The scent of old ash clung to Lyra's skin as she jolted awake. Her breath came in ragged waves, her pulse thudding like war drums in her ears. The room around her—the same stone chamber carved into the cliffs of Hollowmist—was dim, the torches along the wall reduced to dying embers. Yet it felt... unfamiliar. Like something sacred had been broken in her sleep.
She reached for her wrist, fingers trembling. Nothing marked it, yet she felt it—a heat buried deep beneath her skin, pulsing in rhythm with something that did not belong to her. Her magic, once obedient and sharp, curled and flickered like it was caught in a storm.
"You've seen it, haven't you? The dream. The blood. The fall."
The figure's words clawed at her memory like talons. She had seen something. She just didn't know what.
She forced herself to her feet. Outside, Hollowmist was quiet, but not peacefully so. The air was too still, like it was watching her, waiting. The whispers hadn't returned since the vision—neither had the ghostly voice—but the silence didn't feel like safety. It felt like a breath held too long.
And deep in her gut, Lyra knew: the veil had shifted.
—
Across the shattered mirror of realms, Raven stood beneath a silver sky that dripped crimson light. The blood moon—an omen rarely seen—hung above the ruins of the Obsidian Court like a curse resurrected. He didn't remember walking here. His body had moved on instinct, drawn by something older than memory.
The air here smelled like burning pine and iron. The scent twisted into something faintly familiar—lavender and thunder. A contradiction. A warning.
"She's waking," murmured a voice behind him. It wasn't real. Couldn't be. But he turned anyway.
No one.
He wasn't losing control. He couldn't. That was the one thing he'd sworn to his father—to the council. That the darkness in him would stay sealed, buried under blood oaths and silence.
But ever since he'd seen her—not seen her, felt her—in the in-between, everything had begun to unravel. Dreams that weren't his. Magic he hadn't used. And a name he'd never heard, yet kept whispering to himself:
Lyra.
—
Lyra wandered into the Archive Hall under the cover of dusk. Her footsteps echoed like warnings against the marble, and the ancient tomes blinked awake in her presence. She should have been forbidden to enter without a seer's blessing, but no wards stopped her this time. Another sign that the world had tilted.
She found the book she didn't know she was searching for. Its spine was charred, its title long erased. When she opened it, the pages bled ink like they were still being written.
A sketch stared back at her.
Not just a sketch—a face.
Sharp eyes, dark and unreadable. Hair like shadows clinging to dusk. A cruel mouth carved by fate. But the eyes—they weren't cruel. They were tired. Ancient. Alive.
She gasped and stepped back.
The ink bled faster. A new line formed below the drawing:
"He is not of your world. And yet, your world will burn for him."
—
In the ruins, Raven's hand grazed the stones. Cold, and yet they pulsed.
A whisper moved through the soil beneath him.
She's watching you too.
His breath caught.
He saw nothing—but felt it.
A thread.
A tug in his chest, soft but relentless. Not a command. Not a curse.
A connection.
And it pulled.
—
Later that night, Lyra stood at the edge of Hollowmist, eyes drawn to the shimmer of the veil. It was flickering again—more now than ever before. Like it wanted to break. Like it wanted her to see what was on the other side.
She didn't step forward. Not yet.
But she didn't step back either.
Because somewhere beyond that trembling veil, someone else had felt the same pull.
And the threads between them, forbidden and fragile, had just begun to tighten.