The stars above Vireya flickered differently now.
As if they, too, had witnessed the shattering of fate.
The mirror gate was gone. The prophecy—once carved in stone—had fractured with it. And yet, something deeper had awakened in its place.
Not death.
Not destiny.
Something older.
Something watching.
---
Selene stood on the edge of the cliff where Elunari had once shimmered, her hand clutched tight around a shard of the broken mirror. It was warm in her grip—still humming, like a forgotten heartbeat.
Kael approached quietly, wrapping his arms around her from behind.
"Still thinking about what it meant?" he asked.
She nodded. "We didn't end it. We just... changed it."
"Maybe that was always the point."
Selene looked down at the shard. In its surface, she didn't see her reflection—but flames, dancing like wolves through a forest of ash.
She closed her fingers around it.
---
Theron had been quiet since their return from the other realm.
He no longer glowed when he dreamed. He no longer heard the voice in the flames. But he stared longer into the fire at night. He whispered to no one. He drew with his fingertips in the dirt, strange circles and forgotten runes.
Elira watched him carefully.
She no longer feared her brother.
But she feared what might still be buried in him.
---
Naeria examined the mirror shards under a divination lens. "The magic hasn't died. It's been... redirected."
"To where?" Rowan asked.
Naeria frowned. "Everywhere."
---
Back in the city, the Ashborn were beginning to fracture.
Word of the broken gate reached them faster than expected.
Some rejoiced. "The boy denied the flame. Let the moon reign."
Others seethed. "The mirror was broken. The fire denied. The world will now rot in shadow."
Whispers of a third path began to spread.
Not fire. Not moon.
Void.
And in the ruins where the First Flame had once slept—
A new symbol glowed in the stones.
One no one had seen before.
---
Selene dreamed again.
This time, she stood in water.
It was not cold.
It was dark. Deep. Endless.
She reached into the depths and pulled out a scroll—sealed in wax, marked not with fire or moon, but a crescent wreathed in black mist.
She broke the seal.
Inside was one line:
> "You thought prophecy could be bent. But prophecy is a living thing."
---
When she awoke, the mark on her chest—once the Fire Queen's sigil—had changed.
Now it pulsed with silver and shadow.
---
Kael noticed it first. "What is that?"
Selene looked at the mirror shard, then at the twins playing by the ridge.
"I think the mirror didn't just open a door... It saw me."
---
That evening, Rowan returned from the southern borders with grim news.
"There are movements in the Shadowglen. Not Ashborn—something else. Old creatures, risen again. Tracks that don't belong to any living wolf or beast."
Naeria paled. "The mirror's shattering weakened the barriers. That realm wasn't just holding the Fire Queen—it was a seal."
Kael swore softly. "We didn't just change the ending. We loosened the world."
---
Theron began to dream of forests.
Not burning ones.
But ones filled with whispers.
He heard his name on the wind.
He drew a symbol in the soil—three points connected by a spiral.
When Selene saw it, her blood ran cold.
It was the same mark from her dream.
The shadow seal.
---
That night, Elira woke coughing.
She couldn't breathe.
When Selene rushed to her, she found her daughter's lips faintly glowing with starlight.
Not silver.
Not flame.
Something else.
She placed a hand over Elira's heart.
And saw not one, but three pulses.
---
The next day, Selene gathered the family.
"This prophecy—it's not over. It was never about just flame and moon."
Kael nodded. "Something more is stirring. And it wants in."
Naeria placed the mirror shards into a runed pouch. "Then we need to find the third seal before it finds us."
Rowan adjusted his cloak. "Where do we start?"
Selene closed her eyes.
"The Vale of Mourning," she said.
"The place where the first prophecy was written."
---
They departed before dawn.
Elira held the family's newest rune stone, her palms steady, her voice calm.
Theron walked beside her, hand wrapped tightly around the obsidian staff he once feared.
Selene glanced back only once.
And in the sky above Vireya—
A third moon appeared.
Black as ink.
And watching.
---