The dagger's edge bit into Kael's throat, drawing a thin line of blood. Lyra's eyes burned cobalt, her hand steady as the dead forest groaned around them. Behind her, Varyn's corpse lurched closer, joints cracking like dry kindling. His skin hung in gray shreds, but his movements were fluid, predatory—wrong.
"Lyra," Kael rasped, fingers scrabbling in the dirt for his fallen shard. "Fight him."
Her lips curled into Gideon's smirk. "Why? He's giving me what you never could." The dagger pressed deeper. "Clarity."
Varyn's corpse loomed, reeking of rot and burnt roses. Kael's shard glinted three paces away, half-buried in ash. He lunged for it, but Lyra's free hand seized his wrist. Time surged between them—not stolen, but forced. Decades compressed into a heartbeat, aging his forearm to brittle bone. He screamed.
Varyn struck.
Not at Kael—at Lyra.
His fist, fused with rusted clockwork, slammed into her ribs. She flew backward, dagger skittering into the undergrowth. Kael scrambled for his shard as Varyn turned on him, milky eyes rolling in their sockets.
"You're supposed to be dead," Kael snarled, shard raised.
Varyn's jaw unhinged. Lira's voice spilled out, sweet and rotted. "He kept me alive. In her."
Kael froze.
Varyn's chest split open with a wet crack. Nestled in his ribcage, pulsing like a diseased heart, was Lira's locket—the one Kael had buried with her. Its chain had fused with bone, tendrils of blackened silver burrowing into decayed flesh.
"You're lying," Kael whispered.
Varyn's corpse laughed with Lira's voice. "Check the inscription."
Kael didn't need to. He'd carved those words himself the night she died: "Time runs out, but love doesn't."
Lyra stirred behind him, coughing blood. Her veins flickered—blue, then black, then blue again. Gideon's hold was slipping.
"Take it," Varyn crooned, clawing at his ribs. "Free us both."
Kael plunged the shard into the locket.
The explosion of light seared his vision. When it cleared, Varyn's corpse was dust. The locket lay intact in Kael's palm, its surface icy. Lyra crouched nearby, trembling, her eyes her own.
"Did you… know?" she gasped, clutching her ribs.
Kael flipped the locket open. The portraits were gone. In their place, a lock of Lira's hair, gold streaked with gray. "No. Gideon must've dug up her grave after I…"
Lyra snatched the locket. "After you what? Mourned? Moved on?" Her voice broke. "I'm just his puppet, Kael. Her replacement."
"You're not—"
"Look at me!" She shoved the locket at him. The metal had fused to her palm, tendrils snaking up her wrist. "He's in my bones. Her memories, her voice… I can't tell where she ends and I begin."
The forest shuddered. Leaves rained down, disintegrating midair into ash. Somewhere in the poison-fogged distance, a child laughed—high, bright, and utterly soulless.
"We need to move," Kael said, hauling Lyra up. Her skin was fever-hot, her pulse erratic.
She yanked free. "Why? So you can watch me turn on you again?"
"Yes."
The raw honesty stunned her. Kael pressed on, shard glowing faintly in his aged hand. "If you turn, I'll stop you. If you die, I'll bury you. But I'm not leaving you to him."
Lyra stared at him, then burst into jagged laughter. "You're a fool."
"So I've been told."
They ran.
The forest fought them. Roots lashed at their ankles, branches knitting into walls. Lyra's locket pulsed, its chain tightening around her throat with every step.
"He's reactivating the binding," she choked. "I can feel him in my—"
A root snared her leg, yanking her into the air. Kael severed it, but another replaced it, then another. Lyra dangled upside down, the locket swinging like a pendulum.
"Cut it off!" she screamed.
"The root or the locket?"
"Both!"
Kael leapt, shard aimed at the chain. The locket shrieked, tendrils lashing his face. He sliced through—
—and the world inverted.
They stood in a sunlit field, dew glistening on lavender. Lira knelt ahead, Gideon's hands on her shoulders.
"You'll be perfect," he murmured, braiding her hair with clockwork thread. "My masterpiece."
Lyra gagged. "Make it stop."
The memory fractured. They crashed back into the forest, the locket's chain severed. Lyra collapsed, retching black bile.
"It's in me," she whispered. "The poison. I… drank from the river. To mute his voice."
Kael's stomach dropped. The river's rot was irreversible. "How long?"
"Sunset, maybe." She smiled bitterly. "Irony's a bitch, isn't it? I survive Gideon just to die by—"
A child's giggle cut her off.
Through the trees, a girl in a mud-stained dress skipped into view—the same one from the poisoned river. Her eyes were pure cobalt.
"Mama's waiting," she singsonged, vanishing into the mist.
Lyra shuddered. "The mother."
"Run," Kael said.
"To where?"
He gripped her hand, the shard's glow guttering. "Away."