The desert swallowed his ashes before I could even whisper his name.
Only the wind remained — cold, sharp, and endless.
For a long time, I sat in the silence, the guardian's feather glowing faintly in my hand. It pulsed once, twice, then stilled. The sigil on my palm echoed it, like a second heartbeat buried beneath my skin.
I should've buried him. But how do you bury someone who was never truly alive?
Find the next fragment. Beneath the sea of bones.
His final words wouldn't leave me.
The Sea of Bones lay two hundred leagues east — where once an ocean had drowned a kingdom and left nothing but white sands and sun-bleached skeletons of leviathans. Sailors said the ruins of Tareth slept there, waiting for the blood of those foolish enough to seek them.
I wasn't foolish. Just cursed.
By nightfall, I reached the edge of the dead sea.
The air shimmered silver under a ghost moon, and the ground cracked like the ribs of something enormous. Bones stretched to the horizon — not human, not beast, but something in between.
The wind hissed through hollow skulls, whispering my name.
Lyra.
I froze.
That wasn't the wind.
It came from below.
The ground trembled under my boots, and the bones shifted, opening like a mouth. A deep fissure yawned beneath me, spilling pale mist that smelled of salt and death. For a moment, I saw the faint shimmer of water far below, reflecting the stars upside down — an ocean buried under the desert.
The drowned city.
I tightened my cloak and jumped.
The fall didn't kill me.
The water caught me, cold and heavy as memory. When I surfaced, I was in darkness — no sky, no wind, only ruins rising from beneath the waves like gravestones.
Pillars leaned against each other, covered in coral and strange runes that glowed faintly when my hand brushed them.
The feather from the guardian floated beside me, shedding soft light.
It drifted toward a submerged temple, its entrance shaped like an open eye.
I swam after it.
Inside, the water grew warm — too warm. I felt it slide across my skin like silk, tasting of iron and something ancient. When I reached the temple floor, the water drained away, leaving me standing in a vast chamber carved from black stone.
Murals lined the walls: gods with hollow faces, mortals kneeling before them, a woman who looked too much like me standing beside a golden throne.
At her feet, an inscription I couldn't read pulsed with faint red light.
"Return what was divided. Complete the immortal heart."
The second fragment was here.
I could feel it calling — a soft tug at the back of my mind, like desire disguised as thought.
Something moved behind me.
A whisper of fabric, the scrape of a heel.
I turned, blade drawn — and froze.
A woman stood in the doorway, her eyes silver like the moon. She wore white robes soaked to her knees, and her face was hauntingly familiar — not because I knew her, but because she looked like what I used to be before the fragment changed me.
Pure. Untouched. Mortal.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
She smiled faintly. "Your reflection. The part you left behind."
My pulse stumbled. "That's not possible."
"Oh, but it is. When you took the fragment, it split you. The mortal half seeks peace. The other—" she tilted her head— "hungers."
She stepped closer. Her reflection shimmered across the wet floor, but mine didn't.
When she reached out, her fingers brushed my cheek. Warm, soft, and unbearably real.
"You can still undo it," she whispered. "Leave the fragments. Bury what you stole. Be human again."
For a heartbeat, I almost believed her. The warmth of her touch seeped through me, calming the fire under my skin. My eyes fluttered shut.
Then the sigil burned. Hard.
Her warmth twisted into something sharp and wrong.
I opened my eyes — and saw her smile stretch, cracking at the corners. Her eyes turned black.
"You've already forgotten what it means to be human."
She lunged.
I barely ducked the blade that appeared in her hand — a dagger made of the same black crystal as my fragment. It sang when it cut the air.
I rolled aside, kicked her legs, but she moved with my own reflexes — every motion mirrored mine.
She was me.
"Stop!" I shouted, breathless. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because you're the infection," she hissed. "The gods sealed the fragments for a reason. You woke them. You'll wake him too."
"Who?"
She smiled again — a cruel, knowing smile. "The one who gave you that mark."
Her blade slashed across my arm. Pain flared; blood splattered the runes on the wall. They pulsed brighter — hungry. The chamber shuddered.
The murals twisted, the gods' faces splitting open into voids.
I grabbed her wrist, pressed my marked palm against her chest.
The sigil blazed white-hot.
She screamed — and dissolved into smoke.
The dagger clattered to the floor.
Where she'd stood, only her cloak remained, torn and burning at the edges.
The echo of her voice lingered, soft and venomous.
"You can't kill what you are."
The temple quieted.
The air was heavy, damp, and full of whispers. I fell to my knees, shaking. My reflection—my humanity—was gone, and I'd destroyed it myself.
But the chamber wasn't finished with me yet.
The water rippled again, forming shapes — faces, eyes, mouths. From the center of the pool rose a figure made entirely of glass-like water, its heart glowing red. The second fragment pulsed within it.
"Take it," the voice whispered — the same voice that spoke when I first touched the shard in the desert.
The god of dusk.
I approached slowly. "What are you?"
"Your maker," it said. "And your undoing."
As I reached out, the water shivered, forming hands that wrapped around mine.
When my fingers brushed the fragment, pain exploded through my body — not burning, but freezing, as if my soul was being rewritten.
Visions flooded me again:
Temples drowning. Lovers turned to stone. A goddess screaming as her heart was torn into six shards and cast across the world.
And beneath it all — his face.
The guardian. Alive. Kneeling before that same goddess as he ripped her heart apart.
He wasn't her protector.
He was her executioner.
The revelation slammed into me like thunder.
He lied.
I tore my hand back, gasping. The watery figure smiled, its features warping into his.
"Now you remember," it whispered. "You were her. You always were."
The chamber cracked open. Water surged upward, dragging me toward the surface. The last thing I saw before the world drowned again was the second fragment glowing inside my hand — and the reflection of my own face splitting into two.
When I woke, I was on the shore of the bone sea. The ruins had vanished beneath calm sand, as if they never existed.
The feather was gone.
But the dagger remained — and the second fragment, fused with the first, carved new veins of gold across my skin.
The horizon burned red with sunrise. In the distance, black shapes moved — riders, cloaked, their banners marked with the symbol of the Pale Flame.
They'd found me again.
I stood, the wind catching my hair, blood still dripping from my arm.
The fragments pulsed together, whispering like a heartbeat too loud to ignore.
And beneath that whisper, another voice rose — one I shouldn't have been able to hear anymore.
"You think I lied to you?"
"You think you understand what you are?"
"Come find me, Lyra… before the gods do."
My pulse quickened.
The voice wasn't memory.
It was him.
The guardian was alive.
🔥 End of Chapter 3 – The Drowned City of Tareth