The fortress was quiet.
Too quiet.
Where once the halls had roared with the sounds of warriors training, laughing, living — now, silence pooled like blood at Lyra's feet.
The corpses had been cleared.
The shattered banners replaced.
The bone throne reforged, taller, crueler, crowned with the skulls of those who had dared to betray her.
Lyra sat upon it, her back straight, her eyes cold.
She bore no crown now.
She needed none.
The Savage Moon itself anointed her, its bloody light painting her skin in hues of silver and red.
Below her, the remnants of her Pack gathered.
Hardened, hollow-eyed survivors.
Fewer than before.
But stronger.
The weak had been culled.
Only the ruthless remained.
Callan stood beside her — silent, impassive.
He had not raised his blade against her when the others fell.
Nor had he sworn loyalty anew.
He simply remained.
A shadow, a tether to a world she no longer recognized.
Lyra rose.
The Pack fell into a hush, their heads bowing low.
"You have seen the price of betrayal," she said, her voice carrying across the hall like a blade drawn from a scabbard.
"You have seen what becomes of those who falter."
Her gaze burned into them, searing flesh and spirit alike.
"But you who stand here — you who endure — you are the future."
She paced before them, her cloak whispering against the stone.
"We are the storm that will scour this world.
We are the fire that will consume it."
She bared her teeth in a savage, broken smile.
"And when the world howls in fear… it will howl our name."
The Pack roared in answer.
The sound shook the very bones of the fortress.
It filled Lyra with a hollow kind of triumph — a triumph laced with grief, with rage, with an emptiness she could no longer deny.
That night, they feasted.
Not in joy, but in grim necessity.
Flesh and blood.
Meat and bone.
The rites of the old ways, older than memory, older than the valley itself.
Lyra did not eat.
She sat apart, watching the flames.
Listening.
The Savage Moon spoke to her in whispers now — words she could almost understand.
Words that promised power.
And doom.
It was on the third night after the Shattering that the first sign of the New Threat appeared.
A sentry stumbled into the hall, blood pouring from his mouth, his eyes wild with terror.
He collapsed at Lyra's feet, gasping.
"My Queen," he croaked. "The forest… something stirs…"
He choked, and Lyra knelt beside him.
Blood bubbled from his lips.
Something had torn through him — not claws, not blades — something worse.
Something wrong.
With his last breath, he whispered:
"The Hollow Ones…
They have awakened…"
Then he died.
The hall erupted into chaos.
Whispers spread like fire.
The Hollow Ones — the name alone sent shivers through the Pack.
Ancient things.
Forgotten things.
Not spirits.
Not beasts.
Something in between.
Something worse.
Lyra rose slowly, her mind racing.
She remembered the stories, half-mad and broken, told around dying fires.
Stories of beings that once ruled the valley before even her ancestors set foot here.
Beings who had been sealed away when the Savage Moon first bled into the sky.
And now, somehow, they stirred.
Callan moved closer, his face grim.
"What will you do?" he asked.
Lyra turned to him, her eyes alight with a terrible fire.
"The same as always," she said.
Her voice was soft, but it cracked like a whip.
"I will conquer."
She summoned her war captains — the few that remained.
She ordered scouts into the forest.
She ordered the forging of new weapons, blessed by blood and moonlight.
She prepared for war.
But deep inside, a whisper gnawed at her.
A whisper colder than any fear she had ever known.
What if this enemy could not be conquered?
What if it could only be survived?
The Savage Moon offered no answers.
Only a growing hunger that mirrored her own.
That night, as the mists crept closer to the fortress walls, Lyra stood alone atop the battlements.
She stared into the darkness.
Waiting.
Listening.
The wind howled like a dying thing.
The trees bent and moaned.
And in the distance — so far away it could almost have been imagination — a sound rose.
Not a howl.
Not a roar.
Something worse.
A chorus of hollow voices.
Empty.
Endless.
Mocking.
Lyra tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword.
Her blood sang with fury.
Her spirit trembled with dread.
The Hollow Ones were coming.
And nothing — not strength, not sorcery, not savage will — could prepare her for the nightmare they would bring.
Still, she smiled.
A cold, broken smile.
Because if the Hollow Ones thought they could break her…
They would learn the same lesson as Korrin, Vaela, and Rhea.
Lyra did not break.
She shattered worlds.
And the Savage Moon — watching from its throne in the black sky — laughed and wept and hungered for more.