The valley slept beneath a shroud of silver fog.
From the cliffs above, Lysander could see the faint gleam of torchlight in the far villages — lanterns flickering like stars fallen to earth.
But as the moon climbed higher, a second light appeared, darker and pulsing — moving like ink beneath water.
He knew it before Arenne spoke.
They've begun to move against us.
He straightened, watching as the distant glow gathered into a spiral — torches forming a circle, chants rising in the cold air.
The Cult of the Still Veil — those who had once worshiped the silence that followed Arenne's fall — had returned.
Their faith was a hunger: a longing for the old, still eternity where no god wept, no mortal dreamed, and the world lay numb beneath unchanging skies.
As their voices carried on the wind, Lysander felt a pull deep in his chest — a cold ache, like the reverse of heartbeat.
They are drawing upon what I left behind, Arenne whispered. The fragments of my pain. The shadow of stillness I thought I had cast away.
He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of her sorrow, her old exhaustion.
"You mean… they're using your silence as a weapon?"
Yes. And it will answer them if we do nothing. The divine remembers every emotion it has ever felt — even despair.
He exhaled slowly. "Then we'll remind the silence that it was born from love, too."
By dawn, the cult had gathered at the broken temple of Velhar — a jagged ruin of black marble carved with runes that once sealed Arenne's throne.
Hundreds of figures cloaked in gray knelt in a circle, chanting in the ancient tongue.
At the center stood a woman — tall, shaven-headed, eyes like polished obsidian.
She raised her arms, and the ground trembled.
"The Queen has returned," she cried. "She brings chaos in the guise of mercy. The Still Veil must rise again, or the world will drown in dream."
The gathered voices echoed her, a thousand throats forming one word — Stillness.
The obelisk behind her cracked, bleeding shadow.
Far away, Lysander felt it like a blow.
He staggered, hand clutching his chest as a dark pulse ran through his veins.
Arenne's voice gasped within him — not in fear, but pain.
They've found the anchor. They're trying to wake the part of me that should never return.
"What part?" he demanded.
The part that stopped feeling. The Queen of Stone.
For a heartbeat, her voice faltered — and in its place, he felt an echo: cold, regal, merciless.
A whisper of the Arenne who had ruled eternity, who had silenced gods and mortals alike.
You cannot silence me, it murmured. I am the crown you cast away.
Lysander fell to his knees, trembling as the two presences warred inside him — the gentle, grieving Arenne and the hollow voice of her former divinity.
When he looked up, the lilies in the valley had begun to wither.
The dreamlight dimmed.
The song of the earth fell silent.
Arenne's voice cried out within him —
Lysander! Hold to me. Do not let the silence take shape.
He clenched his hands against the soil. "Then fight with me."
Together, they reached inward — into memory, into the place where she had dissolved herself ages ago.
And there, in the dark sea of her own making, he saw it:
A towering figure of glass and stone, crowned in broken moons, standing within the depths.
The old Eternal Queen — perfect, lifeless, beautiful as an idol.
She opened her eyes, and all light fled the dream.
Why have you awakened me? the statue-queen whispered.
I gave the world peace.
"You gave it sleep," Lysander said, stepping forward. "And it almost forgot how to wake."
Her gaze flickered — a faint pulse of crimson in her glass chest.
Peace is mercy. Love is torment.
Arenne's voice — the living one — answered from within Lysander's heart:
And yet, even in torment, I found meaning.
The glass Queen looked at her reflection within him.
Then you are no longer me.
No, Arenne said softly. I am what you became when you learned to grieve.
The glass cracked.
Light poured through it.
The statue screamed — a sound not of pain, but release.
Lysander woke gasping on the valley floor.
The lilies glowed again. The heartbeat steadied.
Above him, dawn broke clean and bright.
Arenne's voice was faint but whole again.
You freed me from myself.
He smiled weakly. "Then the silence is gone?"
Not gone, she said. Redeemed.
And as he stood, light spreading once more through the waking land, he felt something new stirring beyond the horizon — not the cold hunger of old gods, but the gathering of mortals who could feel the divine again.
Dreamers. Believers. Lovers.
The beginnings of a new faith — one born not of fear, but of tenderness.
But deep beneath Velhar's ruins, the obsidian-eyed priestess rose from her circle of ashes.
Her lips bled where she had bitten through them, her voice hoarse but steady.
"The Queen has chosen a mortal. Then so shall we."
Behind her, the shadows began to coil — forming the faint outline of another being, shaped from the same silence Arenne had left behind.
A second vessel.
A reflection.
The beginning of the False Queen.