The fires burned low, their embers casting long, flickering shadows against the craggy walls of the valley.
The dead were buried at dawn.
There was no ceremony.
No words spoken over their shallow graves.
Only silence — heavy, suffocating, filled with the unspoken truth that not all would survive what was coming.
Perhaps none of them would.
Lyra stood apart from the others, watching the mist roll in from the hollowed ridges above.
It curled around the broken stones like grasping fingers, whispering secrets she could almost understand if she listened too long.
Her wounds throbbed, but she ignored them.
The bruises, the broken ribs, the torn muscles — they were reminders that she was alive.
Still breathing.
Still fighting.
And she would not waste this second chance the valley had given her.
Even if it came at a terrible price.
Behind her, Callan approached cautiously, his boots crunching on the gravel.
He no longer looked at her the same way.
Gone was the easy, reckless loyalty of the boy she had known.
In its place was a wariness — a fear he tried, and failed, to hide.
Good.
Fear was healthy.
Fear kept you alive.
"You need to rest," he said, voice low.
"You're bleeding."
Lyra glanced down at the slow, dark seep of blood from her side.
It didn't matter.
Nothing mattered now but survival.
Strength.
Dominance.
"No rest," she said.
"Not until we have a fortress. A home."
Callan hesitated.
"You mean… here?"
Lyra turned her gaze back to the mist-shrouded valley.
The bones of the old world littered the ground — remnants of towers swallowed by roots, broken idols half-buried in the loam.
It was perfect.
Wild.
Untamed.
Cursed.
Just like her.
"Here," she said.
"We carve it from the stone and the rot. We make it ours."
And so they began.
The strongest of them cleared land for tents and shelters, while Lyra and a small circle of trusted scouts — those who had not fled in cowardice — mapped the valley's hidden paths and poisoned streams.
They hunted game — small, twisted creatures with too many eyes and too many teeth — but they were edible.
Barely.
Water trickled from cracks in the rocks, foul but purifiable.
The valley fought them at every step.
Fires refused to light.
Tools broke.
People vanished into the mist, their screams never reaching the camp.
Each loss tightened the noose around their throats.
Each death planted a seed of despair.
But Lyra refused to bend.
Every morning, she stood before the survivors — her body a map of fresh scars, her eyes burning with savage purpose — and reminded them why they were here.
Reminded them that the Pack had cast them out.
That the world beyond the forest would see them dead.
That only here, only together, could they forge something that would make the earth itself tremble.
"Blood or loyalty," she said one morning, standing atop the altar where she had bled her oath to the valley.
"Choose."
And they chose.
Most because they had no other choice.
Some because they believed.
A few — a dangerous few — because they hungered for the power that clung to her like a second skin.
Weeks passed.
The camp grew.
Fences were raised.
Traps laid.
Weapons fashioned from bone and stone and scavenged steel.
And slowly, grudgingly, the valley began to recognize them.
The attacks lessened.
The mist thinned.
Small victories, fragile and fleeting, but victories nonetheless.
Yet even as they built, something festered beneath the surface.
Whispers.
Doubts.
Fear.
Not of the valley.
Not of the monsters that prowled beyond their walls.
But of Lyra herself.
They saw how her wounds closed too quickly.
How the shadows seemed to lean toward her.
How the moon above their valley sometimes turned a sickly shade of black when she stood before the altar and spoke in tongues none of them understood.
She was becoming something else.
Something more.
Something less.
Late one night, Callan confronted her.
She had just returned from the ridges, her arms laden with the strange, glowing fruits she had found deep in the forest.
Food, yes.
But poisoned?
Blessed?
Even she couldn't be sure anymore.
"You're changing," Callan said, stepping into her path, jaw clenched.
Lyra narrowed her eyes.
"So?"
"It's not… right," he said, voice cracking.
"You're not just leading us anymore. You're consuming us."
The words hit harder than she expected.
Because part of her — the girl she had once been — wanted to believe he was wrong.
Wanted to believe she was still Lyra.
Still human.
Still good.
But that part was dying.
And the valley was feeding something else in its place.
Something darker.
Something inevitable.
"You think I asked for this?" she hissed, stepping closer until Callan could feel the unnatural heat radiating off her skin.
"You think I wanted to be the weapon you all needed?"
He faltered.
"I still believe in you," he said hoarsely.
"But how much longer will there be anything left to believe in?"
Lyra stared at him for a long, bitter moment.
Then she turned away.
"You don't have to stay," she said.
"You're free to leave. Just like the cowards before you."
Callan said nothing.
Only watched her walk back into the mist, the fruits glowing faintly in her arms like stolen stars.
That night, the Savage Moon turned bloodred.
And somewhere deep in the woods, a new horror stirred.
One summoned not by the valley.
But by Lyra herself.
She dreamed again.
This time, she stood atop a mountain of bones, a black crown of twisted thorns heavy on her brow.
Her Pack — what was left of it — knelt before her.
Not in loyalty.
Not in love.
But in fear.
And she woke with blood on her hands.
Blood she could not remember shedding.
The seeds of her dark crown had been sown.
And they were already beginning to bloom.