The night before the prophecy

The Hollow District never truly slept.

Even at midnight, the streets breathed. Not with peace, but with hunger.

Blue fire lanterns swung above crooked alleyways, their flames hissing against the cold mist crawling up from the canal. Magic sellers shouted over one another from crowded stalls. A woman with silver eyes sold bottled dreams beside a boy hawking cursed lockets that pulsed like tiny hearts. Somewhere deeper in the maze of stone and shadow, something growled from beneath a sewer grate.

Lyra Noctis pulled her hood lower and adjusted the velvet cloth over her little round table.

Her stall was laughable compared to the others. A cracked crystal orb. Three moon cards. A brass candleholder with only one candle left.

Still, people came. Because even in a city like Velmora, where floating palaces glittered above the clouds, fear made fools of everyone.

And fear paid.

“Tell me if my husband is cheating.”

The woman across from her smelled of expensive rose oil and old bitterness.

Lyra took the woman’s hand, more out of performance than need. The vision hit anyway.

A flash. A red-haired man in silk robes. A servant girl. A necklace dropped beneath a bed.

Lyra blinked. “He already has,” she said quietly.

The woman went pale. Then furious. Then she slammed three silver crowns on the table and stormed away.

Lyra stared after her. Another truth sold. Another future set in stone.

She hated how easy it had become.

By now she knew better than to doubt what came to her. Every vision she spoke aloud happened. Not might happen. Would happen.

It was why she stayed hidden in the Hollow, where nobody asked too many questions.

The bell above her stall chimed. Someone new sat down.

He wore black. Not ordinary black, but the kind rich men wore when they wanted the world to know they owned shadows themselves. His gloves were leather. His face half-hidden behind a silver mask.

But it was the stillness around him that unnerved her. The market noise seemed to bend away from him.

“Read my future,” he said.

His voice was low. Smooth. Controlled. The kind of voice that made lies sound holy.

Lyra forced a smirk. “You look like the kind of man who already writes his own future.”

A pause. Then the faintest curve of amusement. “Humor me.”

She reached for his gloved hand. The second her skin brushed leather, the world split open.

Moonlight. A tower window exploding inward. Black arrows. Blood spreading across white marble. The man before her falling to his knees. A voice whispering

The blood moon takes the Vale heir.

Lyra jerked back so hard her chair nearly toppled.

Her breath came shallow. Cold. Sharp.

“You die,” she whispered.

The masked man didn’t move.

“Before the next blood moon,” she said, staring at him. “You’ll be assassinated in your own tower.”

Silence.

Then footsteps. Heavy. Precise. Men in dark uniforms emerged from the fog, surrounding her stall.

Lyra’s heart stopped.

The masked stranger stood and removed the silver mask.

The entire market gasped.

Cassian Vale.

Everyone in Velmora knew that face. The sharp cheekbones, the cold gray eyes, the expression that had graced the covers of empire journals and financial spell ledgers since he inherited the Vale fortune at twenty-three.

The youngest billionaire in the realm. Owner of the crystal railways. The sky ports. Half the magical banks in the empire.

And currently staring at her like she had just become the most dangerous thing in his world.

“Take her,” he said.

Lyra stood so fast the chair crashed behind her. “You can’t just”

A guard seized her wrist.

Cassian leaned closer, his voice a quiet blade. “If what you saw is true, little oracle, then your future belongs to me now.”