Chapter 30 – Her Name Was Lirae
The silence after Lirae's declaration wasn't silence at all.
It was memory—sharp, splintered, and screaming.
Raen didn't move.
Couldn't.
The girl who stood before him—white hair tangled, eyes the color of sunset bleeding into night—was not a stranger. No. She was a wound dressed in flesh, smiling like she'd waited lifetimes to see him suffer.
"You should've died with me," she whispered, voice trembling with glee. "But you didn't. You left."
The temple ruins around them pulsed with old blood. Runes carved into the stone wept a dull red glow. Ashveil growled behind Raen, but he didn't summon the beast. Not yet.
Because he remembered her.
Not from this life.
From the one before.
From before the pact. Before the gods. Before the Threadrift.