The first knock came just past dusk.

Three slow raps. Not frantic. Not uncertain. Confident.

Lyra froze where she stood, the spoon in her hand trembling over the half-cooked stew. Her fire popped in the hearth, flinging sparks like frightened fireflies. The forest beyond her window stretched dark and endless, wind moaning through its ribs.

Then came the second knock. The same cadence.

Her hand closed around the blade tucked in her apron. Not the sharpest—just sharp enough. The kind of knife made for butchering meat or gutting small lies.

She stepped to the door.

And opened it.

There, in the mist-drenched dark, stood Kael.

Exactly as she remembered—and not at all.

He wasn’t rotted. No bones, no maggots. But wrong in a quieter way. The tilt of his head. The stillness of his breath. His eyes no longer held that searing blue that once made her forget to run. Now they were black, bottomless, full of night.

“Hello, Lyra,” he said, voice soft as blood in water. “Did you miss me?”

She didn’t scream.

She shut the door.

And slid to the floor, breath caught between her ribs like a trapped bird.


Weeks ago, she’d killed him.

Poison in the wine. A dagger to the throat—just in case. She buried him deep, beneath the roots of the old god’s stone, where the dirt was soft and the spirits restless.

Kael had been many things: beautiful, clever, cruel. He’d loved her too much and not at all. He gave her everything she wanted—so long as she became nothing but his.

They had sworn vows before gods no longer named.

“Together in life. Together beyond death.”

She’d thought it metaphor.

She thought she could unmake it with steel.