LYRA
I couldn't breathe.
Not because I was choking — but because for the first time…
I was remembering.
Everything.
---
The memory wasn't a dream anymore.
It had weight, sound, pain.
A room lit by firelight.
Stone floors. Red curtains.
My bare feet on cold marble.
A woman standing with her back to me — long hair in a gold clasp, a robe that shimmered like smoke.
She turned slowly when I entered.
And in that face…
I saw mine.
But older.
Sharper.
Angrier.
> "Seraphine?" I whispered.
She didn't nod.
She didn't deny it.
She just looked at me — and said the words that burned through my soul.
> "They took your name and fed you lies.
But fire doesn't forget its child."
I jolted awake, gasping. The air around me shimmered. The candle beside my bed had melted into a puddle — though it had never been lit.
Kairo was already in the room, eyes locked on me.
"You're remembering," he said.
I nodded. "She called me her child."
Kairo didn't speak.
But I saw the war in his face.
The same look he gave me after every vision.
Fear.
Loyalty.
And something else.
Something he didn't want to admit.
"I need to show you something," he finally said.
He took me beneath the packhouse.
I didn't know this part existed — old, cracked stone tunnels, lined with old blood markings and sacred wolf carvings.
He lit a torch, walked ahead, and stopped at a sealed wooden door.
Carved into the frame:
> "Ash binds blood.
Flame crowns truth."
Inside, dust floated like snow.
A single slab rested in the middle of the room, and on top of it — an ancient scroll, untouched.
Kairo unwrapped it carefully.
And began to read aloud.
> "There will come one who wears the mark of flame.
A child not born, but resurrected.
Of wolf and not-wolf.
Bound to fire, rejected by blood."
"If she returns, one of two fates must rise:
The Flame Queen…
Or the World's End."
The silence afterward was deafening.
I looked up at him, barely breathing.
> "Which one do you think I am?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then said the one thing that broke my heart more than silence.
> "I don't think you get to choose."
I stepped back. Slowly. Quietly.
Because no matter how close Kairo stood to me…
In that moment, I had never felt farther away.
Meanwhile…
Far beyond the packhouse, deep in the northern hills, the cloaked one stood before a shrine of smoke and mirrors.
She traced a name across the altar in flame:
> "Lyra. Daughter of the Fire Crown."
And smiled.
> "Let them wonder.
Let them fear.
She'll remember who she is soon enough."