The forest was too quiet.
Not the silence of peace, but of aftermath.
Sylara stumbled through the underbrush, branches tearing at her sleeves, blood drying in stiff rust over her tunic. Her legs moved on memory alone. She didn't feel the gash on her thigh. She didn't notice the leaves crunching beneath her boots. All she heard was her own ragged breath and the haunting echo of nothing.
No voice. No bond.
Nyx was gone.
Not dead. She would know if he was dead. She would feel it in her bones, wouldn't she? But the soul-thread—the invisible tether that had once thrummed with heat and life between them—was mute. Not frayed. Not strained. Mute. As if someone had turned the stars off inside her.
She gripped the bark of an old, mossy trunk, retching dryly. Her knees hit the earth a second later.
The mission. The ambush. The chanting. The ropes.
Her mind skittered back, unwanted.
---
They'd gone into the forest under the guise of a training assignment—a joint mission to retrieve an artifact. Grouped in pairs, scattered just enough to feel exposed, they were told to rely on strategy, silence, and synergy.
But when her path turned wrong, when the sigils under her feet flickered and her partners never showed, she had known something was coming. The air had shifted. Too clean. Too still.
And then they came.
Three of them. Two with blades rune-carved to dull pain but spill control. One with chanting lips and a talisman of bone and mirror. She remembered the way the artifact pulsed when it neared her skin, how her limbs gave out, her hands curled uselessly, her runes silent beneath her collarbone.
Nyx had screamed in her mind. An animal sound. Then silence.
And then came the light.
A searing rift in the clearing. Nyx forcing herself through.
They tried to trap her. Circle of rune-snares etched into the ground like thorns. Magic that burned backwards, eating itself. Ropes of sunforged silver meant to bind spirits.
But Nyx broke through.
Not because she was strong enough.
Because she chose to spend everything she had.
She took the pain. Ripped her free.
And stayed behind.
---
Sylara pressed her forehead to the mossy bark. Tears had stopped hours ago. Now only hollow.
She had always known Nyx was more than a companion. She was her balance. Her anchor. The echo to her breath. Now there was only silence where her voice used to live.
She remembered a night months ago, when Nyx had whispered in her mind "Even if the sky forgets your name, I won't."
It haunted her now. Because she could still remember her voice. But not feel her.
She didn't know how she got back to Riftkeep.
She remembered the outer guards shouting.
Someone grabbing her arms.
The feel of blood under her fingernails.
The way someone said, "Gods, what happened?"
She hadn't answered.
What answer was there?
They took her to the infirmary. Healers clucked over her. One tried to force calm-runes into her palms. She shattered the bowl with her stare alone.
Someone tried to ask questions. A guard trainee, tall and cold. She didn't speak.
She sat by the window all night. Let the cold bite through the bandages. Watched the sky.
Waited.
Nyx didn't come.
---
They said she was brave.
They said she had survived a targeted assassination.
They said nothing of the girl who came back with her soul in shards.
Sylara watched the dawn break over Riftkeep's towers, light glinting off the silvered stone. Her hands rested in her lap, unmoving. Her eyes, amethyst and storm-swept, held nothing of the girl she was days ago.
She had not cried since the forest.
She had not spoken Nyx's name.
But the embers in her blood burned hotter than ever.
They had tried to take her.
They had tried to use her.
And they had silenced her bond.
But they had not broken her.
They had only lit the fire.
---
Somewhere deep in Riftkeep, where mirrored halls led to locked doors and names were not spoken aloud, a report landed in the hands of the Riftguard.
They read of a girl who survived.
And a spirit-wolf who vanished.
One masked figure whispered, "The flame has stirred."
Another replied, "Then the Hollow will soon awaken."
Outside, dawn touched the world.
And Sylara did not weep.
She sharpened her rage like a blade.
And waited for the fire to speak again.
---