The sword still pulsed like a wound in the earth.
Lyra stood motionless before it, heart splintering beneath her ribs. Raven was gone—ripped through a rift not of their choosing, not even of their making.
And yet, somehow… it had felt inevitable.
The forest no longer held shape. Trees blurred, roots floated above soil, and shadows slithered like serpents unbound by light. This wasn't just a cursed place anymore—it had become something else. A realm in flux. A bleeding edge between what was and what should not be.
"Raven," she whispered again.
No answer. But she could still feel him.
Distant. Cold. Terrified.
It wasn't just magic anymore. It was bond. Anchor. Curse.
She pressed her hand to the sword's hilt again—but it no longer responded. The blood she'd shed had sealed something, and now the weapon refused her touch. Its memory was spent.
She didn't have time to waste.
Drawing on unstable magic was dangerous, but not doing so was worse. Lyra pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and knelt on the forest floor, her fingers skimming the surface of dead grass. She murmured a spell—one the mentors had forbidden long ago. It didn't open doors. It tore them.
The air shattered.
A crack formed in the shape of a wound—ragged and pulsing.
Beyond it, another world called to her.
Raven's world.
Without giving herself the chance to regret it, Lyra stepped through.
---
She landed hard.
The air here was sharp and dry, scorched by something more than fire. Ash floated like snow, and the skies churned in bruised hues—violet and black, red and gold. The vampire realm… but not as she had known it in passing dreams.
It was dying.
Magic here was unbound and unraveling.
As Lyra stood, she noticed the way her boots sunk into the cracked earth. The ground pulsed with veins of glowing blue magic—unstable, sick. Her skin burned faintly from proximity, not enough to kill her, but enough to warn her.
"Raven?" she called out.
No voice replied—but something did.
A whisper, low and distant.
Her name. From the darkness ahead.
She followed it.
The path bent in impossible angles, leading her through what must once have been a temple. Obsidian columns reached into nothing. Statues of forgotten gods crumbled around her, their eyes gouged out, their mouths stitched shut with metal thorns.
It was here she found him.
Raven knelt on the floor before an altar, breathing hard, eyes wild with confusion. His hands were covered in blood, though no wounds marked his skin.
"Raven!" she rushed to him.
He looked up—blank at first. Then his eyes cleared, and he reached for her like a drowning man. "Lyra… you came through?"
"I had to." She gripped his face gently. "What happened?"
"I don't know." He swallowed. "This place… it's like a memory. But it's not mine. It's someone else's. Something else's."
Lyra glanced around. "It's collapsing. Whatever this realm was—it's ending."
He nodded, trembling. "I saw myself. But wrong. Twisted. And I wasn't alone. There was… someone with my face. He said he was what I would become if we failed."
Lyra's throat tightened. "That's what the sword showed me. You, but cruel. Me, but monstrous. Like shadows waiting to claim us if we fall too far."
Raven rose, and their fingers entwined.
The altar behind him began to glow. Lines of ancient script lit up across the stone—a language neither had ever studied but somehow understood.
"The Tethered will burn or bind. Choose."
Lyra read it aloud, voice barely a whisper.
They stood in silence.
"What does it mean?" Raven asked.
But she already knew.
The prophecy wasn't about war or victory. It was about choice. About them.
Their bond was either salvation—or the spark of the world's ruin.
"We don't get to stay in between anymore," she said quietly. "Whatever we are… whatever we were meant to be… the gods are watching now. And they've made their move."
Raven nodded. "Then we make ours."
From the altar's base, a new light emerged—a relic, humming with restrained power. It was shaped like a heart carved from moonstone, half-cracked, still glowing. It pulsed with two rhythms.
Lyra's magic. And Raven's blood.
Together.
She reached for it.
So did he.
And when their hands touched the relic, the world fractured once more.
But this time—they didn't fall alone.