The Moonwhisper compound was in chaos when Lyra slipped back across the border. Guards ran with urgent purpose between buildings, torches blazed despite the early hour, and the air was thick with tension. News of Elowen's attack had clearly spread.
Lyra kept to the shadows, avoiding the main paths as she made her way toward the healers' lodge. She needed to see her sister first, before confronting the elders with what she had learned.
Inside the lodge, the air was heavy with medicinal herbs and the strong stench of fear. Elowen lay on a pallet near the back, her normally vibrant face ashen, dark veins visible beneath her pale skin. The clan's head healer, Sorcha, sat beside her, pressing a cool cloth to her forehead.
What had been a walk to clear her head seems to be hell bent on taking her life.
"Any change?" Lyra asked softly.
Sorcha startled, then frowned when she saw who had spoken. "Where have you been? Your father has half the clan searching for you."
"Is she any better?" Lyra pressed, ignoring the question.
The old healer's face softened slightly. "No worse, which is something. The poison has stopped spreading, but I can't draw it out. It's like nothing I've ever seen."
Lyra approached her sister's bedside, taking Elowen's limp hand in her own. "I know what did this," she said quietly. "They called themselves Shadow Walkers."
Sorcha went very still. "Where did you hear that name?"
"I saw them." Lyra turned to face the healer directly. "I crossed into Ravenclaw territory tracking whatever attacked Elowen, and I found them. Ancient creatures made of shadow with violet eyes."
"Impossible," Sorcha whispered, but her face had gone pale. "They're just stories."
"They're real," Lyra insisted. "And they said Elowen was tested because they thought she might be a vessel for the Convergence ritual. They were looking for this." She pushed up her sleeve, revealing her birthmark.
Sorcha recoiled as if struck. "Cover that!" she hissed, glancing fearfully toward the door. "Are you mad, speaking of such things?"
"So you know," Lyra said, a cold certainty settling in her stomach. "You know what this mark means. What I am."
The old healer seemed to age a decade before Lyra's eyes. She sank back onto her stool, shoulders slumping with the weight of long-kept secrets. "What I know," she said quietly, "would get us both killed if the wrong ears heard it."
"My sister is dying because of these secrets," Lyra said, her voice breaking. "The Shadow Walkers said the barrier between worlds is weakening. That if the Convergence ritual isn't performed in seven days when the Blood Moon rises, what came through and attacked Elowen will be just the beginning."
Sorcha was silent for a long moment, her weathered hands trembling slightly as she adjusted Elowen's blanket. "Follow me," she said finally. "Not here."
The healer led Lyra through a hidden door at the back of the lodge and down a narrow passage Lyra had never known existed. They emerged in a small, circular room lined with shelves of ancient texts—books Lyra had never seen before, their bindings worn with age.
"The forbidden library," Lyra breathed. Clan law prohibited written records, claiming they weakened memory and oral tradition. Yet here were dozens, perhaps hundreds of books.
"What the clan forbids, the healers preserve," Sorcha said, running gnarled fingers along the spines until she found what she sought. She pulled down a slender volume bound in pale leather that seemed to glow faintly in the dim light. "The true history of our people was never meant to be forgotten, only protected."
She handed the book to Lyra, who opened it with reverent hands. Inside were pages of delicate script, accompanied by illustrations that made her breath catch—wolves transforming not just into humans but into beings of pure light, and at the center of one illustration, two figures with spiral marks on their arms, one silver, one blue, their hands clasped over an altar identical to the one Lyra had seen in the forest.
"Before the great division," Sorcha explained, "our clans were one. The Lunaravis—children of moon and raven. We were guardians of the barrier between this world and the shadow realm. Every century, when the celestial alignment creates the Blood Moon Convergence, the barrier thins naturally."
"And two vessels are born to perform a ritual that strengthens it again," Lyra finished, tracing the illustration with her fingertip.
Sorcha nodded gravely. "One from the line of the moon, one from the line of the raven—each carrying half of the power needed. But three centuries ago, there was a... complication."
"What kind of complication?"
The old healer's eyes clouded with remembered pain. "The ritual requires a bond between the vessels, a connection of mind, body, and spirit. The vessels that century fell in love, as they often did. But the Ravenclaw vessel was the clan leader's son, and he had arranged a political marriage to unite with another pack. When he refused, choosing his Moonwhisper mate instead..."
"Let me guess," Lyra said bitterly. "The Ravenclaws blamed us."
"And we blamed them," Sorcha corrected. "Both sides believed the other had manipulated the ritual for political advantage. In the chaos that followed, the clans split, each taking half the ritual knowledge, each determined to find a way to complete the Convergence without the other."
"But that's impossible," Lyra said, looking at the illustration again. "The book clearly shows two vessels."
"Desperation breeds delusion," Sorcha said simply. "For three centuries, each clan has tried to bear the full burden alone. Each time, the vessel has died in the attempt, and the barrier has grown weaker. The shadows slip through in greater numbers each century."
Lyra felt sick. "How many have died this way?"
"Six from each clan. You and the Ravenclaw vessel would be the seventh pair."
"And no one thought to just... talk to the other clan? To end this madness?"
Sorcha's laugh was hollow. "Child, the first century after the split, the Moonwhisper vessel tried exactly that. She was executed as a traitor by her own father. The hatred runs too deep now; it has become our identity."
"So instead, you've all been sacrificing your own children in a ritual doomed to fail," Lyra said, unable to keep the horror from her voice. "While the real threat grows stronger behind a weakening barrier."
"Not all of us agreed with this path," Sorcha said quietly. "Some of us have worked in secret, preserving the true knowledge, hoping that someday, vessels would be born strong enough to defy tradition and find each other."
Lyra closed the book, her decision made. "I've already met him. The Ravenclaw vessel. His name is Kael."
Sorcha's eyes widened. "You've met? When?"
"Today, in the forest. The Shadow Walkers found us both. We're meeting again tonight to compare what we've learned from our elders." Lyra fixed the healer with a determined stare. "I need to know everything, Sorcha. The full ritual, what it entails, what powers I'm supposed to have. If there's any chance of saving Elowen and stopping whatever's coming, I need to know."
The old healer studied her for a long moment, then nodded once, sharply. "Your parents will be looking for you. Go to them, pretend you know nothing. Return here at midnight, and I will teach you what I can." She hesitated, then added, "Be careful who you trust, Lyra. There are those among the council who would rather see you dead than united with a Ravenclaw, even to save us all."
Lyra thought of her father, the clan's most conservative elder, and knew Sorcha spoke the truth. "I understand," she said softly. "Midnight, then."
As she turned to leave, Sorcha caught her arm. "One more thing," she said, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "The marks you bear—they're more than just symbols. They're channels for ancient magic. As the Convergence approaches, you may find... abilities awakening. Abilities no one has seen in centuries."
"What kind of abilities?"
"That," said Sorcha, "is something you and the Ravenclaw vessel will have to discover together."