---
She couldn't remember the last time she had seen the sun.
Not truly. Not the way it filtered through leaves or kissed rooftops in the morning haze. Here, beneath stone and silence, time didn't pass. It circled. Looped. Crawled through her mind like ash in her lungs.
The chamber was carved from obsidian veined with living glyphs. The floor pulsed when she breathed. The chains that bound her wrists and ankles were made of spirit iron—enchanted to suppress elemental flow, twist the inner core, distort memory.
It worked once.
It didn't anymore.
The pain had become background noise. Her true enemy now was the voice.
Not the one that screamed.
The one that whispered.
> Do you even know who you are without the seal?
Lyra didn't answer.
She didn't give it the satisfaction.
---
A figure stepped into the chamber—hooded, cloaked, mask like bone carved into a serpent's grin.
She recognized his gait now. Smooth, calculated. Like someone always stepping over glass.
High Inquisitor Malrec.
"You're awake earlier than expected," he said, voice slithering through the air. "The last stage begins at dusk. You should save your strength."
Lyra lifted her eyes. They no longer burned with fear.
Just fury.
"I should've let Kael kill you in Korr Vale."
He chuckled. "He tried. But he was sloppy. Still young. Still angry."
"You sound proud of that."
"Only of how predictable your kind are. Crowned children. Always thinking bloodline means destiny."
Lyra's fingers twitched. The binding chains pulsed.
"I know you've remembered," Malrec said. "It's written in your mana. You hum like a tuning rod to a storm."
"I remember enough."
"Then you know why we need you."
"You want to make me into a seal-breaker."
"We want to make you into yourself," he said.
Lyra laughed. Bitter. Hollow.
"Every time you say that, I want to stab you with your own arrogance."
"You won't have to," he said. "When the ninth fragment aligns, you'll understand. And you'll thank me."
He turned to leave.
But before his foot crossed the glyph-lined doorway, Lyra whispered something.
> "Six crowns fallen. One remained. That one now is ash and flame."
Malrec paused.
He turned his head slightly.
"Where did you hear that?"
Lyra smiled, slow and dangerous.
"From your mother."
---
Later, when the chamber dimmed and the torches died on their own, Lyra let herself collapse against the chains again.
Her wrists bled. Her muscles trembled. But her thoughts were razor-sharp.
She could feel it now.
The seventh seal inside her. Not unlocked. Not broken. But frayed.
And beneath it—something else.
Someone else.
A memory buried under pain. A voice she hadn't heard in years.
Her brother's.
> "You were born to outshine them all, Ly."
The world cracked a little.
A glyph beneath her right hand sparked.
She inhaled—sharp.
Then whispered a single word from their childhood.
> "Ignis."
The chain flared.
But didn't hold.
It cracked.
---
In the surveillance chamber above the ritual room, two cultists monitoring her bindings panicked.
"Her energy levels just spiked—"
"Seal surge. Unstable. She's remembering too fast—"
The wall to their right exploded.
Not physically.
Magically.
A shockwave of will and fire and grief laced with blood memory tore through the scrying glyphs. One of the cultists screamed. The other turned to flee—too late.
Chains fell in the chamber below.
---
Lyra stood.
Barefoot. Bleeding.
Alive.
The chamber reacted to her like a wounded animal. Runes pulsed red. Alarm crystals shattered. Essence leaked from the walls.
But she didn't move.
Not yet.
The ritual was incomplete.
But she wasn't.
She reached into the shredded collar of her torn robes and pulled out a crystal shard hidden near her heart. Small. Faintly glowing.
It pulsed in answer to a distant bond.
She closed her eyes.
And called out—not in words.
In memory.
---
Far away, deep in the Vale's training cavern, Riven froze mid-strike.
Something hit his spirit like a thunderclap.
A feeling.
A flash of flame through dark.
A voice he hadn't heard in weeks:
> "Riven."
---
Kael staggered in the corridor, one hand on the wall.
He felt it too.
Lyra wasn't gone.
Lyra was calling.
---
Back in the broken ritual chamber, Lyra stepped over the body of the masked scribe and looked up at the mirrored ceiling above the altar.
Her reflection smiled back.
Bloody.
Defiant.
Whole.
> "I'm coming home."
---