The first sign of collapse came not with thunder, but with silence.
Lyra noticed it as she walked through the corridors of the Academy—no birdsong, no rustling leaves, not even the soft hum of the wards that usually echoed through the stone. Just silence. Thick, aching silence.
She reached out with her magic, instinctively, like a child calling for its mother—but the air resisted her. Her threads, once fluid, now stuttered and snapped like broken harp strings.
In the distance, bells rang. But they weren't summoning. They were warning.
In the vampire realm, Raven stood before his council for the first time in weeks. The elders looked at him like he'd grown two heads. He had broken the oldest rule—he had returned from the human realm marked. Not just touched, but bonded.
The mark on his wrist still glowed faintly beneath his sleeve.
"You've compromised everything," said Elder Kael, voice cutting.
"No," Raven replied, "I've understood everything."
Another councilman slammed a hand on the table. "You think you're the first to fall into her eyes? The first to think fate would bend for you?"
"I'm not asking fate to bend," Raven said. "I'm asking you to stop fearing the truth."
They didn't hear him.
They wouldn't.
Not yet.
Back in her world, Lyra stood before the Great Mirror, the one that showed truth. What it reflected now was not her face, but the sky—cracked like glass, bleeding streaks of violet and silver.
She touched the frame. The mirror pulsed.
And whispered.
"Time is folding."
She staggered back.
"Lyra," came a voice.
It wasn't the mirror this time.
It was Raven.
He had crossed the veil again, despite the threat it posed to both their lives. He stood before her, pale but resolute.
"You felt it too," he said.
"Yes." She swallowed. "It's happening faster than we thought."
They sat at the edge of the lake, where the world still seemed untouched. The water shimmered, pretending not to know it would soon evaporate into madness.
"I saw a man today," Lyra said. "He had no shadow."
Raven's eyes narrowed. "Here?"
She nodded. "He said nothing. Just stared. Like he was... remembering me."
Raven reached for her hand. "They're watching."
"Who?"
"The ones from before."
The word hung heavy between them.
They didn't say it—but they knew.
Souls from their past lives, fractured pieces of the cycles before, were bleeding through time and form, slipping into people, shadows, and dreams. The veil wasn't just cracking—it was erasing.
If the world forgot its boundaries, how long before they forgot themselves?
They sat in silence until Lyra broke it.
"Do you regret it?"
Raven looked at her. "What?"
"Touching the book. Learning what we are."
"No," he said. "Because even if the world ends, at least I'll end knowing who I belong to."
Her eyes stung.
They didn't kiss.
There was no time for it now.
The wind picked up. Trees bent backward. In the distance, the sun flickered—like a flame on the verge of going out.
Lyra stood.
"We need to find the relics."
Raven nodded. "Before the others do."
Because yes—there were others.
Creatures born of the original tear,
existing in the seams between worlds. They had always been hungry. Always watching. And now, they could smell the unraveling.
Each relic was a lock. A gate. If they were broken or corrupted, the veil would fall completely—and what came through would not be stoppable.
Varos had mentioned them in whispers. Four relics. Scattered. Hidden. All connected to their past lives.
They didn't know where to start—but they would.
Because the dream they both had last night—shared without saying—had shown the first clue.
A sword in stone, in the mouth of a dead god.
And a voice whispering: One must fall for the other to rise.
Lyra and Raven looked at the sky, now pulsing with veins of magic.
The war had begun.
They just hadn't realized they were its heart.