Touch of Shadows

The Hollow Sky

The first thing Theron felt was silence.

Not the kind that came after battle, when breath and heartbeat still filled the air—but a deeper quiet, as if the world had exhaled and forgotten how to breathe again.

He crouched beneath the roots of a fallen tree, shielding Lyra’s body with his own. The ground had stopped shaking only moments ago, and the air still smelled of scorched iron. Rain fell in slow, heavy drops—each one hissing where it struck the blackened soil.

The horizon glowed faintly orange.

Lyra stirred.

“Is it over?” she whispered.

Theron didn’t answer at first. He scanned the tree line, the ridges beyond. Everything looked… flattened. The forest that had stood between them and the forge was a smear of splintered trunks and drifting ash. Lightning still walked the clouds in long, dying arcs.

He finally said, “It’s quieter than I’d like.”

Lyra pushed herself up onto her elbows, her face pale in the dim light. The runes on her wrists were gone now—only faint scars remained. But her eyes were different. No longer the gray-blue of before; they glowed faintly from within, like stormlight trapped behind glass.

Theron noticed, but said nothing. Not yet.

He rose, brushing mud from his jacket, and checked the knife at his belt. The edge was nicked, the blade half-blackened from the heat. He tested it anyway. Still sharp enough.

“You shouldn’t move,” Lyra murmured.

He looked down at her. “You shouldn’t talk.”

That earned him the smallest hint of a smile. “Fair.”

When he offered his hand, she took it without hesitation. Her grip was stronger than he expected. Together, they climbed from the shelter of the tree roots and stepped into what had once been the northern pass.

The path was gone.

In its place stretched a vast scar of melted stone and glass, cooling under the rain. Steam drifted in white ribbons across the basin, and every few steps the earth cracked with soft, echoing pops. The air was thick with the metallic tang of ozone.

Theron’s jaw tightened. “She did it.”

Lyra nodded slowly, though her expression was unreadable. “The forge?”

“Gone,” he said. Then, softer: “Or sleeping.”

They moved carefully along what remained of the ridge, each step crunching over shards that glittered faintly under the stormlight. Here and there, pieces of armor lay half-buried in the mud—remnants of the riders, twisted beyond recognition. A single helm still smoked, its visor fused shut.

Lyra stopped beside it. “Do you think they were alive in the end?”

Theron crouched, studying the melted metal. “Alive isn’t the word I’d use.”

He touched the ground beside the helm. The soil was warm, pulsing faintly—as if the earth still remembered the heartbeat of the thing that had burned here.

“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “We’re still in its shadow.”

They followed what remained of the northern slope until the terrain began to shift. The ground here was uneven, carved into deep grooves by the force of the blast. At the base of one such trench, water pooled in long reflective sheets.

Lyra crouched and touched the surface. A ripple spread outward—and something answered.

For a brief second, the reflection didn’t show her face. It showed Aeryn’s.

Lyra gasped and stumbled back.

Theron caught her by the shoulder. “What?”

“I saw her.” Her voice trembled. “Aeryn. In the water.”

He frowned, glancing down. The pool was still again, showing only the fractured sky. “You hit your head harder than I thought.”

“I’m not imagining it,” Lyra said, more force in her voice now. “She’s alive.”

Theron hesitated. He wanted to believe that—wanted it more than he would admit—but the crater behind them said otherwise. Still, he’d seen too much in the borderlands to call anything impossible.

“Even if she is,” he said finally, “she won’t stay that way for long if we linger here.”

Lyra opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. Her gaze shifted to the horizon.

The rain had begun to thin, revealing the faint outline of the northern mountains. They rose like broken teeth against the clouds, jagged and sharp. Somewhere beyond them lay the border outposts, the last fragments of the Accord’s reach.

“Can we make it there?” she asked.

Theron adjusted the strap on his pack. “If we start now and nothing else tries to kill us—maybe.”

“Nothing else?”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “Optimism isn’t a skill they teach in the border guard.”

That earned him another small smile—brief, but real.

They walked.

For hours, the only sound was the soft crunch of glass and stone beneath their boots. The light changed slowly, from the forge’s dull orange afterglow to a washed-out gray that hinted at dawn. Every now and then, the wind carried strange echoes—metal striking metal, whispers that weren’t quite voices.

Lyra broke the silence first. “She saved me.”

Theron didn’t answer.

“I think she saved everyone,” Lyra went on, quieter now. “Even the ones who wanted her dead.”

He finally spoke. “Aeryn never cared much for saving people. She cared about stopping what shouldn’t exist. Sometimes the two look the same.”

Lyra thought about that for a long while. “Do you think she’ll come back?”

Theron’s jaw tightened. “Stormblood like hers doesn’t fade easy.”

They reached the edge of a ruined watchtower near dusk. The upper half had been ripped away by the blast, but the cellar beneath was mostly intact. Theron pried open the half-buried hatch and motioned her inside.

It was dark, but dry. The faint smell of old oil and burned parchment clung to the air.

Lyra sank against the wall, exhaustion finally catching up to her. “Do you ever stop moving?”

“Not until I’m dead,” he said, checking the perimeter.

She laughed weakly. “Comforting.”

He found a lantern, dented but functional, and lit it with a small spark from his flint. The warm light cast long shadows across the stone walls. Crude maps were still nailed there, most of them charred. A symbol had been burned into the largest one—the same sigil that had been carved into Lyra’s skin.

Her eyes widened when she saw it.

“That’s the mark they used on me.”

Theron studied the pattern—a spiral inside a broken circle. “It’s a convergence rune. Old style. It draws ley currents together.”

“Like a forge.”

He nodded grimly. “Exactly like one.”

Lyra swallowed hard. “Then they’ll try again.”

“They always do,” he said. “But now they’ve got less to build with.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. The rain outside had softened to a faint patter, and the sound of distant thunder rolled across the horizon.

Lyra’s eyelids grew heavy. “If she’s alive,” she murmured, “she’ll find us.”

Theron sat across from her, knife in hand, watching the shadows move. “If she’s alive,” he said quietly, “she’ll find whatever’s left of them first.”

She dreamed.

In her sleep, Lyra stood on the edge of a vast plain made of glass. Lightning moved beneath its surface like veins of fire. A figure walked toward her across the reflection, barefoot, cloaked in shadow.

“Aeryn?” Lyra called.

The figure didn’t answer. As it came closer, she saw its face was shifting—sometimes Aeryn’s, sometimes Kaela’s, sometimes a blur of both.

The voice that spoke was neither.

“You carry what she left behind.”

Lyra stepped back. “Who are you?”

“I am what remains when purpose burns away.” The figure’s eyes glowed faintly, forge-light and stormlight tangled together. “The forge is gone, but its heart remembers. It beats in you now.”

Lyra’s breath caught. “No. I—I’m not—”

The figure reached out, its hand made of molten glass. “You survived because the storm needed a vessel. She gave you that.”

When it touched her chest, heat flared through her body—bright, blinding.

She woke with a scream.

Theron was at her side instantly, blade drawn. “What happened?”

Lyra’s hands were shaking. Sparks danced across her fingers, tiny bolts of white-blue lightning that didn’t fade.

“I saw her,” she said, breath hitching. “And something else. It said the forge’s heart is inside me.”

Theron’s expression hardened. “Dreams lie.”

“This didn’t.”

He looked at the lightning crawling over her skin, the same light that had once lived in Aeryn’s eyes. For the first time since the blast, he had no answer.

The storm outside swelled, lightning flashing against the clouds like a heartbeat.

Lyra stared at her hands, then at him. “If it’s true… what happens to me?”

Theron sheathed his blade slowly. “Then we make damn sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

The wind moaned through the ruins above, carrying with it a distant sound—soft, rhythmic, and unmistakable.

A pulse.

The forge’s echo.

And in that moment, both of them knew:

It wasn’t over.