The stars had gone out.
Above the ridge where the Spirit Grove once shimmered, the heavens were unnaturally blank—an endless sheet of black velvet, no moon, no constellations, no light. Aria stood beneath it, her breath misting in the still air, her fingers laced with Caleb's. Neither of them spoke. The silence between them wasn't hollow—it pulsed with something sacred, something ancient.
"It's beginning," Solene had said before fading into the rootstones. "The sky will mirror the soul."
And now, the sky reflected the truth that neither of them wanted to say aloud: Aria's soul, once a radiant wildfire of defiance, was dimming.
She hadn't told Caleb about the vision last night. The voice that whispered through the Mirror Gate, the flicker of that other Aria—bone-crowned and hollow-eyed—hadn't left her thoughts since. But this moment, beneath the starless sky, wasn't for ghosts.
It was for them.
