The night was still.
Too still.
Snow blanketed the camp, muting footfalls and voices alike, but Lyra felt the tension like a blade at her throat. The wind smelled of ice and something else—old blood. Something buried, now unearthed.
She sat near the edge of the inner circle, firelight casting shifting gold across her hands. In one palm lay a silver ring—Vaelora's ring, taken from the trial ashes. It hadn't melted. Not even the sacred flame had touched it.
> Why?
Thorne approached from the shadow of the command tent, cloaked in frost and silence.
"You found something," Lyra said before he spoke.
He didn't sit. Just stood there, ancient grief weighing down his shoulders.
"I found everything," he said.
Lyra looked up.
He unrolled the parchment scroll with trembling fingers. The edges were burned, but the text remained. Ancient Moonblood glyphs, rimmed in ink made of crushed starroot and obsidian.
