The horizon bled violet and gold, a sign the veil between memory and oblivion was thinning. In the silence that followed Amira's final chord, something stirred across the rift. Not light. Not warmth.
But wings.
Dark, bone-framed, etched with forgotten sigils.
They came not in fury—but in perfect, terrifying calm.
The Skyhunters had awakened.
The Arrival of the First Wing
Amira, Kelu, Morya, and Damaris watched the skies tremble.
A shriek—ancient and metallic—tore across the heavens. It was not a cry of rage, but of precision, a signal woven into the air itself. The first Skyhunter landed on the outer cliffs, its eyes empty sockets glowing with silvery mist.
It didn't speak.
It simply listened. Then, vanished into wind.
Morya paled. "They're not just watchers anymore. They've been sent."
"Sent by who?" Amira asked, heart pounding.
Kelu swallowed hard. "The ones who rewrote the sky's language. The Architects."
Webs in the Sky
In the Citadel of Withered Echoes, Teyrion the Pale held a sliver of broken skyglass in his palm.
"Each note she plays cracks our tapestry," he whispered. "We built a new sky—without gods, without fire, without choice. And now, she dares to sing the old song."
One of the veiled Architects stirred. "Shall we summon the Widowstorm?"
Teyrion's smile was as thin as a shadow. "No. Not yet. Let the Skyhunters reach her first. Let her feel hunted. And when she looks up for help…"
He crushed the glass.
"…there will be no stars left."
A Choice in the Firelight
That night, beneath the tattered starlight, Amira met with the Flamekeeper.
"You must choose," the elder said. "Complete the song and awaken Serai fully—risking the collapse of the False Sky. Or destroy the harp, and keep the world stable but broken."
"There's a third way," Amira whispered.
The elder tilted his head.
"I don't burn the sky or bury it," she said. "I teach it to remember."
The fire shivered.
The harp's strings began to hum on their own.
And for the first time since Serai fell, the stars shifted in their rhythm.
Foreshadowing the Fall
At dawn, a feather drifted onto the mountaintop. Not from a bird. But from a wing far older.
Damaris caught it, eyes widening.
"It's hers," he said. "Serai… she's moving beneath the veil."
But so were the Skyhunters.
They no longer flew overhead.
They were beneath the soil now. Listening. Waiting.
Preparing to strike not the sky… but Amira's heart.
Final Lines of the Chapter
Far away, in a crumbling observatory lost to time, a child drew stars on cracked stone with a piece of coal.
He paused.
Then turned to his shadow and whispered:
"She's almost there. If she remembers the Eighth Note, the sky will burn open."
His shadow responded in Serai's voice.
"And what will she find on the other side?"