The darkness tasted like silver ash.
Lyra stumbled through it, each step sending ripples through the nothingness beneath her feet. Every breath burned as though she were inhaling light itself.
Selene’s words still echoed in her skull.
One of your loves will die at dawn.
“No,” she whispered, clutching her chest. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Somewhere deep inside her, she felt the faint pulse of her bond — the thrum of Kael’s fire, Lucien’s shadow, and even Ronan’s stormlight, tangled together in a thread that shouldn’t exist. It was thin, trembling… but it was still there.
And she followed it.
The void twisted around her as if alive. Shapes emerged — ghostly echoes of memories. The night Kael rejected her. The way Lucien’s hands had trembled when he first touched her. Ronan’s sile
