Ashveil did not sleep. It breathed.
And Raen heard it now, clearer than ever.
The stones beneath his boots pulsed with a dull heartbeat, one not entirely mortal. Every step through the ruined corridor echoed not in air—but in memory. With Lyra beside him and Keir trailing with a thousand-yard stare, the trio entered the chamber where the ash no longer settled. It floated, as if rejecting the earth below.
She stood in the center.
The girl from the mirror. The one who wore his name. The one who should have died in the fire.
Her silhouette wavered between illusion and flesh, between someone he remembered and someone he could not. She was real now. And her eyes—the same silver as his—reflected nothing but silence.
"You came," she said.
Raen did not speak. He couldn't.
She stepped forward, barefoot, the ash parting like shadows fleeing flame. Her voice was calm, laced with something too old to be hatred, and too broken to be love.
