The night would not end.
It stretched, unbroken, as if time itself had recoiled in horror from what had awakened beneath the Hollow Sky.
Lyra sat alone on the shattered battlements, her body aching, her wounds burning under hastily wrapped bandages.
The survivors of her Pack tended to each other in silence below, but Lyra could not rest.
The Savage Moon loomed above, bloated and furious, its light searing her skin, whispering madness into her ears.
She closed her eyes.
And the visions came.
Not dreams.
Not nightmares.
Something worse.
The blood rites of the Savage Moon had always granted glimpses — flickers of fate, shards of what might be.
But now, with the Hollow Ones stirring, the Moon had shattered the barriers of her mind completely.
It poured visions into her — ruthless, endless, merciless.
She saw fire.
Forests burning black under a red sky.
The bones of her ancestors cracking and screaming from beneath the earth.
She saw herself, standing alone atop a mountain of ash, crowned not with a diadem of gold, but with the severed heads of her enemies.
She saw Him.
A figure in the mist.
Taller than the Hollow Ones.
Cloaked in rags that were not cloth but woven from the screams of the dead.
A king of nothing.
A god of emptiness.
Eyes like hollow pits, deeper than death, staring directly at her.
Reaching for her.
Calling her name.
"Lyra…"
She jerked awake, heart hammering, breath ragged.
The mist had thickened again.
Creeping over the broken stones, whispering along the shattered walls.
The Savage Moon pulsed in the sky like a living heart.
Someone approached.
Not Callan.
Not Drenna.
Someone… else.
The figure stepped from the mist — a woman, clad in black leathers, hair the color of ravens' wings, eyes that burned a strange violet.
She moved like smoke.
Her scent was wrong — not Pack, not prey.
Something older.
Something deeper.
Lyra rose slowly, her sword already half drawn.
"Who are you?" she demanded, voice a growl.
The woman smiled, a slow, knowing thing.
"I am called Selene," she said.
Her voice was soft, melodic — but it carried the weight of ancient storms.
"I am what was left behind when the Savage Moon first bled into your world."
Lyra narrowed her eyes.
"A spirit?"
Selene laughed — a sound like knives on silk.
"No.
A memory.
A warning."
The mist shifted behind her, revealing glimpses of a battlefield lost to time — wolves of impossible size battling creatures of shadow and bone, the sky a whirlwind of black fire.
Selene stepped closer.
"You fight the Hollow Ones now.
You think them your greatest enemy."
She leaned in, whispering against Lyra's ear.
"You are wrong."
Lyra bared her teeth.
"Then tell me, witch. What comes for us?"
Selene's violet eyes blazed.
"The Mourning King," she said.
"The First Hollow.
The Betrayed and the Betrayer.
He who devoured the gods.
He who drowned the moon in blood."
The mist twisted, shaping images as Selene spoke.
A throne of shattered bones.
A crown of rusted thorns.
A figure draped in rotting banners, ruling over an empire of silence.
"He sleeps still, beneath the Vale of Whispers.
But your battle has stirred him."
Selene's smile faded.
"When he rises, Lyra, there will be no moon left to howl under. No world left to conquer."
Lyra sheathed her sword fully.
She met Selene's gaze without flinching.
"Then I'll kill him."
Selene tilted her head.
"You cannot kill what has already died.
You cannot slay what is made of sorrow and silence."
Lyra snarled, her voice low and savage.
"I have slain kings.
I have bled gods.
I have burned betrayal from the hearts of my own blood."
She stepped closer until she was nose to nose with Selene.
"If the Mourning King wants my world, he will have to rip it from my teeth."
Selene studied her for a long moment.
Then she smiled again — this time, something sadder, something almost fond.
"Then there may yet be hope."
She reached into the folds of her cloak and drew forth a shard of obsidian — slick and black as the void between stars.
It pulsed faintly with a heartbeat not its own.
"This is a fragment of the Binding Stone," Selene said.
"Forged in the dying breath of the first gods.
It can cage the Mourning King… if you are strong enough to wield it."
Lyra took the shard.
The moment her fingers closed around it, agony lanced up her arm — visions stabbing into her mind.
She saw herself unmade.
She saw herself remade.
She saw herself standing atop the ruins of the world, crowned in weeping shadows.
The shard burned against her flesh — but she did not release it.
She bared her teeth in a savage grin.
"I will forge a prison," she said.
"I will forge a grave."
Selene's form began to dissolve into mist.
But her voice lingered.
"Hurry, Lyra.
The Mourning King stirs.
And when he wakes…
the Savage Moon itself will weep blood."
And then she was gone.
Only the mist remained.
Only the pulsing shard in Lyra's hand.
Only the weight of destiny pressing down upon her like the crushing hand of a god.
She turned back toward the fortress.
Toward her warriors.
Toward her future.
There would be no more waiting.
There would be no more surviving.
There would only be war.
War against the darkness itself.