The stars bled red over the forest of the Hollow Vale.
A strange wind whispered through the trees as Maria stood at the cliffs overlooking the ancient ravine below. Mist rose in tendrils, curling like serpents. The Tribunal had ended, but something in her soul had only just begun unraveling
She hadn’t told anyone—not Joseph, not Luca—that after the Tribunal, the ancestral stone had whispered another name.
Nyra
It wasn’t just a stranger’s name. It was hers.
Or… what she could have been.
The First Luna had shown her flickers—visions half-drenched in smoke and screams. A cradle. A girl with Maria’s eyes. A mother whispering lullabies in a language long since lost.
And then a forked path.
Maria had been chosen. But someone else had been created. Who came back to claim her destiny and
