The wind in the Wyrmgrave Expanse had always carried the scent of ash and forgotten bones. Now, it carried something else.
Her.
The little girl with hair like nightshade silk walked barefoot across the obsidian plains, trailing silence like a cloak. Her skin glowed faintly under the moonlight, not with warmth — but with an unnatural stillness, as though time dared not disturb her.
She held a single object in her hand.
A tooth.
It was pristine, silver-edged, pulsing faintly with necrotic light.
Liora's tooth.
Plucked from time itself.
A gift from the paradox that birthed her.
The wind circled around her as if curious, then stopped altogether.
Even nature didn't know what she was.
She reached the edge of a shattered stone ridge, where a rusted sign marked the ruins of an ancient village — forgotten even by maps.
The shadows around her lengthened.
And the first soul — a wandering ghost — drifted toward her.
An old woman, translucent, humming a lullaby from a war long past.
The child looked up at her.
The ghost smiled kindly.
"Are you lost, little one?"
The girl tilted her head.
Then opened her mouth.
The ghost shattered.
No scream. No cry.
Just obliteration.
Even death wasn't safe from her presence.
Back at the Weeping Hills, Liora felt it.
A chill down her spine that wasn't cold — it was recognition.
"She's crossed," she whispered.
Vaerion, sitting across from her in the war tent, looked up. "The child?"
Liora nodded slowly, pressing her hand against her temple.
"I felt a soul vanish. One I didn't raise or bind. Something… ancient. Kind. Snuffed out like breath."
"Where?"
She focused.
The thread wasn't clear — but it vibrated with a frequency she now knew all too well. Her own magic, reversed and refracted.
"Wyrmgrave," she said. "South ridge."
Vaerion stood, already grabbing his blade.
"You're not going alone," he said.
"I never do," she replied.
The journey was short — a day's ride on bone dragons that soared above cloud lines, silent and swift. Liora rode at the front, her cloak trailing like smoke behind her, the Shard's influence still woven into her bones. Below them, the land changed.
Not naturally.
Unwillingly.
Flowers turned black as they flew over. Stones cracked. Rivers paused in midstream, waiting for her to pass.
The gods had written laws into the world — but Liora no longer obeyed them.
They descended into the ruins of the old village just after dusk.
The air was wrong.
Too still.
No insects. No wind. Not even the sound of breath from the skeletal mounts.
Vaerion dismounted, blade drawn, eyes alert.
"This place is dead," he said.
Liora stepped down beside him. "No. It's worse."
She walked forward slowly, hands out, brushing her fingers through the air like one tests water for heat.
Then she saw it — a single handprint, small, pressed into the soot at the edge of a stone wall.
Tiny fingers. Perfectly formed.
No ash disturbed around it.
As if time itself had stepped aside to let it happen.
She kneeled beside it and touched the print.
A wave of memory surged into her skull.
A lullaby.
Not sung. Echoed.
From her own mind.
From a life not yet lived.
She saw the child again — sitting on a cracked windowsill, swinging her feet, staring into the void as though it were a friend.
And she was holding… the tooth.
Her voice echoed in the memory like thunder inside glass.
"This belongs to her.But I think it fits me better."
Liora gasped and fell backward.
Vaerion caught her.
"What did you see?"
"She… she remembers me."
"Is she hostile?"
Liora shook her head, her voice hoarse. "Worse. She's curious."
That night, they made camp on the edge of the ruins.
Kelvir joined them with three squads of elite soulbound. Veyron patrolled from the air.
But the night remained… uneventful.
Too uneventful.
Liora couldn't sleep. She hadn't needed to since fusing with the Shard, but even the illusion of rest refused her.
So she walked the ruins again — alone — until she found the edge of the stone ridge where the child had first stood.
There, resting on the crumbling stone, was the tooth.
Placed delicately.
As if returned.
Liora's heart stilled.
She reached for it—
And a whisper brushed her ear:
"You left me behind."
She turned.
And saw herself.
Not her adult form.
Not the child.
But a warped in-between — a young girl with Liora's eyes, wearing a tattered version of her cloak, holding a hand-drawn picture of a family: Liora, Vaerion… and herself.
The real daughter.
The one born of light.
"You're not supposed to be here," Liora whispered.
The child looked at her sadly. "She said you'd forget me."
"Who?"
A rustle behind her.
Another form stepped from the shadow.
The dark twin.
Still five. Still pale.
But now she smiled.
And the ground cracked.
Vaerion ran to the sound of the rupture, drawing his sword.
He found Liora standing between the two girls.
One glowing with faint golden light.
The other with shadows dancing in her irises.
Liora looked back at him. "They've found each other."
"Which one is…?" he asked.
"I don't know," she whispered. "I feel them both."
The light-child reached for Liora's hand.
The dark-child reached for her other.
And Liora… took both.
The moment she did, the sky screamed.
Above, the clouds split open in concentric rings of white fire and void.
The heavens cracked like porcelain.
And Ilyra appeared.
Descending on a chariot of light, surrounded by a thousand divine fragments, each bearing a different law.
Her voice boomed across the plains.
"You were warned."
Liora stood her ground, the two girls beside her.
Vaerion stepped beside her, weapon raised.
"I took back what you stole," Liora said calmly. "And in doing so, I gave the world balance."
"You birthed paradox," Ilyra spat. "You dared bind void to fate. You have two daughters — and only one belongs."
Liora's eyes shimmered.
"Then let the world choose."