The courtyard overlook perched high above the Academy's blood-slicked stones, a place where whispers traveled farther than words and envy sharpened its teeth behind polished smiles.
Nyra leaned against the cold stone railing, silver eyes narrowed, watching.
Below, students gathered like moths around flame—and the flame, tonight, was Voss.
He stood slightly apart, half-turned toward the crowd, but his posture screamed disinterest. Sharp, closed, impenetrable. Yet it didn't stop the bold from trying.
And one—only one—was daring enough to linger.
Alira Vessan.
Noble-blooded. Perfectly sculpted. Radiating that effortless power the upper houses bred into their heirs like prized hounds.
She brushed her fingers along Voss's arm, a touch so light it might have been mistaken for accident if not for the tilt of her lips—a smile calculated to destroy.
She leaned in, voice low, private.
Nyra didn't hear the words.
She didn't need to.
The shadows around her—those ever-faithful extensions of her will—tightened.
They clung to her wrists, her calves, the curve of her spine. Unseen by others, but pulsing, straining like hounds against a leash.
A dry voice at her shoulder broke the gathering storm.
"You're coiling," Riven murmured, arms crossed, gaze flicking lazily to the scene below, "like you're about to gut her."
Nyra didn't blink.
"If she breathes too loud, I might."
Riven chuckled under his breath, a sound like silk sliding across steel.
"Possessive, aren't we?"
Nyra's mouth tilted in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"No," she said flatly. "Territorial."
Riven said nothing more. He didn't need to. The truth hung heavy between them—a truth neither confession nor denial could tame.
Below, Voss shifted. Alira's hand fell away. The conversation ended, and he turned from her without ceremony, striding back toward the upper barracks.
Alira's expression darkened, but she masked it quickly, retreating into the buzz of nobility that swallowed her like a well-rehearsed chorus.
Nyra watched every step.
She didn't follow.
Not yet.
The night sharpened around her like a blade sliding free of its sheath.
Later, the dormitory tunnels pulsed with the low, humming throb of ward-stones and whispered gossip.
Nyra moved through them like a phantom—silent, sure, inevitable.
And there he was.
Voss.
Alone. Bruised but unbowed.
His posture relaxed against the tunnel wall, arms folded, head tilted as he caught her approaching footsteps without even needing to look.
She stopped a few feet away.
The air between them snapped tight.
Nyra's voice was cold enough to shatter glass.
"You let her touch you again," she said, "I'll cut off her hand."
She paused.
"Then yours."
For a heartbeat—just a heartbeat—there was silence.
Then Voss's mouth curved into a smile.
Slow. Dangerous.
"Possessive, Hellcat?"
Nyra's silver gaze narrowed to razors.
"No," she said, stepping close enough that the tips of her boots brushed his. "Territorial."
The word crackled between them like dry lightning.
Voss's amusement didn't fade.
If anything, it deepened—eyes darkening with something that was not mockery.
Something older. Hungrier.
Nyra held the moment until it stretched taut, breathless.
And then—
She smiled.
Sharp. Knowing. Smirking as if she'd just won a battle he hadn't realized he was fighting.
Without another word, she turned and walked away, hips swaying with predatory grace, the shadows parting for her like mist.
Voss watched her go.
He didn't call her back.
He didn't need to.
Some victories were silent.
Some territories—claimed without war.
The veil between worlds shimmered in the silvered mist, so thin it might have been mistaken for a trick of the light.
But Nyra knew better.
She slipped through it like a memory half-remembered—silent, sure, and claimed by no realm but her own will.
The trees here were different.
Their bark shimmered faintly, breathing with old, slumbering magic. Their leaves hummed when brushed by the mist, a sound too low for words but thick with meaning. Roots curled and drifted across the ground, as if untethered by mortal laws.
The Cradle of Falling Light.
Nairavel's sacred grove.
And waiting within it, three forms—half mist, half bone, all promise.
The offspring.
Smaller now. Watching her not as children watch their mother's stories—but as predators watch the shift of the wind before they strike.
Nyra walked forward, chains coiling loosely at her sides, flame guttering low against her skin. She didn't hide it. She let the small flickers dance—wild, volatile—across her knuckles.
The offspring stirred.
One mimicked the motion of her chains, the rippling arcs echoing with eerie precision.
Another's hide pulsed with faint traces of violet—not their own hue, but hers. Echoes of her flame signature, crude but unmistakable.
She smiled faintly, predatory pride swelling low in her chest.
Then—
The mist broke.
The grove darkened.
And he appeared.
Aurevir.
The Breath That Stilled the Storm.
Nyra's instincts screamed to kneel, to bow, to offer something—anything—to the towering, terrible beauty descending through the mist.
But she remained standing.
Even when the air grew heavier.
Even when the starlight warped around him.
Even when the ground itself seemed to hush in reverence.
Aurevir's form shimmered between substance and dream—horned, crowned in translucent bone and aurora-light. His wings did not flap but pulsed, vibrating with planetary gravity. His presence was not presence at all but dominion—the raw, unfiltered weight of an ancient force that existed before history had a name.
He spoke without moving.
"You step into my den often."
"Are you looking for her? Or for something else?"
Nyra met the celestial gaze without flinching.
"Maybe I'm looking for what she saw in you."
A slow, seismic ripple through the mist. Not laughter. Not anger.
Something more dangerous.
"Foolish."
Nyra tilted her head slightly, letting her chains drag across the starlit grass.
"She saw peace," she said, voice steady. "And ruin. And something worth leaving behind."
For a long, terrible moment, there was only silence.
Then—
a rumble like thunder stitched with teeth vibrated through the grove.
"I haven't killed you yet because she told me not to."
"If she hadn't... you'd be marrow by now."
The offspring stilled.
The mist shivered.
But Nyra didn't break.
Her heartbeat roared in her ears, but her voice—when it came—was calm.
"Then it's a good thing," she said, "that she loved you more than your instincts."
Aurevir's massive wings curled inward slightly, the air pressure warping space in their wake.
The offspring twitched, torn between awe and fear.
The mist between them thickened, almost solid—a barrier of unspoken judgement.
Finally— a deep pulse of acknowledgment.
Not approval.
Not acceptance.
But a stay of annihilation.
"Speak again, Vale girl," Aurevir said, his voice now stitched with the sound of collapsing stars.
"Next time—bring answers."
And then—
He was gone.
Not like a beast retreating.
Not like a king departing.
But like a veil collapsing inward, folding him out of existence without leaving a trace.
Nyra exhaled slowly.
The offspring's gazes remained locked on her.
Waiting.
Choosing.
She flexed her fingers once, letting the dying embers of her flame flicker along her palm.
"Not today," she murmured to them, her voice barely touching the mist.
But soon.
The Academy's dining hall corridors always buzzed with noise—laughter, gossip, the occasional clash of egos beneath a thin veil of civility.
But today, the hum felt sharper.
More focused.
It clung to the corners of the halls like smoke—and at the center of it all was a name Nyra had learned to loathe.
Alira Vessan.
Nyra moved silently along the far edge of the corridor, her steps slow, measured, as she let the whispers brush past her ears.
"Did you hear?"
"Voss… and Alira…"
"A political arrangement. Her family's bloodline is tied to the Summoning Council."
"They want him tied to the old blood—to strengthen the council's claim."
"She was offered to him."
Offered.
Like a blade slipped into a hand.
Like a noose offered with a bow tied neatly around the neck.
Nyra's hands curled at her sides, nails biting into her palms.
She kept walking.
Kept her face neutral.
But inside, something ancient and wolfish stirred.
She didn't confront the whisperers.
Didn't correct them.
Didn't make a scene.
No.
Later—when the corridors emptied and the last echoes of courtly scheming faded into nothingness—Nyra found herself standing in the center of the combat training yard.
The stone floor—scarred by centuries of battles, betrayals, and broken dreams—was empty beneath the crescent moons.
Perfect.
She knelt, pressing one bloodied fingertip to the cold stone.
A slow breath.
A single thought, shaped in the ember of her magic.
The violet flame coiled and licked across the ground.
And where it touched, it carved.
A sigil.
Old.
Forbidden.
A mark once used by the ancient rebels of Veyrune to declare a target.
It didn't scream.
It didn't howl.
It whispered.
A soft, damning promise:
You are seen. You are marked. Prepare.
Behind her, in the watching shadows of the training balcony, Seraph leaned casually against a pillar, arms crossed, a faint smile tugging at her mouth.
Beside her, Nyx shimmered in a semi-reflection of herself, eyes bright with amusement.
"You think she's jealous?" Seraph asked, her voice soft enough not to carry.
Nyx snorted.
"Jealous? No."
She tilted her head, watching Nyra rise from the sigil, shadows coiling tighter around her hips and wrists like living armor.
"Nyra doesn't get jealous."
A beat.
A wicked grin.
"She gets… predatory."
The violet light of the carved sigil pulsed once more before fading into invisibility, leaving only the faint scent of singed stone in its wake.
Nyra turned, expression unreadable.
Her silver eyes caught the moonlight and threw it back like cold fire.
Then she walked away, leaving the ancient warning embedded in the ground, unseen but potent.
Waiting.
Like her.
The mist was thinner tonight.
It clung to the sacred grove like a second skin, translucent and trembling under the weight of unseen expectation.
Nyra passed through the veil without hesitation.
The Cradle of Falling Light welcomed her—but it was a silent, wary welcome, like a battlefield awaiting the first sword to draw blood.
The three offspring stirred as she entered.
They watched her differently now.
Not with the distance of passive curiosity.
But with the razor-sharp focus of creatures testing the edge of something—something they might soon claim, or be claimed by.
Nyra knelt near the center of the grove, drawing her chains across the silvered grass. She began to move, not in combat, but in rhythm—the old forms, the ones Kierian Voss had taught her, the ones she'd polished in the dark when no one was watching.
The chains sliced through the mist, arcs and spirals and sudden jolting whips.
Not violent.
Not showy.
Alive.
The youngest offspring moved first.
It slipped from the others with liquid grace, body low, wings folding tight against its mist-touched back.
It crept closer.
Mimicking.
Each time Nyra spun her chain, the creature flicked a tendril of its aura—ribbons of half-formed magic swirling in echoes of her path.
Each time she ducked low, it mirrored her.
Not perfect.
But learning.
Watching.
Choosing.
Nyra didn't speak.
Words had no place here.
She moved slower, more deliberately, letting the youngest see, adapt, follow.
At one point, as she pivoted on one heel, her shadow magic bloomed outward—not in aggression, but in offering.
Dark ribbons coiled from her fingertips, dancing with the mist.
The youngest offspring's eyes—if they could be called eyes—gleamed with starlight, and it responded.
A ripple of silver mist unfurled from its form, brushing lightly against her aura.
The touch was brief.
Soft.
But it was there.
A flicker of fusion—an acknowledgement, not of domination, but of trust.
Nyra felt the echo in her bones.
Her flame—always violet, always sharp—flickered at the edges.
And for the barest second, a thread of it shimmered silver.
She stopped moving, letting the chains drop.
The youngest settled back, its wings unfurling slightly, revealing patterns along its translucent hide that resembled constellations.
Nyra exhaled, slow and careful.
"Ishari," she said softly, naming it not as a master names a pet, but as a soldier names a comrade.
A word torn from a half-remembered lullaby her mother once sang, back when Nyra was too young to know the world's cruelty.
Little Light in War.
The name rippled across the grove.
The older two offspring shifted, restless—acknowledging the shift, the choice being forged in the silence.
The youngest—Ishari—leaned closer, brushing against Nyra's shadow once more before coiling protectively around the space where she stood.
A promise.
Not a full bond.
Not yet.
But the first thread had been woven.
And in the world to come, even the smallest thread could strangle a giant.
The Academy slumbered beneath the fractured moons, the spires casting long, skeletal shadows across the empty courtyards.
Nyra stood atop one of the lesser rooftops, crouched low against the bitter wind, her chains coiled silent at her sides.
Below, the world moved in slow, predictable patterns—students returning to dorms, instructors disappearing into shadowed corridors, the usual restless shuffle of ambition and exhaustion.
But her focus wasn't on the world.
It was on him.
Voss.
Alone now.
No Alira. No nobles buzzing like flies around raw power.
Just him.
He walked across the courtyard with that same quiet dominance he carried everywhere—the kind of authority that didn't need to announce itself, because the world instinctively bent around it.
Halfway across the stone yard, he stopped.
Slowly—without haste, without searching—he lifted his gaze.
And found her.
High above.
Hidden in the cold teeth of the rooftop's edge.
Their eyes locked across distance and darkness.
Neither moved.
Neither smiled.
But the connection sparked all the same—raw, breathless, undeniable.
Nyra's heartbeat slowed.
Sharpened.
Her fingers tightened around the worn leather of her chains.
She didn't whisper his name.
She didn't reach for him.
She simply watched.
And to herself, low and fierce and quiet, she thought:
"I don't want him to choose me. I want him to remember I already did."
The wind shifted, carrying away whatever fragile thing lingered between them.
Voss inclined his head—a gesture more acknowledgment than farewell—then turned and disappeared into the waiting dark.
Nyra remained a moment longer.
Letting the cold seep into her bones.
Letting the tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding finally bleed away.
She turned to leave—
And froze.
In the trees beyond the outer wall—
Movement.
Not the restless twitch of a beast.
Not the quiet steps of a student breaking curfew.
Something else.
A silhouette wrapped in mirrored threads, its shape wrong, its presence pressing against her senses like oil sliding over water.
Watching her.
Remembering her.
Nyra's body tensed instinctively.
Fight or flight coiled low in her spine.
The Academy's protections would not reach here.
And deep down—
She knew.
This was not beast.
Not blood.
Something older.
Something patient.
Something that had begun to remember her name.
The wind howled between the spires.
Nyra took a single step back, chains whispering a warning against her thighs.
The figure did not move.
It only watched.
The moment stretched—thin, trembling, edged with something sharp and inevitable.
And then, like a dream shattered by waking, the figure faded into the mist.
Leaving only the echo of its presence wrapped around her skin like a second, colder breath.
The beasts knew her.
The shadows watched her.
But something else… had started to remember her name.