POV: Lyra
I ran.
Not from him.
Not from Ronan.
From myself.
From the fire in my veins, the lies in my lungs, the way the air felt wrong when I breathed it.
The trees blurred around me as I sprinted through the woods, branches slapping my arms, roots nearly catching my boots. The forest was too quiet — even the wind was holding its breath.
How long had they known?
How long had I been a weapon dressed as a girl?
Ronan's words kept echoing:
> You weren't chosen. You were created.
My hands pulsed with that golden fire again.
I pressed my palms to the cold bark of a tree and screamed — but no sound came. Only smoke.
I didn't know where I was going. I just needed space. I needed silence.
And then, suddenly, the ground gave out beneath me.
I fell.
Not far — maybe a few feet — but into a hollow chamber covered in moss and shadow.
The fall knocked the breath from my chest, and I gasped as I pushed up from the stone floor, dirt clinging to my skin.
I wasn't alone.
The air here felt ancient. Stale. Sacred.
I stood slowly, brushing myself off.
And that's when I saw it.
A mural.
Painted across the stone wall in old, flaking reds and charcoals.
A woman with fire in her eyes.
Hair like mine.
A scar over her brow like the one I got last winter.
And behind her, a man — tall, dark, with silver eyes — crumbling into ash as she burned from the inside out.
Below the mural, in ancient runes, was a name:
Emberlyn.
My knees buckled, and I sat hard on the stone floor, heart racing.
I'd seen her in dreams. In whispers. In that mirror.
But now I saw her on a wall that predated me by centuries.
> I was real, her voice whispered through my mind. And so is your purpose.
"No," I said aloud. "This can't be—this isn't me."
But the mural didn't lie.
Neither did the bond surging in my veins.
I wasn't a reincarnation. I was a continuation.
The same flame, carried forward again and again, waiting to ignite.
And suddenly, I wasn't afraid of the fire anymore.
I was afraid of what I'd do with it.