The silence was no longer a comfort. It was a cage.
Riftkeep pulsed with motion—students training, instructors barking commands, fire pits roaring to life with each dawn. But to Sylara, it was all muffled, distant, like she stood behind glass too thick to shatter.
Nyx was gone.
She moved like a specter through the halls, her limbs remembering how to walk even when her soul didn't. Her body bore the bruises from the forest attack, but those were fading. What remained was the hollowness behind her ribs. The unbearable quiet where Nyx's presence had once hummed.
And still, she hadn't cried. Not once.
Kiva tried. At first gently—then louder, frustrated, desperate. She cornered Sylara in the hallway near the eastern arch. "Talk to me," she pleaded. "Gods, Sylara, say something! What happened to you out there?"
Sylara looked past her. Through her. The answer she wanted lay beyond words.
Kiva's voice cracked. "You're not made of stone. I know you're hurting. Let me help you."
But Sylara didn't move.
Couldn't.
Because if she did, if she opened her mouth, she feared what would pour out wouldn't be speech—but a scream so raw it would hollow the walls of Riftkeep.
---
That night, she dreamt.
Not of fire or shadow, but of stillness. In it, she stood beneath a broken sky. A mirror lay shattered at her feet, pieces of herself staring back.
In one shard, she saw Nyx curled beside her by the hearth.
In another, the glint of silver eyes during moonrise.
In another, the last time they touched minds—her whisper, her promise:
"I will never leave you. Not unless you ask me to."
Sylara fell to her knees. The shards cut nothing.
Because you cannot bleed when you are already emptied.
---
Elsewhere, behind Riftkeep's warded gates, the rot stirred.
A meeting in shadow. Three cloaked figures. One bore a blood-sealed ring, the sigil of House Saevren—one of Elarion's oldest surviving puppet-governors.
"She survived."
"She was never meant to."
"The wolf manifested early. Unstable."
"She is no ordinary caster. That soul-beast is not born of this realm. We must find a new approach."
The tallest leaned forward. "The Severing was incomplete. Their bond still flickers. We need her broken—shattered—before she can awaken fully."
"What of the prophecy?"
"It was never about the wolf."
Silence.
"It was about the girl."
---
Back in Riftkeep, Kiva stormed into Instructor Aerith's quarters.
"She's not fine!" she shouted. "She hasn't spoken to anyone since she came back. Something happened out there."
Aerith folded her arms. "The mission was sabotaged. We believe there was a mole. Possibly from within the Northern Wing. But Sylara won't speak. Until she does, our hands—"
"No," Kiva snapped. "You don't understand. She's fading."
---
In the stillness of her chamber, Sylara sat with her knees drawn to her chest.
Something felt wrong. Not just inside her—but around her.
The shadows lingered too long.
The mirrors caught movements that weren't hers.
Whispers returned to her like dying echoes. Runes she hadn't drawn began to flare faintly at night.
And then the dream changed.
This time, Sylara wasn't alone.
She stood in a void, a sky of ash above.
And there, across a blackened field—Nyx. Still spectral, still distant.
But this time, her head lifted. Her silver eyes met hers.
And she howled.
But no sound came.
Only the image of a binding circle drawn in runes not of Riftkeep—not of this world.
She woke with a gasp, sweat-drenched, her hands glowing faintly with ember-runes she'd never learned.
---
The next gleam, Kiva barged into her chamber again—but this time, she wasn't shouting.
She held a sealed scroll in shaking hands.
"I found this in the archives," she whispered. "They tried to erase it."
She unrolled it slowly, revealing a diagram of the exact binding circle Sylara had seen in her dream.
And beneath it: a prophecy fragment.
"When the soul-bound flame is severed before its time, the girl shall awaken. Not alone. Not whole. But watched—by the Hollow, by the gods, and by that which hunts even them."
Sylara stared at the words, her lips parting for the first time in days.
"Kiva," she said.
Her voice was broken. Like glass beneath feet.
But it was a beginning.
The storm had not passed. It had only just begun.