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She'd once found Dren in a battlefield chapel, half-dead and cradling a child that wasn't his. The child was silent, eyes wide and strange.
"She kept singing," he whispered, hands bloodied. "Even after they slit her throat."
Lysara had knelt beside him, touched the child's cold cheek, and asked: "Do you ever stop saving what you know you can't keep?"
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Ashengar's skies wept black snow.
Lysara stood at the edge of a smoldering village, the ruins still coughing up heat. Bodies—charred, unrecognizable—lay scattered like discarded puppets. But not all. Some had vanished. Not stolen, not buried.
Gone.
The only thing left behind was a funeral fire still burning without a body to consume.
Caldus approached, face pale beneath soot. "They didn't die here. Not all of them."
"I know," Lysara said, crouching near a scorched doll. Its glass eyes gleamed unnaturally. "He took them."
She rose. A child stumbled from the ruins—barefoot, skin unburnt despite the blaze. A boy of maybe six, clutching a black flower petal between trembling fingers.
He looked up at her. And smiled.
It wasn't his smile.
"Lysara," the child said. But not in a child's voice. It was deeper. Velvet and cruel.
It was Dren's.
Caldus unsheathed his blade. "Possessed," he hissed.
Lysara held up a hand. "No. Let him speak."
The boy blinked slowly. "You still love me. Don't lie."
She flinched.
Behind her, Selene muttered, "This is blasphemy."
"It's more than that," Lysara said quietly. "It's him reaching through someone innocent."
The boy began to weep—but his tears were black and viscous. With each drop, petals bloomed from his cheeks, curling into nightshade blossoms.
"You broke the vow," the boy whispered. "You were supposed to bury me with the blade still in my heart."
Lysara's voice was a whisper. "That blade was never in your heart. Only mine."
Around them, wind howled, thick with laughter not carried by any mouth. The shadows along the ruins twitched.
Then the child collapsed.
No blood. No pulse. Just... gone.
But a trail of black petals led deeper into the forest behind the village. Lysara stepped forward.
Selene caught her wrist. "You follow that path, you won't come back the same."
"I already haven't," she whispered, pulling free.
Elsewhere...
In a hidden chamber beneath the Raven Prince's fortress, Dren stood surrounded by enchanted mirrors. In each, a different vision of Lysara: weeping, raging, silent.
But in the last mirror—she smiled. That one he stared at longest.
Behind him, Valcian chuckled. "You really think she'll come? After all this?"
"I don't think," Dren murmured. "I know."