The night after the valley's awakening was not a true night at all.
The stars hung low, unmoving — as though watching, waiting for something unspeakable to stir beneath their light.
Far to the east, where the ruins of Velhar bled black smoke into the dawn, the priestess knelt in a circle of ash. Her robes were tattered, her skin pale from blood loss, but her eyes burned with the same cruel certainty that had driven her through years of silence.
Around her, the shadows thickened — writhing, reaching, whispering in a language that was less sound than sorrow.
"You will answer," she whispered. "You will come to me, as you once came to her."
The air cracked like glass. A wind colder than the void rushed through the temple's hollow heart.
From the ashes of the chant and the remnants of the Still Veil's faith, something began to form.
At first, it was only a shimmer — a faint echo of silver light, trembling like a reflection in broken water.
Then came the shape of wings, vast and graceful, made not of feathers but of obsidian mist.
And finally, a voice — soft, familiar, and wrong.
"Why have you called me back?"
The priestess trembled, half in awe, half in terror. "To restore your throne, my Queen."
The figure stepped forth from the darkness. Her hair fell like black glass, her eyes faintly silver — the mirror image of Seraphyne's grace and Arenne's eternal sorrow, but emptied of warmth.
"You are mistaken," said the False Queen. "I am not she. I am what she cast away."
Still, the priestess bowed low, pressing her forehead to the cold stone.
"To us, you are truth. You are the silence made flesh. And through you, we will unmake the dream."
The False Queen's gaze drifted toward the horizon, where dawn had begun to glow faintly.
Each beam of light seemed to sting her, as if it carried the memory of a world she once ruled but no longer understood.
"The dream," she murmured, "is a lie. Dreams end. Silence endures."
Then she raised her hand, and the remaining cultists rose from their kneeling positions, their eyes silvered, their voices one.
"Silence endures."
The False Queen smiled — a small, patient smile that belonged to no living being.
"Then let us begin again."
While she gathered her followers, Lysander and Arenne wandered through the forests of Mirathen, seeking the old shrines — the fragments of divine essence that had once tethered Arenne to her celestial domain.
Each shrine they found rekindled a spark — faint motes of dreamlight rising like fireflies, purifying the lands that had lain dormant for centuries.
But with each awakening came resistance.
Birdsong fell quiet where they passed. The air grew colder, the wind carrying whispers not of reverence, but of warning.
She has taken form, Arenne murmured within him. The part of me that could not forgive.
"You mean the False Queen?"
Yes. But she is more than a ghost. The silence she wields is a creation of mortal faith — born from those who feared me, worshiped me, then mourned me.
He frowned. "Then she's as real as any god who's ever been loved."
Exactly.
That night, they made camp beside the ruins of an ancient bridge.
Lysander slept lightly, haunted by visions — a city made of mirrors, a throne surrounded by still water, and a woman's voice whispering from beneath the surface:
All beauty must end to be eternal.
He woke gasping, the words cold against his heart.
The moon above them had dimmed — faintly, but perceptibly — as though the sky itself was grieving.
She's moving, Arenne said, her tone dark. She's begun to claim the dreams I sent to heal the world.
"How?"
By twisting them. Turning memory into despair.
He looked toward the distant east, where the mountains were wrapped in shadow.
"Then we go to her."
No.
Her voice grew low, sorrowful. She is me, once. You cannot destroy her without destroying the part of me that still lingers in pain.
"Then what do we do?"
We remember her.
As the words settled between them, a faint sound reached their ears — like the chiming of glass.
From the treeline, a figure approached: a young woman cloaked in tattered silk, her eyes blank and silvered.
In her hands, she carried a cracked mirror.
"Are you the Queen's vessel?" she asked softly. "She told me to find you."
Lysander rose, wary. "Which Queen?"
The girl smiled faintly — and the reflection in her mirror wasn't hers, but the False Queen's face.
I have found you, my shadow, the reflection whispered. Come, and be whole again.
The mirror shattered in her hands, and the night filled with whispers — countless voices, the echoes of prayers once given to the Eternal Queen, now returned in corruption.
The trees bent. The stars went dark.
And from the broken shards, a single feather of black light fell at Lysander's feet — warm as blood.
Arenne's voice trembled within him.
She has begun to harvest faith itself.