The sky was still bleeding when they found her.
A strange girl stood at the edge of the ruined temple, barefoot in the ash, her eyes reflecting starlight though the sun had not yet set. She looked no older than twelve, but something about her—her stillness, her impossible calm amid ruin—froze the soldiers in place.
High Priest Maren climbed the temple steps slowly, the hem of his robe blackened by soot and cinder. His heart beat a heavy, uneven rhythm against his ribs. The Temple of Tirael had stood untouched for over seven centuries. Not even the dragons of the Scorched Age had dared approach it. Now its sacred spire lay shattered, and the Divine Mirror—the source of the Oracle's sight—was in pieces.
He should have felt rage. Grief. Panic. But all he felt was dread.
"Who are you, child?" he asked, voice hoarse from smoke and something deeper.
The girl tilted her head toward him. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, as if the fire had spared her not out of mercy, but recognition. "I am the last," she said softly.
"The last what?" Maren asked, though part of him didn't want to know.
She looked skyward. The clouds had broken open, revealing a canvas of early stars. "The last voice of the stars," she said, as if stating a fact no more unusual than her name.
A few of the acolytes behind Maren whispered prayers. One of them, a novice barely older than the girl, dropped to his knees and wept.
"The Mirror is destroyed," Maren said. "Without it, the Oracle's words are blind. This temple is sacred. What happened here?"
She turned slowly and stepped into the shattered sanctum. Maren followed. Crystal fragments glinted like ice in the failing light. The inscriptions on the walls—the prophecies of a hundred generations—were charred and smudged.
"I came to end it," she said. "It had to burn."
"End what?"
"The chain," she said. "The lies written in silver. The curse passed from Oracle to Oracle. The prophecy that binds kings, slaughters children, and starves the skies of light."
He stopped. "Only the Oracle could read the High Tongue. That knowledge was passed from vessel to vessel—"
"I was the vessel," she interrupted. "Twice before. Once in the Age of Storms. Once at the fall of the River Kings. And now… again."
Maren's mouth went dry. Reincarnation was not spoken of in anything but myth, yet the way she moved, the way she spoke—he wanted to dismiss her, but he couldn't.
"I don't understand," he whispered.
She knelt beside the largest shard of the Mirror. "I saw what was coming. I saw how my past selves helped shape the future. Every vision we gave… became a prison."
She reached out and touched the glass.
In the reflection, Maren saw not a child, but a woman in ancient robes—eyes glowing, voice echoing through centuries.
"Eloryn," he breathed. "The Oracle who vanished before the Ebon Wars."
She nodded, and for a moment, he saw flickers of flame dance in her hair, like ghosts of the pyre she once died upon.
"I was betrayed," she said. "Burned for what I refused to say. But this time… I will not be silent. I have returned to correct my mistake."
"And what mistake was that?" he asked.
Her voice was cold and clear.
"I gave the prophecy that crowned the False King."
Outside, the wine rose like a screm
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