The mountain path was a serpent of jagged rock and stubborn, wind-bent pines, a stark contrast to the gilded corridors Queen Lyra had fled. She rode not as a queen, but as a fugitive, a common cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, its hood shielding her face from the biting wind and the accusing eyes she imagined in every shadow. Beneath the fear and the frantic rhythm of the horse’s hooves, a single, searing image played on a loop: Eliora’s terrified face as she clawed at the anklet. The memory was a brand of shame. Her daughter was in danger, she had to find a way to keep that bing away from her baby girl.

Her destination was the Ancient Monastery, a structure so old it seemed to have been grown from the mountain itself rather than built. The air grew thinner, colder, purged of the palace’s floral perfumes, smelling only of stone and solitude. A single, ancient monk awaited her at the gate, as if he had been standing there for a century. His eyes, milky with age, saw not a queen, but the frantic energy of a soul brushed by a primordial power.