. Below them, the last of the Hollow-Scar trees were being cleared. The land was healing. But the sky no longer sang with the same voice.âShe hasnât slept,â Kael s
The forest had gone quiet.Not silentâbut reverent. The kind of hush that clung to sacred places, like breath held before the divine. As the final night of the Blood Moon reached its zenith, even the wind seemed to bend around the sacred grove. The flames around the circle shimmered, caught between gold and crimson, flickering like they recognized the soul standing within them.Elira stood tall, her skin luminous under the moonâs fierce gaze. The markings along her arms had deepened, no longer the thin runes of the Hollow, but wider, rooted symbols pulsing with energy older than her lineage. Her eyes had changed tooâonce soft starlight, now moonsilver rimmed in ember.And yetâshe was still Elira.Still the woman who had burned for justice.Still the girl who had once wanted to run.But now she carried the weight of something far greater.Something elemental.Theron stood just behind her, hands curled into fists, jaw set as he watched the Revenants surrounding the grove. They moved slo