The forest didn’t speak.
It watched.
Lyra moved through it like a shadow, her steps uneven, her breath shallow. The god’s power curled inside her like smoke quiet now, but restless. Her palm still bled from the mirror’s shattering, the wound raw and pulsing with something ancient.
She didn’t know where she was going. Only that she couldn’t stay.
The trees whispered above her, their branches heavy with mist and memory. The air was thick with silence, the kind that came after something sacred had been broken.
She collapsed beside a stream, the water dark and fast. Her reflection shimmered in it splitting in two, shadows of the past, unfamiliar. She didn’t recognize the girl who had shattered the mirror. Who had seen a thousand lives and still couldn’t choose.
She pressed her palm to th
