yra hung like a marionette, cobalt light pouring from her eyes and mouth. Kael lunged, but spectral chains held him fast.
"Did you think I'd let her go?" Gideon's voice boomed through the locket, now swollen to the size of a shield. "She's Lira's ashes reshaped. My masterpiece."
The hunters knelt, chanting.
"Bullshit!" Kael strained against the chains. "Lyra's her own—"
"Is she?" The locket's portraits reformed, showing Lyra's childhood—except the memories weren't hers. A girl with Lira's face laughed in a sunlit field, Gideon's hands on her shoulders.
Lyra twitched, her voice overlapping with Gideon's. "You were never real. Just borrowed time."
Kael's shard glowed—the last dregs of stolen power. He rammed it into the locket.
The world exploded in screams.
When the light faded, Lyra lay crumpled, the locket's chain severed. The hunters were gone, reduced to armor filled with ash.
"You okay?" Kael rasped.
She stared at her hands. "Am I?"
Her veins flashed blue.