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She once found him asleep beneath a blood-soaked altar, the bruises still fresh on his throat, his hands bound behind him.
Lysara should've ended him then.
But she stood, watched… and wept instead.
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The night air in Ashengar reeked of wet stone and burning sage.
Lysara Vale stood alone on the ruined balcony of the Inquisitor Citadel, her hand brushing the cold edge of the iron rail, watching cinders float over the decaying city like wandering ghosts. Somewhere below, church bells tolled for a village slaughtered that morning—yet not a single body had been found. Only the sigil burned into every door: a crescent moon split by a sword. His mark.
She clutched the parchment tighter.
It had arrived with no messenger. Just wind and shadow, left on her chamber floor, sealed in wax the color of old blood. No words—just the sigil, and a mirror shard wrapped inside. The same kind used in blood-communion. The kind that allowed monsters to speak without being seen.
Her heart beat like a war drum. Still, she crushed the shard in her palm.
"Speak, Dren," she whispered.
The reflection stirred.
Mist coiled through the silver sliver of mirror, forming not his face—but his voice. Low, velvet-dark, amused.
"You came home, my little flame. I wasn't sure you'd still follow ashes."
Lysara didn't flinch. "I follow murder."
"Then you follow me."
She could almost see him behind her closed eyes: Dren Talovar, older now. No longer the thin boy she had spared in the rain-soaked ruins of Melquor, but a man wrapped in shadow, temptation, and blood. His voice alone threatened to unravel her. And he knew it.
"Did you get my gifts? I left petals in the mouths of your Inquisitors. Black roses. Our favorite."
"You killed them."
"They begged. One said your name while he choked."
"Liar."
"Do you still dream of me, Lysara?"
The question landed like a blade between her ribs.
She said nothing.
Across the continent, far beneath a ruined cathedral swallowed by vines and grief, Caldus Thorne stared at the twisted emblem scrawled across the altar floor. It shimmered with heat, then cracked, revealing a chamber sealed in holy iron. Kaelen watched silently beside him, blindfolded but alert.
"He's gathering them," Caldus muttered, sweat beading on his brow.
Kaelen tilted his head. "The cursed ones?"
"The chosen. The ruined. The damned. Whatever we are." Caldus stepped over the broken seal. "He's calling us together."
Meanwhile, in a frost-wrapped keep carved into the bones of the mountain, Valcian Myrrh, the Raven Prince, lit a candle before a glass tomb filled with ash.
He smiled as he heard the whispers rise.
"Lysara's flame flickers," the voice said, crawling through the candlelight.
He dipped his quill in blood. "Then it's time she sees the smoke."
In the mirror shard, Dren's voice dropped lower. No longer amused—dangerous now.
"I've shown you mercy before, Lysara. I even begged for your blade."
"And I spared you," she hissed. "Mistake I won't make twice."
"No. You loved me."
"I pitied you."
"You still do."
His words wrapped around her throat like silk and rope.
The reflection went dark.
Behind her, the bells tolled once more.
Back in the sanctum, Naeven Korven traced a glowing rune over her bare chest. Her fingers trembled. The old wound burned.
She still remembered the way Dren screamed when they were torn apart in the dungeons of Valaith. That scream still echoed in his sleep.
"Soon," she whispered. "We'll finish what they started."
Selene Mirthvale stood in the halls of the Oracles' Library, her mirror-masked face turned toward the stars. She saw everything. Lysara. Dren. Erydon, still cloaked in silence. And the threads binding them all.
"Break," she whispered to the glass, and it cracked.
Lysara stared at the mirror shard long after Dren's voice vanished.
The rage in her chest didn't die. But something darker had begun to bloom beneath it.
Not forgiveness. Not mercy.
Something worse.
Curiosity.