The valley bled for days after the battle.
Its rivers ran black with ash and broken bone.
The earth was scorched, the trees bowed low under the weight of sorrow, and even the wind carried the scent of death wherever it blew.
Lyra stood at the heart of it all, her throne now rebuilt atop the ruins of the altar stone — no longer a place of offering, but of dominion.
Around her, her Pack labored.
They buried the bodies of the fallen under cairns of stone and twisted branches.
They reforged weapons from the spoils of the dead.
They built walls of black timber and sharpened bones, raising a new fortress where the valley's heart once beat.
It was no longer survival they sought.
It was power.
It was empire.
It was Lyra's will given form.
She watched it unfold with hollow satisfaction.
This was what she had bled for.
Killed for.
Sacrificed herself for.
But in the quiet moments — those rare, splintered seconds when the spirit's song faded from her ears — a deeper, gnawing hunger whispered from within.
A hunger no feast, no victory could silence.
A hunger for something she had already lost.
Callan kept his distance now.
He bore no open rebellion — no words of defiance passed his lips — but his silence was a blade sharper than any dagger.
He looked at her differently.
As if seeing a ghost of the woman he once knew, flickering behind the mask of the queen she had become.
At night, Lyra would sometimes stand outside his tent, listening to the restless toss of his body, the broken sighs he thought hidden by sleep.
She would lift her hand, as if to touch the canvas separating them.
And then lower it.
Always lower it.
The spirit had warned her.
Love was a weakness.
And weaknesses were to be burned away.
The days passed, bleeding into weeks.
The fortress grew stronger.
The Pack grew fiercer.
Rhea, now captain of her warbands, led brutal raids into the surrounding lands, seizing resources and culling any who dared resist.
No mercy.
No hesitation.
Only conquest.
They called her Queen of Ash and Bone.
Some whispered it in fear.
Others in reverence.
It made no difference to Lyra.
They obeyed.
That was all that mattered.
Until the night of the Black Eclipse.
It began with the howls.
Not of her Pack, but of something else.
Something older.
Something wrong.
The mists recoiled from the edges of the valley, and a darkness deeper than night crept inward.
The Savage Moon, always red and angry, dimmed to a sickly black, veiling the world in a blindness that chilled the soul.
Lyra sensed it immediately.
Not an attack.
Not a storm.
A summons.
She gathered her captains.
Rhea.
Callan.
Korrin — the scarred brute who commanded her outer scouts.
Vaela — the sharp-eyed witch who read the bones and the blood.
Together they formed the spine of her new dominion.
Together they rode into the heart of the darkness.
They found the circle at the edge of the woods.
Ancient stones, half-sunken into the soil, arranged in a pattern that hurt the eyes to look upon.
Symbols etched deep into the earth around it, glowing faintly with sickly green light.
And at the center…
A figure.
It was no Warden Lord.
No mortal enemy.
It was something else.
Something worse.
A woman, or what had once been a woman, clad in rags and crowned with a twisted halo of thorns.
Her skin was cracked and weeping black ichor.
Her eyes were hollow pits.
But it was her scent that told Lyra the truth.
It was the same scent that clung to her own blood now.
Spirit-touched.
Cursed.
Blessed.
Damned.
The woman lifted her head, and her voice croaked across the stones:
"Daughter of the valley… you are not the first."
The captains shifted uneasily, hands tightening on weapons.
Even Rhea, so recently fearless, paled visibly.
Lyra stepped forward, unafraid.
"What do you mean?"
The woman laughed — a dry, broken sound like dead leaves scattering in the wind.
"There were others before you.
Queens.
Kings.
But none could hold the valley.
None could master the hunger."
She reached out a skeletal hand.
"You are strong.
Stronger than most.
But strength alone is not enough."
From the stones, shapes began to rise.
Phantoms.
Echoes.
Visions of those who had come before: crowned figures, rotted and broken, their mouths frozen in eternal screams.
Callan gasped.
Vaela whispered a prayer to gods that no longer listened.
Lyra stared at the apparitions without flinching.
She could feel them clawing at her mind, at her soul, trying to pull her down into their endless despair.
But she was no puppet.
No slave.
She was queen.
With a roar that shattered the mist itself, Lyra unleashed her power.
The sigils along her arms and spine blazed to life, flooding the clearing with blinding light.
The phantoms shrieked and withered.
The spirit-woman howled and crumbled into dust.
Silence fell.
Broken only by Lyra's ragged breathing.
And in that silence, a seed was planted.
Korrin leaned close to Rhea, his voice a whisper.
"She is strong.
Too strong.
If we do not act… we will all become her slaves."
Rhea said nothing.
But her eyes never left Lyra.
And deep within them, something cold and calculating began to grow.
Lyra turned back to her captains, unaware of the shadows gathering behind their eyes.
"We build higher walls," she commanded.
"We sharpen our blades.
We do not wait for death to find us.
We hunt it down and tear it apart."
The captains bowed.
Obedient.
Loyal.
For now.
But in the days that followed, whispers spread through the fortress like a slow, creeping fire.
Whispers of doubt.
Whispers of rebellion.
Whispers of betrayal.
And in the heart of her new empire, Lyra sat alone on her throne of ash and bone, staring up at a moon that no longer wept for her.
Only watched.
And waited.