Far from the smoke and ruin, beneath a temple carved into the spine of a dying mountain, Meredith the Hight Priestess collapsed to her knees.
Candles guttered in their holders. The star-charts curled inward as if recoiling from fate. Her breath came in shudders, sharp and ragged, her eyes wide and silver-blind.
She had felt Mira's death.
Not as a whisper but as a rupture.
As though someone had torn a thread from the weave of fate and cast it screaming into the void.
The name Nyx still echoed in her mind like a bell struck in the heart of eternity.
"No," she whispered, pressing a bloodied palm to the cold stone. "No, no, no…"
She reached outward not with hands, but with Sight. Reached for any ember, any flicker of life that remained in the ruins of the Night Realm.
There was nothing.
The wards were dead. The soul-lights extinguished. The royal line, the ancient blood of the Moon and Stars, was gone, wiped clean. No children hidden in secret chambers. No mages lingering beneath the foundations. Not even the spectral echoes of the Night Court's spirits remained.
It was a silence deeper than death. It was obliteration.
She felt her Sight recoil, as though God himself had burned the memory from the world.
A tear slipped down her cheek, followed by another, and another, until the stone was wet with grief.
"How?" she breathed. "How did they know?"
Behind her, the sacred pool darkened. The water that once shimmered with stars turned black. Cracks split the marble beneath her feet. The very bones of prophecy were breaking.
Meredith bowed low, forehead to the ground, and began to weep not just for Mira, but for all of them: the children with moon-silver eyes, the twin princes who loved poetry, the king who had once promised peace, the queen who died holding her child, and Mira, bright, wild Mira who had burned like a falling star.
She had seen the end in visions. But she had never imagined it would feel so final.
The flame had won.
The night was no more.
The Oracle slowly stood up from where she had been kneeling in anguish for those slain.
Her tears had soaked into the ancient floor of the sanctum, and where they touched, the carved constellations flickered faintly to life. Just enough to whisper a name again.
Nyx.
Not a scream this time. A murmur. A breath.
It echoed not just in her mind, but in the very bones of fate. She heard it woven into the distant murmurs of the stars, like the last line of a prophecy unfinished.
Mira had died for it.
Not for revenge. Not for legacy. But to protect a single truth: Nyx lives.
The Oracle rose, slow and unsteady, her hands trembling as she reached for the sealed scrolls in the highest alcove records forbidden even to the Circle of Seers. She unrolled one with shaking fingers, revealing a lineage traced not by name, but by shadowmarks, inherited only by the direct blood of the Night Court.
There.There it was.
A branch no one knew of. Hidden. Disguised. A child born under eclipse. Removed from court records at birth. Unnamed.
Just a flicker.
But flickers can become flame.
Her heart stuttered in her chest. Mira had kept the child hidden. Concealed even from Sight. Perhaps the last surviving heir of the Night.
"Nyx," the Oracle breathed again, this time with awe. "The hidden star."
She turned to the crystal ball. It reflected nothing now but she did not need reflections. She had purpose.
If the Sun Realm knew the child lived, they would hunt her to the ends of the world.
So she would guard the name. Bury it in myth and silence and from this moment forward, the world would believe none had survived the purge.
Even the stars would lie.
The golden throne room of Solara burned with sunlight much too bright and too sharp.
It spilled in shafts through the vast stained-glass dome, casting a thousand shifting reflections on the marble below. At the center, beneath a sunburst arch of gold and flame glass, the Sun Queen stood still as a statue.
Her crown shimmered with phoenix feathers. Her eyes were narrowed to slits of molten gold.
And she was furious.
Reports lay strewn before her, scattered scrolls written in trembling hands. Sealed accounts from commanders, generals, seers. All repeating the same word:
"Extinct."The Night Court is no more.No survivors. No prisoners. No heirs.
It should have satisfied her.
But it didn't.
Not when the Oracle had gone silent. Not when the stars above the eastern sky refused to realign. Not when the last breath of Mira that wretched fountain princess had echoed like a curse across the skies.
"Nyx."
That single name had wormed its way into her dreams. It hissed through the bonfires at dusk. Birds turned their heads toward it. The wind carried it like a forgotten prayer. She had asked every sage and prophet what it meant. Most trembled. A few lied. None satisfied her.
And now her most trusted Shadowfinder had returned from the ruins with empty hands.
She turned on him like a blade.
"You found nothing?" she snapped. "No bones? No blood? No child hidden in vault or cellar?"
The Shadowfinder dropped to his knees. His cloak of feathers spread like spilled ink across the golden floor.
"We searched every crypt. Every cave. We used the tongues of flame to test for illusion and blood-wards. There is… nothing left, Your Majesty."
"Then explain this!" She flung a scorched scrap of silk at his feet embroidered with the sigil of the royal Night line. It was not on the list of recovered artifacts.
He looked up, stricken. "Where did you find that?"
Her voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "It arrived by raven. No note. No seal. From the ruins. Yesterday."
The hall went still.
A message. A warning. A ghost.
"I want that child found," she said coldly. "I want every name rechecked. Every grave reopened. If any midwife or court mage escaped my flames, drag them into the sun. Burn them until they speak."
The Shadowfinder bowed low, already vanishing into the golden corridors.
Behind the throne, phoenixes screeched. Fire curled along the banners.
The Sun Queen remained still, her fists clenched at her sides.
She had ended a kingdom. Burned a world to ashes. Slaughtered gods and ghosts alike. She had taken the crown of the day and crushed the night beneath her heel.
And still… Mira had whispered a name. With her dying breath. As if she knew something the Queen did not.
As if she had already won.
The Sun Queen stepped down from her throne and crossed the marble to the vast mirrored map at the room's center. Her gaze swept the known realms and then drifted east, to the broken lands beyond her reach.
Her voice was quiet, but every guard in the chamber heard it:
"If this Nyx lives…....I will find her and I will finish what I began."