The Lycan King’s Broken Mate
And meanwhile, like a deep, constant motif, Nyra’s name pulses in every thought, as if the castle itself knows for whom its heart now beats.
Before the sun fully sets, I walk once more the three anchors of the circles: in the inner, the old moonstone, fine cracks across its surface, yet its light unbroken, only multiplied; in the middle, the silver star brought by Lunathiel, trembling faintly beneath my fingertip, giving no warmth yet soothing; at the outer, the carved sigil—simple crescent with three dots below—which I learned as a child, and now the stone breathes again beneath my hand, as though saying: “I am here.”