The flickering light of a dying fire cast long, jagged shadows across the ruined temple walls. Faint carvings of forgotten gods lay half-buried beneath moss and ash. The world outside still slept under the hush of midnight, but within those crumbling stones, the air burned with unspoken words.
Kael sat across from Lyra, a bloodied rag pressed against his side. The cut would scar, but it was nothing compared to the war inside him a storm of memories not his own, voices older than men, and a hunger for something he could neither name nor deny.
Lyra watched him silently. She hadn't spoken since the vision in the clearing. Now, her gaze flickered to the cursed mark glowing faintly on his chest.
"You should leave me," Kael muttered. "I'm... wrong. You saw it."
"I did," she admitted, voice low, soft as dusk. "And yet here I stay."
He looked up, met her eyes. In them, he saw neither fear nor pity. Only understanding and something else, a warmth that should not have existed between them.
"You're a Duskborne," Kael said. "Our clans would slit each other's throats in the street. My father..."
"...would've killed me before I drew breath," Lyra finished for him. "And my mother would burn your soul to cinders if she knew you still breathed."
As if summoned by the very mention of her name, the night outside cracked open with a peal of unnatural thunder. A column of violet flame erupted in the forest, and an inhuman scream echoed across the valley.
Kael tensed. "What was that?"
Lyra rose to her feet, her face gone pale. "She's here."
Selvara, Demon Queen of the West, had come.
A presence pressed against the world a suffocating weight like drowning in smoke. The trees bowed. The stars dimmed.
"You need to run," Lyra said urgently, gripping his hand. "If she finds you, Kael, there won't be a bone left to bury."
"I won't leave you."
A half-smile touched her lips, sad and beautiful. "Foolish boy. I've spent my life hunted for defying her. If I fall, I fall on my feet."
A deafening roar tore through the forest, and a figure stepped into the clearing beyond the temple ruins.
She was a vision of death made flesh. Tall, with raven hair crowned in bone, and eyes the color of molten gold. Darkness clung to her like a living thing. In one hand, she held a whip of seething shadow. The other stretched toward Lyra.
"My daughter," Selvara hissed, voice a blade against the air. "You consort with the boy who would end gods?"
Kael stepped forward, brandishing his dagger like it could mean something against a creature born before the world had names.
Selvara's lips curled into a cruel smile.
"How precious. The mongrel would defend you."
Before he could move, the cursed blade Vharion pulsed beneath his skin. A voice, ancient and terrible, whispered in his ear.
"Take me. Strike her down. Break the chains."
His hand moved toward the hilt, but Lyra's voice cut through the madness.
"Don't," she said, stepping between them. "Not tonight."
Selvara's gaze hardened. "You would betray blood for love?"
"I would defy the gods themselves."
For the first time, the Demon Queen hesitated.
And in that heartbeat of silence, Kael took Lyra's hand, and together they ran into the shadows, into the unknown, leaving behind the war that would follow them like a curse.
The hunt had begun.