The screaming started before she was awake.
It ripped through the tower like something alive, bouncing off stone walls and stained glass, crawling under doors and into dreams. In the chambers below, other Seers groaned and rolled over, pulling pillows over their heads. In the halls, novices froze mid-step, their hands going to their ears. In the kitchens, a pot of morning porridge boiled over because the cook forgot she was holding it.
Lyra couldn't hear any of that.
She was still inside the vision.
---
Five skies, tearing apart like old cloth.
Dragons falling, wings dissolving, their screams soundless and terrible.
A girl—young, maybe her age, maybe younger—standing in fire with a blade that shone like silver lightning. The girl's eyes were gray like storm clouds, and she was afraid, and she was fighting anyway, and Lyra was her and not her, watching and being watched, and—
The girl looked up. Looked directly at Lyra through the flames. Opened her mouth to speak—
Lyra hit the floor hard.
She lay there, cheek pressed against cold stone, her nightclothes soaked with sweat, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. The room came back slowly—the narrow bed with its tangled sheets, the window showing gray pre-dawn light, the stacks of books and papers that covered every surface. Home. Safe. Real.
Her throat was raw. She'd been screaming again.
"Three nights in a row."
The voice came from the doorway. Lyra didn't move. Couldn't move. Her body was still remembering how to be a body instead of a witness to apocalypse.
Mira crossed the room and knelt beside her. She was old—one of the oldest Seers in the tower, her hair white as winter clouds, her face a map of years—but her movements were quick and sure. She pressed a cup of water into Lyra's hand and waited.
Lyra drank. The water was cold and clean and helped remind her where she was. Stone floor. Morning light. The smell of dust and old paper and the herbs Mira burned in her chambers to keep the headaches away.
"The same vision?" Mira asked.
Lyra nodded. Her voice came out rough. "The girl. The blade. The fire."
"Anything new?"
The girl looked at me. Lyra closed her eyes. "No. Same as always."
Mira was quiet for a moment. Then she helped Lyra sit up, leaning her against the bed frame. "You need to eat something. And bathe. You smell like fear."
"I always smell like fear."
"More than usual." Mira's eyes, pale blue and sharp as broken glass, studied her face. "This one's getting worse, isn't it? Closer."
Lyra didn't answer. She didn't have to.
---
The Tower of Seers rose from the mists like a finger pointing at heaven.
It was the oldest structure in the Seer Realm, built before the Shattering by hands that remembered a world that was whole. Its stones had been quarried from mountains that no longer existed, carried by roads that had crumbled to dust, fitted together by masons whose names were forgotten. The tower had seen empires rise and fall, watched kings and queens come to beg for visions of their futures, endured storms that should have leveled it and wars that should have burned it.
It would probably outlast them all.
Lyra had lived there her whole life. She knew its secrets—the hidden staircases that spiraled between floors, the windows that opened onto views of impossible landscapes, the chambers where the oldest Seers slept and dreamed and occasionally woke to speak prophecies that no one understood. She knew which floorboards creaked and which stones held warmth from the sun and which corridors to avoid after dark because the visions there were too strong, too loud, too much.
She also knew that the tower was slowly dying.
Not in any way outsiders would notice. The walls still stood. The magic still flowed. But the older Seers whispered about it in the evenings, when they thought the young ones weren't listening. The foundations were weakening. The connections between stones were fraying. Something was wrong with the deep magic that had held the tower together for millennia, and no one knew how to fix it.
Lyra thought about that as she made her way down the spiral staircase, one hand on the cold stone wall for balance. About dying towers and falling dragons and a girl with gray eyes who looked at her through fire.
About what it meant that the visions were getting closer.
---
The bathing chamber was in the east wing, fed by a hot spring that ran deep beneath the tower. Steam rose from the pool's surface, carrying the sharp smell of minerals. Lyra lowered herself into the water slowly, letting the heat soak into muscles that had clenched tight during the night.
She was alone. Most Seers bathed in the evenings, not at dawn. She floated in the warm silence and tried to empty her mind.
It didn't work. It never worked.
The visions came whether she wanted them or not. They'd started when she was six—small things at first, glimpses of the immediate future, a falling book before it fell, a broken cup before it broke. Her teachers had been excited. A strong Seer, they said. Gifted. Special.
They stopped saying that when the visions turned dark.
By the time she was ten, she was seeing deaths. By twelve, disasters. By fifteen, she couldn't sleep through the night without waking at least once, heart pounding, mouth open around a scream. The other young Seers avoided her. The older ones watched her with something that might have been pity or might have been fear.
Only Mira stayed. Mira, who was old enough to remember things no one else remembered, who looked at Lyra's visions with calm eyes and never flinched, who said things like "the gift is heavy" and "you were born for something" and other words that were supposed to be comforting but mostly just felt like weight.
Lyra ducked under the water.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but warmth and silence and the muffled sound of her own heartbeat. No visions. No fire. No girl with gray eyes.
She came up gasping.
---
The archives were in the tower's deepest level, below even the chambers where the eldest Seers slept. Lyra had to pass three checkpoints to reach them, each one guarded by Seers who looked at her with those familiar expressions—curiosity, wariness, the particular tension of people who'd heard about her visions and weren't sure what to expect.
She was used to it.
The archives themselves were a maze of shelves stretching into darkness, each one crammed with scrolls and books and tablets and things that weren't quite any of those. Dust hung in the air like fog. The only light came from floating crystals that drifted slowly through the space, their glow soft and uneven.
Mira was already there, sitting at a table buried under piles of documents. She looked up when Lyra approached and gestured at the chair across from her.
"Eat first."
A plate sat at the empty place—bread, cheese, an apple sliced thin. Lyra sat and ate without tasting, her eyes scanning the papers spread across the table. Old writing. Diagrams. Maps of things that didn't exist anymore.
"What are you looking for?" she asked around a mouthful of bread.
"Anything." Mira pushed a scroll toward her. "This one's from before the Shattering. Talks about 'convergence events'—times when the boundaries between realms grow thin. Sound familiar?"
Lyra unrolled the scroll carefully. The paper was brittle with age, the ink faded to brown. She squinted at the words, her Seer's instincts reaching for meaning beyond the text.
"Something's coming," she said slowly. "Something that's been waiting. The boundaries aren't just thin—they're breaking."
Mira nodded. "That matches what the others are seeing. Not the same vision as yours, but pieces. Fragments. A dragon in the Earth Realm. A star falling. The old magic waking up." She leaned back, rubbing her eyes. "Something's happening, Lyra. Something big. And I think—" She stopped.
"You think what?"
Mira looked at her for a long moment. Then she said, quietly, "I think you're not seeing a warning. I think you're seeing an invitation."
Lyra's hand tightened on the scroll. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know yet." Mira stood, moving to a different shelf. "But I've been alive a long time. Long enough to know that when one Seer starts having the same vision over and over, and that vision involves a specific person—" She pulled down a heavy book, its binding cracked and peeling. "—that person is probably going to show up."
"A girl with a silver blade."
"A girl with a silver blade who looked at you through fire." Mira brought the book to the table and opened it carefully. "What did she say? In the vision?"
The girl looked up. Looked directly at Lyra through the flames. Opened her mouth to speak—
"I don't know," Lyra said. "I always wake up before she speaks."
Mira was quiet for a moment. Then she turned the book around so Lyra could see it.
The page showed a drawing—old, stylized, but unmistakable. Two figures standing back to back, one holding a blade that shone with light, the other with hands raised as though seeing something invisible. Above them, dragons circled. Below them, shadows gathered.
"Prophecy of the Two," Mira said. "Also called the Metal and Sight prophecy. It's been dismissed as legend for centuries. The consensus among scholars was that it referred to something that already happened, back before the Shattering. But—" She tapped the drawing. "Look at the blade."
Lyra looked. The blade in the drawing was silver, shining, almost alive. It looked exactly like the blade in her visions.
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I." Mira closed the book. "But I think you're going to have to. Soon."
---
The rest of the day passed in a haze.
Lyra read through the materials Mira gave her—old prophecies, historical accounts, fragments of texts that had been banned and burned and somehow survived. Most of it was impenetrable, written in languages she barely knew or referring to events she couldn't place. But pieces kept jumping out at her. A description of a blade forged from "sky-metal." A reference to "the empty one who will be filled." A warning about "the veiled sovereign" who waited in shadows for the moment of reunion.
Her head ached by evening, a dull throb behind her eyes that meant she'd been using her gift too much. She pushed through it anyway, because stopping meant sleeping, and sleeping meant visions, and visions meant waking up screaming with her throat raw and her heart trying to escape.
But eventually Mira made her stop. Made her eat. Made her climb the spiral stairs to her chamber and lie down on her narrow bed and close her eyes.
"Try to rest," Mira said from the doorway. "Real rest. No reaching. No seeking. Just sleep."
"Easy for you to say."
Mira's smile was sad. "Child, I haven't had a vision in thirty years. My gift died along with everything else I loved. Sometimes I think that's worse than seeing." She pulled the door partly closed. "Sleep, Lyra. Tomorrow we'll try again."
The door clicked shut.
Lyra lay in the darkness and listened to the tower settle around her. The creak of old stones. The whisper of wind through cracks she'd never found. The distant murmur of other Seers, other dreams, other fears.
She thought about the girl with gray eyes. About what she might say, if the vision ever let her speak. About whether she was real, somewhere in one of the other realms, going about her life unaware that a stranger dreamed of her every night.
She thought about the blade. About sky-metal and empty ones and prophecies that refused to stay buried.
And eventually, despite everything, she slept.
---
The girl stood in fire.
Not burning—standing in it like it was water, like it was air, like it belonged to her and she to it. The blade in her hand shone silver-bright, casting light that pushed back the shadows gathering at the edges of the vision.
Lyra watched from somewhere outside, somewhere safe, somewhere—
The girl looked up. Gray eyes met hers across the flames. And this time, this time, her mouth opened and words came out.
"Find me."
The voice was not a voice. It was heat and steel and desperation and hope, all tangled together into something that broke Lyra's heart just to hear it.
"Find me before—"
The fire swallowed her.
---
Lyra woke screaming.
But this time, she remembered what the girl said.
---
She was at Mira's door before she was fully awake, pounding with both fists, her voice raw and urgent. "Mira! Mira, wake up!"
The door opened. Mira stood there in her sleeping robes, her white hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes sharp despite the hour. "What?"
"She spoke. The girl in the vision. She spoke."
Mira pulled her inside, sat her down, pressed water into her hands. "What did she say?"
" 'Find me.' " Lyra's voice shook. " 'Find me before—' And then the fire took her. I don't know before what. I don't know where. But she's real, Mira. She's real and she needs help and I have to—"
"You have to breathe." Mira's hands were steady on her shoulders. "You have to think. If she's real, she's in one of the other realms. Probably Earth, based on the old texts—Earth Realm is where metal-workers live, where blades are forged. But we don't know how to reach her. The boundaries between realms have been sealed since the Shattering."
"There must be a way."
"There might be." Mira's expression was strange—hope and fear and something else, something Lyra couldn't name. "There are old stories. Passages that open when the boundaries thin. Places where the realms touch. If your visions are getting stronger, if the boundaries really are breaking—" She stopped, thinking. "We need to consult the Council. This is beyond us."
"The Council won't listen." Lyra had been to Council meetings. Had sat in the back while old Seers debated the meaning of prophecies they'd never seen, dismissed visions they couldn't understand, protected their comfortable certainties against anything that might disrupt them. "They'll say I'm imagining things. They'll say the old prophecies are myths. They'll—"
"They'll do what they always do." Mira's voice was tired. "But we have to try. If the girl is real, if she's in danger, if the veiled sovereign is waking—" She shook her head. "We have to try."
---
The Council chamber was at the tower's peak, a circular room with windows on all sides showing the stars and the void beyond. Nine Seers sat in a ring, their faces ancient and smooth and unreadable. Lyra stood in the center, Mira beside her, and tried not to shake.
"Repeat your vision," the eldest Council member said. Her name was Serath, and she had been old when Mira was young. Her eyes were milk-white with the blindness that came to some Seers late in life, but Lyra knew she saw more than anyone in the room.
Lyra repeated it. The five skies. The burning dragons. The girl with gray eyes and silver blade. The words she'd spoken: Find me before—
"And you believe this girl is real?" Serath asked. "Not a symbol? Not a manifestation of your own fears?"
"I've been having this vision for months," Lyra said. "It's always the same. Always her. Always that blade. It's not a symbol. It's a message."
"A message from whom?"
"I don't know. From her? From fate? From the Core?" Lyra's voice rose despite herself. "Does it matter? Something's coming. The boundaries are breaking. Dragons are appearing in realms where they haven't been seen for centuries. And there's a girl out there who needs help, who's going to be part of whatever's coming, and you're sitting here asking if she's real?"
Silence.
Serath's blind eyes seemed to look through her. "You are young," she said finally. "Young and powerful and frightened. I remember what that feels like, though it has been long years since I felt it." She turned her head slightly, as though listening to something only she could hear. "The boundaries are thinning. That much is true. We have felt it in the tower's foundations, in the weakening of the old magic. Something is coming. That much is also true."
"Then—"
"But whether your girl is part of it, or merely a symptom of your own troubled mind—" Serath shrugged, a minute movement of ancient shoulders. "That we cannot know. Visions are not always what they seem. The gift is not always a blessing."
"I know what I saw."
"I know you believe you know." Serath gestured, a small motion of her hand. "Go. Rest. We will consider your words."
"That's it?"
"That is all we can offer." Serath's voice was final. "The Council does not act on the visions of one young Seer, however powerful. If the boundaries continue to thin, if more signs appear, we will reconvene. Until then—" She turned away. "Go."
Lyra stood frozen, rage and despair tangling in her chest. Beside her, Mira put a hand on her arm.
"Come," Mira said quietly. "We tried."
Lyra let herself be led out. But at the door, she turned back.
"She's real," she said to the Council's unresponsive backs. "And when she dies because you wouldn't listen, her blood is on your hands."
No one answered.
---
The next weeks were the hardest of Lyra's life.
The visions came every night now, sometimes twice. Always the same—fire and falling and gray-eyed girl—but closer each time, more urgent. The girl's face was clearer now. Lyra could see the shape of her jaw, the way she held her blade, the fear she tried so hard to hide behind determination.
Find me before—
Before what? Before the fire consumed her? Before the shadows reached her? Before something else, something worse, something the vision wouldn't show?
Lyra stopped sleeping. She couldn't bear the screams anymore, couldn't bear waking with her throat raw and her heart trying to escape. She spent her nights in the archives, reading by crystal-light, searching for anything that might tell her how to reach the other realms. Her days were a blur of exhaustion and desperation, punctuated by Mira's worried looks and the increasingly concerned whispers of other Seers.
"She's losing herself," someone said outside her door one night. "The visions are eating her alive."
"She was always too sensitive," someone else replied. "Too open. Some Seers can't handle the gift."
Lyra pressed her hands over her ears and tried not to listen.
---
On the night of the new moon, everything changed.
Lyra was in the archives, as usual, when the tower trembled. Not much—just a shudder, like a sleeping giant shifting in its dreams—but enough to send books sliding from shelves and dust raining from the ceiling.
She froze, listening. The tremor faded. Silence returned.
Then the visions hit.
Not one this time. Dozens. Hundreds. A flood of images crashing through her mind so fast she couldn't separate them, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Dragons rising. Cities falling. A blade of silver light. A figure wrapped in shadow, reaching for something, laughing. The gray-eyed girl standing alone against darkness, and beside her—beside her was Lyra, herself, standing in fire with hands raised and eyes wide and—
She screamed.
She was still screaming when Mira found her, curled on the floor among scattered books, her body shaking uncontrollably. Mira gathered her up, carried her through the tower's winding corridors, laid her in her own bed and held her until the shaking stopped.
"The boundaries," Lyra gasped when she could speak. "They're breaking. Something's happening in the other realms. The gray-eyed girl—she's in danger. She's—" She grabbed Mira's arm with desperate strength. "I have to go. I have to find her."
"Go where? How?"
"I don't know. But I can't stay here. I can't keep watching her die and do nothing."
Mira was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, slowly, "There is a way."
Lyra stared at her.
"The old passages. The places where realms touch. If the boundaries are truly breaking, they might be opening." Mira's expression was troubled. "But it's dangerous, Lyra. The passages haven't been used since the Shattering. No one knows what's on the other side. No one knows if you can come back."
"I don't care."
"You should care. You're young. You have your whole life—"
"She doesn't have a whole life." Lyra's voice broke. "I've seen it. She dies, Mira. Unless something changes, she dies, and the shadows win, and everything burns." She sat up, meeting Mira's eyes. "If I can change that—if there's even a chance I can change that—I have to take it."
Mira studied her for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"I thought you might say that." She reached into her robes and pulled out a small leather pouch, worn and soft with age. "I've been keeping this for a long time. Waiting for someone who needed it more than I did."
She opened the pouch and tipped the contents into her palm. A stone, smooth and dark, shot through with veins of silver that seemed to move when Lyra looked at them.
"What is it?"
"A wayfinder. From before the Shattering. It's keyed to the old passages—can sense when they're open, can guide you through." Mira pressed it into Lyra's hand. "It's been dormant for centuries. But if the boundaries are really breaking—" She stopped, swallowed hard. "It should work."
Lyra stared at the stone. It was warm against her skin, and as she watched, the silver veins began to glow.
"It's working," she whispered.
"It's working." Mira's voice was thick. "Which means the boundaries are breaking faster than I thought. Which means you don't have much time."
Lyra looked up at her. At the old woman who had been her only friend, her only anchor, her only family for as long as she could remember. "Come with me."
"I can't." Mira smiled, and there were tears in her eyes. "My gift is gone, remember? I'd be dead weight. Besides—" She touched Lyra's face gently. "Someone needs to stay and tell the Council they were wrong."
Lyra laughed, and it came out wet and broken. "They won't listen."
"They never do." Mira pulled her into a hug, fierce and warm. "Go. Find your girl. Save the world if you can. And if you can't—" She stepped back, wiping her eyes. "If you can't, at least make sure it knows you tried."
---
The passage opened at the tower's base, in a chamber that had been sealed for so long that even the oldest Seers had forgotten it existed. Mira used the wayfinder to unlock the door—a door that wasn't really a door, but a shimmer in the air that became solid when the stone touched it.
Beyond it, darkness.
Lyra stood at the threshold, the wayfinder warm in her hand, and tried not to be afraid.
"You don't have to do this," Mira said behind her. "You can still stay. Still wait. Still—"
"I can't." Lyra turned to look at her one last time. "Thank you. For everything."
Mira nodded, not trusting her voice.
Lyra turned back to the darkness. Took a breath. Stepped through.
The passage swallowed her.
---
It was like falling through a dream.
Colors that had no names. Sounds that weren't sounds. Moments that stretched into eternities and eternities that compressed into moments. Lyra floated through it all, the wayfinder pulsing warm against her palm, guiding her toward something she couldn't see but could feel—a presence, a person, a girl with gray eyes who needed her.
Find me, the vision had said.
I'm coming, Lyra thought back. I'm coming.
And somewhere, on the other side of the boundaries that had separated the realms for centuries, a girl with a silver blade looked up at the sky and felt, for the first time, that she wasn't alone.
****
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