## CHAPTER 13: _"The Bloodless Army"_
The city walls groaned under the weight of night. The stars, once fierce over Elira, now trembled. Below them, the Forgotten gathered—silent, endless, patient.
They did not beat drums.
They did not shout.
They simply marched.
Lysia watched from the ramparts, a sword at her side, though she was no soldier. Her heart thudded harder than war drums ever could.
> "This isn't a battle," she said. "It's a reckoning."
Arien stood beside her, pale but steady.
> "Then we give them a reckoning worth remembering."
---
Inside the palace, the war council burned with urgency.
> "We can't fight them the way we fought the queen," Mara argued. "They feel no pain. They know no fear."
> "Then we don't fight them with fear," Lysia replied. "We fight them with memory."
They stared.
> "Magic remembers. So do curses. And so do the people."
She turned to the ancient mage, Orrin, who had once served Altheira in secret.
> "Can we bind them back?"
> "Binding them requires the same love that broke them," Orrin said.
Arien spoke. "Then we use what we have. What they never did—each other."
---
By dawn, Elira was ready.
Children were hidden in the caves.
Mothers stood on rooftops, bows in hand.
Elders painted protection runes on the city stones.
This was no longer a kingdom.
This was a heartbeat.
When the Forgotten reached the gate, the sky broke with stormlight. Lysia stood on the walltop, her voice carrying like a blade.
> "You were made from silence. But we were born from scream."
> "You were shaped by old kings. We are shaped by the fire they feared."
> "You are bloodless. We are not."
She raised her hand.
And lightning answered.
---
The battle was not clean.
It was not fair.
But it was loud.
Lysia fought with spells not written in books. Arien fought with a sword born from love and ghostlight. The people fought with grief sharpened into defiance.
For every Forgotten that fell, three rose.
But for every Eliran that stood—hope doubled.
The tide turned when Lysia, drenched in ash and fury, reached the heart of the battlefield and carved a circle of light into the stone.
> "I call on the name you erased," she shouted.
The ground quaked.
From it rose a figure of mist and runes—**the First**, the origin of the curse.
She looked at the Forgotten. "You are not memory. You are chains. And I break you now."
With a single word, she scattered them.
Silence fell like snow.
The battlefield stilled.
Elira had survived.
But Lysia collapsed.
Her eyes fluttered.
And the curse flared once more—not as pain.
But as something else.
A **warning**.
The war was not over.
Only its first song had ended.
The chorus was yet to come.