Lyra ran—branches clawing at her skin, breath sharp in her lungs, the voice echoing in her mind.
"Come here."
She didn't know where she was going. She only knew she had to follow. Behind her, Aylea cried out, and Thalen shouted something she couldn't hear over the pounding of her pulse. The trees parted—like curtains yanked back—and there it was.
A cave.
Its mouth yawned open in the hillside, rimmed with moss and shadow. The fog pooled around it like breath held too long. An uneasy hush wrapped the air.
They fled inside.
The dark swallowed them.
Behind them, the not-men emerged—figures broken and bloodied, staggering with strange precision. Their mouths hung open, not from pain but vacancy. From their eyes glimmered a dull, flickering gold, like candlelight glimpsed through thick water. One dragged a chain still fused to his wrist, the metal rusted but thrumming faintly.
The children crouched deeper in the cave, huddled close. The creatures did not follow—not yet.
Time passed.
The air inside was cold, ancient. It tasted of stone and water, of memory left too long in the dark.
Then:
"Aylea?" the girl whispered.
And before her voice reached the others' ears, they heard it from deeper in the cave.
"Aylea?" it repeated softly—already spoken.
They froze.
Thalen muttered, "I think they're gone."
But again—before he spoke it—the cave breathed it:
"They're gone."
It wasn't echo. It was something else. Not the past. Not even the present.
The cave was echoing futures.
Aylea clung to Lyra. "What is this place?"
Silence again.
Then Lyra stirred. "I'll look outside."
"No—don't," Aylea whispered, clinging to her arm.
Before Lyra could rise, Thalen squared his shoulders. "I'll go."
He stepped cautiously to the cave mouth. Pale light filtered in through the leaves. Minutes passed.
"They're still there," he said when he returned. "Just… waiting."
Aylea began to sob softly, pressing her face into her knees.
Lyra turned away from the others. Something called her deeper into the cave. Her eyes scanned the rough stone—and then stopped.
Etched into the wall, nearly lost to time, was a spiral.
She stepped forward. Her fingertips brushed the groove. It was faint, ancient. And yet she knew it.
She saw her mother's handwriting flash in her mind—ink thin and careful, the letters curled slightly to the left. She had always written like that.
"The path is not a straight line."
It had been scrawled in the margin beside the same spiral, in one of Elira's journals.
Lyra's breath caught.
The stone beneath her fingers shimmered briefly—soft gold, like the light from the medallion, like candlelight behind silk. The glow faded. But something else had awakened.
A sensation.
A warmth curled at the base of her spine, rising like steam. Then a tug—not painful, but persistent—just behind her ribs. As if something ancient inside her had turned toward something far away.
She didn't speak.
And then, from deeper in the cave, a whisper that no one else heard:
"You've come home."
Her knees buckled slightly. She backed away from the spiral just as a voice echoed from outside:
"Lyra! Thalen! Aylea!"
Lady Siora.
No one moved.
Again: "Please—answer me!"
Lyra took a breath. "We're here! In the cave!"
Moments later, Siora burst into the mouth of the cave, skirts torn, eyes wild with fear. She scanned the darkness—then saw them.
"Oh, thank the stars," she breathed, stumbling forward and pulling them into her arms.
Aylea broke down, sobbing into her shoulder. Thalen held himself rigid, but he didn't pull away. Lyra stood still, letting herself be held, comforted—but her eyes drifted past them all, toward the spiral in the dark.
Siora pulled back to check them one by one. "Are you hurt? Did they touch you?"
They shook their heads.
"I thought—I thought I'd lost you."
"We're okay now," Aylea whispered.
But Lyra wasn't sure.
The whisper was gone.
The echo faded.
But something had taken root inside her now. Not fear. Not wonder. Something older.
The pull had begun.