Part 1: The Moonless Night & The Offer (Lyra)
The world had gone dark—not just the sky, which swallowed the moon whole, but inside me.
Pain throbbed beneath my ribs, each breath a blade. My steps faltered, shadowing and silencing my only companions. I could feel the cold seeping through my torn cloak, mingling with the sting of dried blood crusted on my skin. Every inch of my body screamed for rest, for surrender—but I couldn't. Not yet.
I kept moving, limping through the twisted ruins of a forgotten village, the bitter wind carrying whispers of ghosts and lost hopes. The mission had nearly ended me—a narrow escape from the assassin's blade, a bullet meant for death but dodged by sheer luck and sharpened reflexes. My limbs were weak; my magic, a flickering ember on the verge of extinguishing.
Then, just as the chill began to numb my senses, the figure appeared—no sound, no warning, just a presence that chilled and warmed all at once.
I froze, every muscle taut like a drawn bow. The figure stepped from the shadows, cloaked head to toe in dark fabric that swallowed even the faintest light. The only thing that caught the moonless night was the ring on their finger—an ornate band etched with twin sigils, one a flickering flame, the other a crystalline shard, both intertwined as if bound by destiny itself.
"You were not exiled. You were hidden." The voice was calm, grave, and threaded with a weight that made the air itself seem to thicken. "You are the storm the crowns fear."
I blinked, disbelief gnawing at my exhaustion. Hidden? Storm? Crowns? The words hit me like a cold wave crashing through frozen stone.
"No name. No promises. Just a choice." The figure's words echoed in the silent night.
I could keep running—keep vanishing into the cold dark that had become my home for so long. I could retreat into the loneliness of exile, let my wounds fester beneath layers of shadow.
Or—
I could step into a world of shadows where legends lived and died. Where power was forged in silence and fire, and the future was carved by those who dared to seize it.
I chose to fight.
The truth is that what I'd been running from was never exile. It was destiny.
The cold seeped into my bones, but beneath it, a spark stirred—fragile yet fierce. I remembered the lullabies my mother once sang, her voice a thread of silver light through the darkest nights. The magic within me—the song, the melos magic—had always been more than a gift or curse. It was a force waiting to be wielded.
The stranger stepped closer, their eyes hidden beneath the shadow of the hood. "The Order of the Two Crowns has waited centuries for you. We are the balance—the flame and the crystal, the light and the dark. The realms are broken, torn apart by hatred and blood. Only you can mend what was shattered."
I wanted to deny it. To cast off the weight of prophecy that had haunted me since birth. But every whispered promise, every broken bond, every scar told me otherwise.
I had been cast away, betrayed by blood and crown. But I was not lost.
The figure held out the ring—its sigils pulsing faintly in the darkness. "Wear this, and you join the legacy of those who stand in the shadows to protect the realms from falling into ruin. You will not walk alone."
My fingers trembled as I reached out, touching the cold metal. It was heavier than it looked—not in weight, but in meaning.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and slid the ring onto my finger.
The air shifted. The night seemed to exhale, and for the first time in years, I felt something I thought I had lost: hope.
But hope was a double-edged dagger.
The path ahead would demand everything—trust, sacrifice, and the shattering of all I thought I knew.
Yet, deep in the marrow of my bones, I knew this was not just a calling. It was a reckoning.
I was the storm the crowns feared. And the storm had only just begun.