## CHAPTER 12: _"When Shadows Return"_
The moon over Elira shone silver that night, but the light felt wrong.
Something stirred beyond the city walls—something that hadn't moved in decades.
In the forest to the north, where the cursed dead were once buried, the earth cracked.
A single hand—blackened, marked with ancient runes—reached from the soil.
Not all curses stay buried.
---
Back in the palace, Lysia paced the council chamber, firelight dancing in her eyes. Maps lay scattered across the stone table. Letters arrived faster than they could be read.
> "Three border towns report movement," said Mara, the former rebel scout turned councilwoman. "Not Eliran soldiers. These are… different."
> "Different how?" Arien asked.
> "They don't bleed when struck. They don't speak. They only march."
Silence fell. Lysia clenched her jaw.
> "The Forgotten," she whispered. "I read of them once. Magic-bound soldiers from the war before Elira even existed."
> "But they were destroyed," Mara said.
> "No," Arien said grimly. "They were sealed."
---
Later, in the tower library, Lysia traced her fingers along old tomes. She found what she feared: a passage about the "Second Awakening."
> "When blood breaks a throne not meant to fall,
> The sealed shall rise without call.
> Where love undoes the iron chain,
> Shadows born of cursed pain."
She closed the book. "Our love broke the curse," she murmured. "But it also woke something older."
---
At the city gate, scouts rode in breathless.
> "They're here."
Hundreds of them.
Pale-skinned. Runes etched into bone. Eyes that glowed but saw nothing.
The Forgotten had come for Elira.
Not to rule it.
But to erase it.
---
On the balcony, Lysia stood wrapped in a stormcloak. She watched the dark horizon pulse with movement.
Arien joined her.
> "They march without fear," he said.
> "Because they march without heart."
> "Then let's remind them what heart can do."
She turned to him. "We may not win this."
> "Then we lose loud."
And together, they walked into the war council, not as rulers.
But as lovers with fire in their blood.
A curse had been broken.
But a war had begun.
And this time, the cost would not be their hearts.
It would be the fate of Elira itself.