Lyra's POV
I'm not falling anymore.
I'm floating in absolute darkness, suspended in nothing, with no up or down or sense of direction. My curse mark is the only light—silver lines glowing across my skin like a map to somewhere I don't want to go.
"Hello, Lyria."
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. Cold. Calculating. Familiar in a way that makes my soul scream in warning.
A figure materializes in front of me. The man from above—Councilor Maelis. He looks younger here, powerful, with silver hair that gleams like moonlight and eyes that see straight through me.
"You can't be here," I whisper. "The Veil is supposed to show me my past, not—"
"I am your past." His smile is all sharp edges. "I was your mentor. Your teacher. The one who showed you how to wield memory magic before you betrayed me."
"I didn't betray anyone!"
"Didn't you?" He circles me slowly, like a predator studying prey. "You stole my research. You and that lovesick warrior conspired to destroy everything I built. You were going to expose me to the Council."
Fragments flash through my mind—memories that aren't mine but somehow are. A grand library. Maelis teaching me magic. Discovering dark experiments he was conducting. Horror and betrayal.
"You were hurting people," I hear myself say. "Using stolen memories as weapons. I had to stop you."
"And look where that nobility got you." He gestures at my curse-covered body. "Dead in one life. Cursed in another. Tell me, was it worth it?"
Before I can answer, the darkness shifts.
I'm standing in a different place now—a battlefield. Bodies everywhere. Fire consuming everything. And there, in the center of it all, I see them.
Past-Lyria and past-Kade, fighting back-to-back against impossible odds. They're losing. I can see it in their movements, in the blood staining their clothes, in the desperate way they keep looking at each other like they're memorizing faces they'll never see again.
"Watch closely," Maelis whispers in my ear. "This is the moment you chose to forget."
Past-Kade takes a sword through the chest—a blow meant for past-Lyria. He drops to his knees, blood pouring from the wound.
"NO!" Past-Lyria screams and catches him as he falls.
I want to look away, but I can't. I'm forced to watch as she holds him, as he dies in her arms, as she makes a choice that will echo across lifetimes.
Past-Lyria's hands glow with silver light. She's casting something—a spell so powerful the air itself cracks and splinters around her.
"Let my knowledge be locked away where you can never reach it," she says, her voice breaking. "Let my memories scatter to the winds. Let my soul forget this pain."
The curse mark appears on her wrist, burning bright.
"But here's what you don't know," Maelis says, his voice dripping with satisfaction. "Here's the secret she kept even from herself."
The scene shifts again.
I'm watching past-Lyria stumble through a forest, wounded and dying, the curse already eating away at her memories. She reaches a temple—this temple—and collapses inside.
But she's not alone.
Maelis is there, younger, watching from the shadows.
"I let you cast that curse," he tells her dying form. "I let you lock away your knowledge because I knew something you didn't. Souls reincarnate. Bodies die, but souls return. And when you came back—" His smile is terrifying. "—I'd be waiting."
"No," I breathe.
"Oh yes." Present-Maelis turns to face me fully. "I've been orchestrating everything, Lyria. The memory thefts that drew Kade to your village. The message on your wall. The warrant for your arrest. I've been herding you here, to this temple, to this moment, for three years."
The darkness begins to close in, squeezing tighter.
"And now you're going to give me what I want. You're going to unlock that curse and hand over every secret you've been hiding. Or—" His eyes gleam with malice. "—I'm going to kill everyone you love, starting with that warrior who can't seem to let you go."
Terror and rage war inside me. "I'll die before I help you."
"You already did that once." Maelis raises his hand, and pain explodes through my body. "Didn't work out so well, did it?"
I scream as the curse mark burns hotter than ever, spreading across my remaining eye, covering my face completely. I'm being consumed from the inside out.
"LYRA!"
Kade's voice cuts through the darkness like a blade.
Suddenly, impossibly, he's here—dropping through the void like he jumped in after me. His curse mark glows bright blue on his chest, cutting through Maelis's darkness.
"That's impossible," Maelis snarls. "You can't enter someone else's Veil—"
"Watch me." Kade lands beside me and grabs my hand. The moment we touch, light explodes outward, driving back the shadows.
Maelis shrieks in fury and dissolves into smoke.
But I can still hear his voice echoing: "This isn't over. I'm already inside your head, little Lyria. And when you break that curse, I'll be waiting to take everything."
The Veil shatters around us.
We crash back into reality, both gasping for air. We're lying on the temple floor, hands still locked together, our curse marks blazing with synchronized light.
Kade sits up quickly, pulling me with him. "Are you hurt? Did he—"
"How did you follow me?" I interrupt. "You said the Veil was something I had to face alone."
His jaw tightens. "I lied."
"Why?"
"Because—" He looks away, conflict clear on his face. "Because I've already watched you die once. I wasn't going to stand by and let it happen again."
Something warm blooms in my chest despite everything. "You jumped into the Veil for me. You could have been trapped there forever."
"Worth it." He says it simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Before I can respond, the temple begins to shake again—but different this time. Not destruction. Awakening.
The walls light up with glowing symbols. Ancient magic stirs in the air, responding to something.
Kade's eyes widen. "No. It's too soon. You're not ready—"
"Ready for what?"
He looks at me, and I see fear in his face. Real, genuine fear.
"The temple is reacting to your presence. To your curse reaching its final stage." His voice is urgent. "Lyra, the Veil isn't just going to show you your past anymore. It's going to force you to relive your death. Every moment of it. Every pain, every terror, every heartbreak. And if you're not strong enough—if the curse consumes you first—"
"I'll die for real this time," I finish.
He nods grimly.
The floor beneath us begins to crack, revealing swirling silver mist—the deeper Veil, the place where past and present collide.
"There's still time to run," Kade says desperately. "We can find another way. We can—"
"There is no other way." I can feel it in my bones. This was always how it had to end. "You know that."
His hand tightens around mine. "Then let me come with you. All the way this time. Let me face it with you."
"Kade—"
"I remember everything, Lyra. My curse means I can anchor you in the memory. I can remind you who you are now, not just who you were then. Please." His voice breaks. "Please don't make me watch you walk into death alone again."
The mist rises higher, reaching for us with ghostly fingers.
I look into his storm-gray eyes and see two hundred years of grief and love and desperate hope.
"Okay," I whisper. "Together."
His relief is palpable. "Together."
We stand at the edge of the growing pit, hands locked, curse marks blazing.
"On three?" I ask.
"On three."
But before we can count, something grabs my ankle from below.
A hand made of silver mist and shadow, impossibly strong, yanks me down into the Veil. I scream and lose my grip on Kade.
"LYRA!"
I'm falling again, plummeting into swirling memories and pain and truth I'm not ready to face.
The last thing I see is Kade diving in after me, his face set with determination.
And the last thing I hear—barely audible over the roar of the Veil—is a woman's laugh.
Cold. Familiar. Deadly.
Isla's voice echoes through the void: "Did you really think it would be that easy? Father sends his regards."
Then the Veil swallows us whole, and everything goes white.