The aftermath of the Cross family duel was a subject destined to trend for months, and not without reason. For far more than one even.
The most prominent among them was the emergence of the prodigy Lyra Cross—a girl whose awakening, when paired with Lugh's, marked the sudden appearance of two awakened humans at the same time.
The significance of that could not be overstated. It sent ripples through every institution, every council chamber, every shadowed corner of power.
That both of them had survived the voyage to the Devil Sea only served to stoke the conspiracy theories until they burned with fevered intensity.
But even that wasn't the only tenebrous thread tying them together. Both Lugh and Lyra were survivors of Drakensmar—a city once revered, now whispered of with dread.
A place so saturated with corrupted energy that seeing mutations in its survivors was hardly an oddity. It had become a running truth that one did not emerge from Drakensmar unchanged.
