The Voice in the Ashes
The Heart's destruction left silence.
Eira lay in the ruins of Vaelis, her body humming with phantom power, her ears ringing from the explosion. The sky above pulsed—not with stars, but with the absence of them, as if the world had inhaled and forgotten to exhale.
Then the whispers began.
"You are ours."
Not from the wind. Not from the shadows.
From inside her skull.
She rolled onto her side, retching blackened starlight onto the cracked earth. The taste of burnt honey and iron filled her mouth.
Kaelan was shouting, his voice muffled as if through water. "—get up, Eira, we have to—"
A hand clamped around her wrist—Veyl's hand, the Shadow King's grip colder than death. His hollow eyes bored into hers.
"Do you feel it yet?" he breathed. "The thing they left inside you?"
Eira's mark screamed.
---
The First Memory
The vision hit like a blade to the gut.
She stood in a celestial throne room, but the marble was cracked, the tapestries aflame. A woman with Eira's face—no, not hers, her ancestor's—knelt before a towering figure wreathed in smoke and starlight.
"Take my life,"the ancestor begged."But spare my daughter."
*The figure leaned down, its voice the scrape of scales on stone:"We take both. Her blood will be our vessel when we return."
Then it plunged a shard of the Heart into the woman's chest—
Eira wrenched free of the memory with a gasp.
Veyl still held her, his lips curled in a mockery of a smile. "Now you understand. The Forgotten didn't just kill your bloodline. They *planted* their heir in it."
Kaelan's dagger was at his brother's throat in an instant. "Let. Her. Go."
Veyl laughed. "Oh, little brother. You think I'm the villain here?"
Then the ground split open.
---
The Vyrth Ascendant
The Forgotten rose from the fissure—not the half-formed monsters from before, but something older.
Its true form was a shifting horror: a skeletal giant wrapped in starlight-veined skin, its face a void where constellations died. The air around it rotted, leaves crumbling to dust in its wake.
"Eiraaa," it crooned, the sound vibrating in her teeth.
Kaelan hauled her backward, but Veyl stood his ground, shadows writhing around him.
"You broke the bargain," the king snarled.
The Forgotten's laugh was the sound of bones breaking. "You stole our power. We stole your future." Its void-face turned to Eira. "She was always meant to be our queen."
Her mark ignited, silver fire racing up her arm. The voice in her head purred:
"Say yes, and I'll make them all kneel."
Kaelan's grip tightened. "Don't listen—"
The Forgotten moved.
One moment Veyl stood before it. The next, the king's body folded, his spine snapping as the creature lifted him like a doll.
"Kael—"Veyl choked, blood bubbling at his lips—
—then the Forgotten ripped him in half.
---
The Choice
Kaelan's scream shattered the night.
Eira expected him to attack. To mourn. Instead, he went still, his shadows dissolving into the air like smoke.
When he spoke, his voice was calm. "Run."
She grabbed his arm. "We run."
His golden eyes met hers, empty as Veyl's had been. "I can't."
Then he pushed her—hard—just as the Forgotten's claw descended where she'd stood.
Eira hit the dirt, scrambling back as Kaelan faced the creature alone, his hands raised.
"Take me instead," he said.
The Forgotten paused. "You are nothing."
Kaelan smiled. "I'm his brother."
He clapped his hands—
—and the shadows inside him detonated.
The blast threw Eira into the ruins. She barely registered the pain as she clawed her way up, her vision swimming.
Where Kaelan had stood, there was only a crater.
Where the Forgotten had been, there was nothing.
And in her mind, the voice whispered:
"Liar. Coward. Murderer."
Teaser for Chapter Eight: The Hollow Queen
Kaelan is gone.
The Forgotten are hunting.
And the thing inside Eira is waking up.
"Let me out,"it pleads."I'll make the pain stop."