The world woke up to a terrifying quiet. The hiss of steam, the hum of Aetheria, and the clatter of clockwork had vanished. In Aethelgard, the great turbines stood like skeletal corpses, and the floating palaces had crashed into the mud. Civilization hadn't ended, but its crutches had been kicked away.
Lyra stood at the edge of the blast crater in the North. The lightning storm was gone. The silver sphere was gone. All that remained was a vast, circular scar in the ice and a single, blackened glass dagger lying in the frost.
"He's not dead," she whispered to the wind, clutching the dagger to her chest. "A man who dies twice doesn't leave so easily."
She turned her back on the North. She had no empire to serve, no Nest to return to. She only had a ghost to find.