The silver mist curled around her ankles like living smoke, cool and endless, swallowing the horizon. The moon above was so close it ached to look at, its light sinking into her skin until her storm hummed beneath the surface like a restless animal.
Lyra stood trembling, barefoot on that strange plain, Kael on one side of her, Orion on the other. Both reached for her, both calling her name—two voices so different, yet tangled together in a knot she couldn’t undo.
Choose me.
The words overlapped, clashing, but it wasn’t just their voices she heard. Beneath it was something deeper, older. The storm itself. The bond of the moon. Fate.
Her pulse hammered as she staggered back, putting space between them. “What is this place?”
The mist rippled with laughter that wasn’t laughter. The ancien
