The battlefield lay still. For now.
Ashes drifted like feathers, settling on torn earth and scorched armor. The witch's tale still rang in the air, an ancient song long silenced and now suddenly awakened.
Lyra didn't speak much as they moved through the quiet aftermath. Her fingers grazed the edge of her blade absentmindedly, her thoughts tangled in the witch's voice, the cadence of the story, and most of all—the name that had returned like a chill wind through the cracks of her mind.
The Forgotten King.
She hadn't seen his face. No one had. But the mere mention of him had stirred something older than memory, something buried. A presence not remembered, but deeply felt.
That night, sleep did not come gently.
It dragged her down like a cold tide. And there, in the stillness of her mind, the dream began—not in chaos, but in silence.
A throne carved from bone and shadow rose before her. The sky above was a torn velvet canopy, stars bleeding black. The king was not seated, but present—his form cloaked in storm and smoke, faceless yet watching. Not with eyes. With intention.
"Lyra," he whispered.
The voice didn't echo. It lingered, like breath on her neck. She turned, but found herself rooted, her hands no longer her own. A mirror appeared in the air—cracked, gleaming with frost—and inside it, she saw a version of herself. Cold. Crowned. A queen of ruin.
"You were made for more than their war."
The reflection smiled.
"You were made for me."
She woke with a gasp, drenched in moonlight and silence. The campfire had long died out. Raven lay nearby, motionless, caught in whatever storm brewed behind his own closed eyes.
She looked at him for a long time, heart pounding, then turned her gaze to the stars.
Just a dream. Just a shadow of the tale, her mind weaving fiction from fear.
She didn't tell him.
By morning, the dream had already started to fade—at least, that's what she told herself. She buried it beneath the tasks of the day, under sword practice and whispered strategy. But something stayed with her. A pull in her chest. A hush in her thoughts where noise used to be.
The witch had said little more after the tale, her eyes hollow, her voice gone brittle as frost. Lyra had tried to ask her more, to understand what this king wanted, what he was—but the witch had only looked at her, as if already mourning something she couldn't name.
"She should not have told us," Raven had said. "They locked her away for a reason."
Lyra nodded.
And kept the dream to herself.
But the Forgotten King was not finished.
That night, he came again.
This time, the dream began with light.
A soft meadow, gold with sun and buzzing with bees. Her mother's voice sang somewhere in the wind. Lyra felt warmth, peace—something that should have been impossible in this realm of blood and war.
Then the sky blinked.
The warmth twisted. The bees turned to ash.
And there he was again—no longer shadow, but a flicker of form. Tall. Unmoving. Made of threads from a thousand lives. He stood at the edge of the dream, as if respecting some unseen threshold.
"You will break," he said.
"Not today," Lyra answered, not knowing why she responded, only that she had to.
"Not today," he agreed, "but soon."
The meadow crumbled beneath her feet. She fell—but did not scream.
And again, she woke.
This time, her pulse refused to steady. She looked at her hands. Trembling. Just slightly. A whisper. But enough.
Still, she said nothing to Raven.
She didn't want him to worry. Didn't want to explain something she didn't understand herself. She told herself the dreams were just echoes. Fear tricking her. Nothing more.
But something had shifted.
The stars seemed dimmer. Her footsteps heavier. The wind occasionally carried her name—too faint to be real. Yet too sharp to ignore.
She started glancing over her shoulder when no one was there.
The Forgotten King hadn't touched her.
Not yet.
But the whisper had planted a seed.
And some seeds grow best in silence.
But silence was never safe in the presence of ancient things.
The witch stirred from her half-sleep, eyes wide, as if a scream had threaded through the fabric of the night. No one else moved. The campfire crackled low, its embers fading into soft orange glow. But she felt it—the ripple.
The old magic.
No, not magic. Something else.
A rot in the realm's breath. The tug of something forgotten yet familiar—like the scent of rain before a storm not meant for this world.
Her fingers brushed the soil beneath her, murmuring old words in the lost tongue. The ground answered with a chill that crept up her spine.
He is awake.
Not fully. Not yet. But she had felt him press against the veil. She had heard the soft hum in the quiet, the way shadows whispered his name when they thought no one listened.
The Forgotten King.
She turned her eyes toward Lyra, still lying still beneath a blanket of stars, her brow furrowed even in rest. Something clung to her—a residue, dark and bitter like cursed ash.
"He's touched her dreams," the witch whispered, more to the earth than to the wind. "He's found her."
A flicker of fear stirred in her chest. Not for herself. Not even for Lyra. But for what this meant.
The prophecy had always been veiled in riddles, guarded by blood-bound silence. But one truth had always been clear: if he returned, it would be through her.
Not with force.
With influence.
She knew better than to confront Lyra now. A spirit freshly brushed by the Forgotten King was delicate, volatile. It would take more than warning to sever the thread he had begun to spin.
She'd seen this before—centuries past, in the last war when he had nearly returned. Dreams were always the door. A single whispered promise in sleep could shatter even the strongest warrior.
But Lyra wasn't just a warrior.
She was a key.
And if she turned...
The witch stood, silent as the moon, and walked into the darkness. Her steps were careful, her senses stretched thin across the night's breath. She would gather the old wards. Call on the runes etched in bone and forgotten by even the elders.
She would try—while time still permitted—to protect the girl from dreams that did not belong to her.
Because the king did not come to kill.
He came to reclaim.