The air had never tasted this strange.
Lyra stood barefoot in the center of her warded chamber, the chalk circle beneath her feet now humming with a frequency she couldn't decipher. Threads of her latest spell scattered like ash in the wind, and her grimoire—once obedient—refused to open its pages.
She clutched her chest.
The feeling again.
A tug—not painful, but persistent—gnawing from within like something alive, desperate to be heard. She had never felt magic behave this way. It wasn't conjured. It wasn't summoned.
It was… calling.
And it wasn't hers.
Lyra staggered backward, heart pounding as she remembered the voice. Not her voice, but the one that echoed with hers in the dream. The figure with shadowed eyes and a face half-obscured by moonlight. His presence still clung to her like mist.
Raven.
She didn't know his name, but something inside her whispered it like a memory.
Outside, the skies over Lunaris turned an unnatural gray. Thunder crackled—not from clouds but from the soil—and the Elder Witches convened behind closed doors. Students whispered about disappearances. About dead things seen walking too far into the woods.
Something was coming, and Lyra's bloodline—one she barely understood—was waking up with it.
---
On the other side of the Veil, Raven watched the horizon burn.
Red lightning danced across the sky, carving veins into the clouds. The ashwood trees were wilting. His kin whispered about omens, about the sun setting a fraction slower than it should.
He had dreamed of her again. This time clearer.
She was standing in water—black, moonlit, endless. And in her eyes was a storm he somehow knew had once lived inside him.
Raven pressed a hand against the obsidian mirror in his sanctum. He could feel the tether now. Thin. Fragile. But real. A soul-link, ancient and forbidden. He shouldn't have one. Not with a witch. Not across realms.
He didn't even know her name.
But the Veil, once indifferent, now pulsed when he thought of her. Something between them had cracked open, and with every moment, it widened.
He had heard her voice again.
Not in a dream this time.
In waking.
---
That night, Lyra's body moved before her mind did. She crossed the courtyard, barefoot, drawn by an unseen thread. The moon hung low—unnaturally so—and her breath formed patterns that danced in unfamiliar sigils.
At the heart of the garden stood the Circle of Thirteen Stones, ancient remnants no one dared approach after dusk. But Lyra did.
The stones vibrated. Low. Deep. Like a heart about to break open.
And then—her fingers brushed one of the stones.
The world bent.
Her vision split in two.
She saw him.
He saw her.
There was no barrier. No dream.
Just them.
For a breathless second, they stared.
The same tether, the same pull, now undeniable. No words spoken. None needed. The Veil had thinned between them. But with it came something darker
—something watching them from the tear.
Lyra jerked back, gasping. Her chest burned. Her vision flickered. And Raven—he staggered too, his mirror shattering as a black mist hissed through it.
Whatever force tethered them was no longer dormant.
It was awake.
And hungry.