The air in the chamber was colder than it had any right to be.
Lyra stood alone, still facing the ancient runes carved deep into the mountain stone. Their glow had dimmed, their secrets buried once again beneath centuries of silence. But the truth they had whispered lingered in her bones.
He was never yours to begin with.
That voice—that poison—had come not from memory, but from the enchantment Caleon helped her unlock. The chamber hadn't just held ruins of forgotten magic. It had held the echoes of the past—memories bound by blood, betrayal, and soul.
And one memory, clearer than the rest, had broken her.
The child. The one torn from her arms before she burned on the pyre. She had believed he'd died. That her sister—the one who wore her crown—had ended his life to finish her revenge.
But now, something twisted had surfaced.
"He was never yours."
Then whose?
Lyra pressed her palm to the wall, trying to keep the shaking at bay.
Caleon's voice had long faded from the stairwell. He had left her after her collapse, after she'd screamed without sound and clawed at stone. He hadn't asked questions. He simply said, "Let me know when you're ready," and vanished into the shadows like he always did.
She wasn't ready.
Not for the truth. Not for the fire that now burned and froze at the same time inside her.
But time was no longer a luxury.
Footsteps echoed behind her.
She didn't turn. "I thought I asked to be alone."
"I know," came a voice that was neither Caleon's nor Thalen's. It was softer. Tense.
Lyra turned. Her breath caught.
"Eris," she whispered.
The young woman stepped from the archway, shadows curling at her back. Her crimson robes, once scholar's garb, now looked more like blood-woven armor.
"It's true, then," Eris said, her voice tight. "You remember."
Lyra narrowed her eyes. "What do you know about my past?"
Eris looked away, shame crossing her features. "Enough."
"Say it."
"I was there, Lyra," she said softly. "The day they took your son."
The silence shattered like glass.
Lyra moved before thinking. She was across the room in a blink, magic singing at her fingertips, frost curling in her palms.
"You were there?" Her voice cracked. "You watched him be taken?"
"I didn't have a choice—"
"You had a choice!" she screamed. "You had a choice to save him. To stop them!"
"I was seventeen," Eris said, her voice breaking. "A ward of the crown. Your sister threatened to brand me as a traitor to the realm. Said she'd have my tongue cut if I spoke a word. I didn't have power. I didn't have—" She stopped herself, swallowing hard. "I didn't have your courage."
Lyra's frost flared, then dulled.
"I thought you were loyal to me," Lyra whispered.
"I was," Eris said. "I still am."
The silence stretched. Too long. Too heavy.
Lyra turned away. "Where did they take him?"
Eris hesitated.
"I don't know," she said at last. "He was smuggled out of the palace. Some said he died in the fire. Others said… he was sent to the North. To the Veyren lands."
Lyra's heart twisted.
The Veyren Wastes. A barren stretch of snow and shadowed forests, ruled not by nobles but by blood-wars and old laws. No child would survive there alone.
Unless he wasn't alone.
Unless someone had raised him.
Lyra steadied herself. "If he lives…"
Eris stepped closer. "You'll tear the Empire apart to find him."
Lyra didn't deny it.
In the days that followed, whispers rose across the palace.
Lyra did not return to the training fields. She did not walk the royal court as she once had. She moved through the halls like a storm—cold, silent, calculating.
Caleon noticed.
He stood beside Commander Thalen at the edge of the north battlements, overlooking the sparring rings far below.
"She's changed," Thalen said, watching her move through the corridors beneath them.
"She's remembering," Caleon replied.
"She's dangerous."
"So are we."
Thalen gave him a look. "She's more than a threat, Caleon. She's an heir."
Caleon didn't respond.
Because it was true.
Lyra's magic, bound not to the elements but to her will, marked her as something far beyond a sorceress. It made her a wielder of soulfire—a power thought extinct when the first dynasty fell.
And soulfire only bloomed in one bloodline.
The imperial bloodline.
Not the one that currently sat on the throne.
The true one.
Thalen continued. "If the Empress finds out—"
"She already knows," Caleon interrupted. "She's always known."
Thalen went silent.
Below them, Lyra paused at the outer courtyard, then turned toward the chapel steps.
"She's not ready," Thalen murmured. "If she goes after him now—if he's even alive—she'll be walking into a trap."
Caleon's gaze didn't leave her.
"She's not going alone."
The chapel was empty when Lyra entered.
Dust danced in sunbeams through broken stained glass. The old gods had long since been abandoned in favor of courtly idols and imperial banners.
But Lyra didn't pray.
She knelt, slowly, at the altar—not in reverence, but in mourning.
"For you," she whispered, pressing her hand to the cold stone, "I burned."
She didn't know if her son could hear her. If her magic, reborn and seething, could cross the veils between the living and lost.
But still, she whispered.
And the frost around her answered.
A flicker. A pulse. A heartbeat.
It was faint. But it was there.
Not hers.
His.
Still alive.
Her head shot up.
Someone moved in the shadows of the nave.
She rose to her feet instantly, her hand glowing faint blue.
"You shouldn't sneak up on me," she said coldly.
Caleon stepped forward. "I wasn't sneaking."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then you're reckless."
He smirked. "So are you. I heard about your visit to the war chambers."
Lyra said nothing.
"I'm coming with you," he added.
"I didn't invite you."
"You didn't have to."
Lyra turned away. "This is my burden. Not yours."
"No," he said quietly. "It never was. But I carried it anyway."
She froze.
Caleon's voice was rough. "You don't remember everything yet, do you?"
She turned slowly. "I remember enough."
He took a step forward. "Do you remember the night before your trial?"
Silence.
"I was the one who smuggled you out of the tower. I got you to the sanctuary beneath the library. Gave you a chance to run."
"But I didn't run."
"You turned back. For your son. And I let you."
Her breath caught.
"I watched you walk into that fire."
The walls of the chapel suddenly felt too close.
"You—" Lyra's voice broke. "Why didn't you stop me?"
"Because I knew if I did," Caleon said softly, "you'd never forgive me."
Something between them shifted. Not warmth—but pain. Shared. Survived.
"Why are you still here?" she asked. "Why not let me go alone now?"
"Because you're going into the Veyren Wastes," he said. "And no one returns from there without blood on their hands. You'll need someone who doesn't care how many bodies lie between you and your truth."
Lyra studied him.
Caleon Drevarr—the Empire's coldest commander. The man with a blade for a spine and a storm behind his eyes.
"You always were better with blades than with goodbyes," she said quietly.
He looked away. Just for a moment.
"Then don't say goodbye."
The journey began at nightfall.
Lyra and Caleon rode east under a moonless sky, their cloaks drawn tight, their faces hidden beneath the insignias of fallen houses.
No one stopped them.
No one dared.
Their route was forbidden, carved through borderlands riddled with old traps and older secrets. The Veyren Wastes loomed ahead like a mouth waiting to swallow them whole.
But Lyra felt no fear.
Only fury.
And something else.
A whisper in the wind.
She hears your name, the wind seemed to say. She remembers.
At first, she thought it was madness. Echoes of frost in her veins. But each step deeper into the wilds sharpened the voice.
Until it wasn't a whisper.
It was a name.
"Lyra."
She spun.
Caleon raised his blade. "What is it?"
She didn't answer.
Because no one was there.
Not that he could see.
But she saw him.
The figure standing beyond the ridge.
A boy.
Tall, cloaked in wolf-pelt, his eyes an impossible shade of gold and blue.
Her breath stilled.
The frost in her blood howled.
Her heart recognized him before her mind could speak.
It can't be.
But it was.
He turned—and ran into the shadows.
Lyra moved.
"Lyra, wait—!"
She didn't stop.
Branches whipped at her face. Roots clawed her boots. But she ran, faster than she had in either life.
The world blurred.
And then she reached it.
An altar of ice and bone.
Abandoned in a clearing. Blood dried on the stone.
A voice whispered in her head, not hers, not memory—but warning.
"Do not forget what he is."
And she knew then.
This was not the boy she had borne.
This was what the Veyren had made him.
A weapon.
A ghost.
A prince reborn not in fire—but in frost and vengeance.
And as her breath fogged and her vision swam, Lyra felt it again.
That same frost-fire power—but older. Stronger.
Rising all around her.
And behind her, Caleon's voice, sharp and alarmed:
"Lyra—he's not alone."
She turned.
Too late.
Figures emerged from the mist.
Eyes glowing. Teeth bared.
Not soldiers.
Not men.
Shades of ice and steel.
And standing among them…
The boy.
Her son.
Clad in Veyren armor.
Eyes like hers.
But without mercy.
Without warmth.
He lifted a hand—and the frost answered.
And Lyra understood—
She had not come to save him.
She had come to face him.