Halcrest's highest chamber was a throne room only in name.
There was no throne—just a circle of bone mirrors, each humming with soulbound resonance. The room was cold. Not from winter.
But from the absence of belief.
Alira stood alone now. Her advisors had not yet returned from Varrin's Hollow.
She had ordered silence. And silence had answered.
But it was no longer her ally.
It pressed against her skin.
Suffocated her.
Mocked her.
She stared into the bone mirrors.
And for the first time in months, they didn't reflect her.
They showed Liora.
Standing on the platform in Varrin's square, staff in hand, truth in her voice.
The people had chosen her.
Not through loyalty.
Not through magic.
Through memory.
Alira's hand trembled.
Not with rage.
With something far more dangerous:
Uncertainty.
She turned to the nearest mirror.
Raised her hand.
"Bring me Eron," she whispered.
A pause.
Then, the surface rippled.
The image shifted.
Eron's face appeared, half-lit in candlelight. His expression was tired. Not surprised.
"I thought you'd call."
"You were supposed to ensure the Prophet succeeded."
"She improvised. You know how zealots are."
"She used a living staff," Alira spat. "Do you know what that means?"
"Yes," he said, too calmly. "It means she thought she was you."
Alira flinched.
"I am not a murderer."
"No," Eron said. "But you're starting to smell like one."
The mirror cracked.
And with it, her restraint.
Hours later, the council reconvened in the War Library—a chamber lined with tablets from Cradlefall, etched with every known military failure in history.
It had once been a room for learning.
Now it was a room for blame.
Alira entered in silence.
None of her advisors rose.
She did not sit.
"I want the sanctuary broken," she said flatly.
Whispers.
Then silence.
"You said we'd take it last," one of them said.
"I was wrong. They're reclaiming the narrative. I won't let them."
"And the people?"
"They'll understand."
"And if they don't?"
Alira looked up.
And for a moment, the room thought they saw something in her eyes.
Not fire.
Not power.
Fear.
"Then we'll make them understand."
Far away, Liora stood over a gravesite.
It wasn't marked with a name.
Just a bone ring, carved from the femur of a boy who died protecting a town he never knew.
She knelt.
Lit a candle.
And waited.
Caelen joined her moments later.
"Another town?"
"Two," she whispered.
Shae came next, with a satchel full of letters. Messages from Hollow's neighboring settlements.
"They're turning," she said. "They're listening. They want to remember."
Liora didn't smile.
But her eyes softened.
"They want to heal. There's a difference."
Shae crouched beside her.
"What happens next?"
Liora traced a circle in the dirt.
"We give them the space to grieve."
Caelen frowned. "While Alira sharpens her blades?"
Liora nodded.
"Yes."
At that moment, in the sanctuary's quietest chamber, something stirred.
The Breathstone pulsed.
Once.
Then twice.
Then held its glow.
And from the shadows, a girl stepped forward.
Lanira.
She was thinner now. Paler. But her eyes burned with clarity.
She touched the stone.
And whispered:
"I remember."
In the city of Orenth, where Alira's reach was newest, strange things began to happen.
People who once praised her began to stutter in her presence.
Children cried when she passed, without knowing why.
The mirror halls cracked without cause.
And one night, in the central square, a symbol appeared.
Not carved.
Not burned.
Just… present.
The Reaper's Eye.
Liora's mark.
Alira ordered it removed.
The stone cracked.
And re-formed.
The symbol remained.
Eron watched from afar.
He stood atop a tower of ashwood, arms crossed.
Behind him, three of Alira's oldest guards waited.
"She's unraveling," one said.
"She won't surrender," said another.
Eron didn't turn.
"She doesn't need to."
A pause.
Then:
"She needs to fall."
Back in the sanctuary, Lanira emerged into the council chamber.
Gasps greeted her.
Shae stood first, eyes narrowing.
"You shouldn't be here."
"I should," Lanira said. "Because I was wrong."
Kelvir, still recovering from his captivity, leaned forward.
"You were used, child. That is not sin."
"No," she said. "But it doesn't erase what I helped her do."
She turned to Liora.
"Let me speak."
Liora nodded.
And the room fell silent.
Lanira stepped forward and raised her hand.
A glow appeared.
Soft.
Shimmering.
The first stirrings of re-forged soulbond.
"I feel her," she whispered. "I feel her unraveling. She's desperate now. Her magic leaks into places it shouldn't reach. And I… I still carry a sliver of it."
Shae's hand moved to her blade.
But Caelen caught her wrist.
Lanira continued.
"I can find her. Not where she is. But where she's weakest."
Liora stepped forward.
"What do you want?"
"Redemption," Lanira said, voice barely audible. "And to give you a path."
"A path to what?"
Lanira looked up.
And for the first time, smiled.
"To end her without killing her."
That night, Liora walked alone through the dream grove, where soulbound memories were hung like lanterns in the trees.
She touched each one as she passed.
Kael's.
Her mother's.
A child she raised during the war, who died believing in her.
She whispered to each.
Not in apology.
But in remembrance.
Because the dead do not ask for guilt.
Only honesty.
And when she returned to her chambers, a message waited.
Written in ash and bound with a single orchid.
It read:
"You want the world to remember?
Then come and remind me.
I'll be waiting in Halcrest.
Come alone.
Or not at all."
Alira had made her move.
And Liora?
Smiled.
At last.