The statue sat in the temple square like an immovable story. Selene's hands were lifted as if cupping something fragile, with her marbled face veiled in calm. Torches ringed her figure, but the moon's light traced a softer line; it had painted her face with a detail no torch could match, bathing the goddess in moving silver: a slow, indifferent compassion of something that has outlasted many pleas.
Daryn had come there not to pray but to press his back against something that did not demand immediate answers. He sat beneath her outstretched hands, back against cool stone, a smear of dust along his cheek, watching his reflection in the polished base. It was half-formed..... uncertain.
As Lyra approached, she moved with the hush of someone who had practiced approaching both gods and wounded men—quiet, certain. Dusting her robes at the hem before she sat, not too close, not too distant, the ritual distance of a priestess who knows boundaries and when to cross them.
She did not sit at once. She had waited the proper breath, then settled close enough that her presence warmed him, but not so close that it crowded the quiet. After deciding on a respectful distance, she let the silence gather until it had weight.
"You fought well," she said without ceremony. Her staff rested across her knees like a boundary line and a support.
"You did not only win, you shaped the room." Her voice was a melody he had learned to read for truth.
Daryn touched the nick on his shoulder and rubbed the grit from it before letting out a short, humorless laugh.
"I got lucky. Thalos almost split me open."
Her eyes flicked briefly to the wound and back to his face. "Luck makes its own form when you shape it."
He let out a short laugh. "Well, the crowd liked it, although I believe the gods liked it more."
Lyra's eyes lingered on the statue with a slow and reverent calculation, then returned to him. "Did you feel her?"
He swallowed. The memory of the faint moonlight veil came with the scent of smoke and the hollow lifting of his chest when the dagger missed.
"On the obsidian grounds. I had sensed a presence. A pull like a line tied to my chest."
Daryn's jaw tightened. "It was more like a thread at my sternum. Not a voice—but an insistence."
Lyra's fingers tightened around her staff.
"Then you are marked more clearly than many.....more visible. Selene is not… showy with her marks, as she tends to tuck things away. She watches in odd ways, giving, but cutting where a mortal would heal."
Lyra placed a hand on his forearm, firm but gentle as a vow. "She has marked you. That mark opens doors and locks others. You did what you had to,"
Daryn let out a breath that might have been a laugh or a sob. "He called me moonborn. Thalos had called me a novelty. They must think I'm a spectacle," he said, trying to laugh it off.
Lyra watched him for a long moment as if reading the lines on a palm. "You are more than that; you have carried your fear into the tournament grounds and turned it into movement, and that is rare."
He sighed, "I still don't know what it means to be chosen. I thought being here would explain everything."
"It explains half and hides the rest," Lyra said. "The gods tell stories by omission."
"They keep balance. They measure and weigh. Sometimes they decide a secret protects more than it wounds while other times, they decide for themselves and call it mercy." She paused.
"Selene gives power and keeps pieces. We then balance reverence with questions." She tilted her head slightly, "Such is her mystery."
Daryn's reply was a wordless tilt of his head. He wanted to ask—if lullabies existed behind godly intent—but the question was too large for that moment. Instead, he asked what mattered:
"If she knows… if she can reach into people's lives, why keep things hidden?"
Lyra's fingers tightened before she loosened them again. "We are not free of the gods' walls."
Daryn straightened. "I want the truth. All of it."
Lyra's face registered the risk in that sentence after all, she had been taught to guard the goddess's mysteries, but he had taken her hand to indicate the urgency.
"I need to find Seris. If Selene knows—if she had a hand—then I need to hear it from someone who will tell me everything."
Bowing in defeat, she nodded, and instead of recoiling, she slid closer and lowered her voice until it was only for him. "The archive beneath the temple holds all registers of claims, bargains, and losses. If you are willing to go where the priests prefer the light not to reach, I will help you look. Because you are not the only one who will be broken when they play."
Then Lyra straightened, taking a more serious tone
"But not to hurt you—for some truths are knives that cut their holders as cleanly as their targets. For you are Selene's, and you should know what that means before you let others decide it for you."