The sky trembled again, not with thunder, but with music—fractured and distant. The kind of melody that once spun galaxies and cradled the sleeping breath of creation. Amira stood beneath it, hearing the tones not with her ears, but with her bones.
It was Serai's lullaby.
And it was breaking.
A Lullaby of Fire and Dust
The woman without eyes handed Amira a harp.
It was no ordinary instrument. Each string shimmered with light pulled from the breath of stars—some broken, some still glowing.
"This," the woman said, "is what remains of her song. Play it, and you will remember not just her… but the part of yourself that was born from her fall."
Amira's hands shook.
She strummed.
And the world twisted.
The Memory of the Fall
Suddenly, she was not in the Flame Chamber. She was falling—wings of fire curled behind her, Serai's own heart beating inside her chest.
The sky had once been whole. A great woven dome of dreams and flame. But then the Loom fractured—betrayed by the Silver Architects, those who believed memory should be controlled.
Serai had stood against them.
She had burned everything to keep the sky dreaming.
But it hadn't been enough.
Amira saw Serai spiral through the stratosphere, her feathers turning into ash, her light swallowed by a void that had no name.
And then… silence.
Return to the Chamber
Amira gasped awake, the harp still glowing in her arms.
Kelu knelt beside her, whispering: "You played the memory. I saw it."
"She is not gone," Amira breathed. "She was buried in the forgetting. And we… we were never meant to forget her."
Morya nodded slowly. "Then the Song must be completed. If the sky is to mend, Serai must rise through us."
"But if we play it wrong," Damaris added grimly, "we could shatter what little sky is left."
Meanwhile: A Gathering of Shadows
Far to the north, in the Citadel of Withered Echoes, the Silver Architects reconvened.
Their leader, Teyrion the Pale, stared into the Veil Mirror. "She remembers too much," he said.
One of the shadowed figures hissed, "Then the flame must be extinguished before the Ninth Eclipse."
"But not just her flame," Teyrion replied coldly. "All of them. Every soul that carries the ember of Serai. Even the boy with the opal eyes."
He turned.
And with a whisper, the Skyhunters were summoned.
Final Lines of the Chapter
Amira stood at the cliff's edge again, harp cradled in her arms. Above her, the stars blinked uneasily.
She played one final chord.
And somewhere, beneath the crumbling sky, a wing beat echoed back—faint, but rising.
Serai was listening.
And she was not alone.