Chapter 9: Cage of Echoes

The cold was alive.

It slithered through Frostspire's dungeon walls, biting at Lira's skin like a thousand serrated teeth. Silver cuffs anchored her to the stone floor, their wolfsbane-laced metal leaching warmth from her veins. Every breath crystallized in the air, sharp and brittle. Above, the citadel groaned a symphony of shifting ice and ancient magic.

Selene's heartbeat Lira thought bitterly. She built this place to last forever.

Footsteps echoed. Vesper emerged from the gloom, her hybrid claws glinting under the dungeon's phosphorescent moss. The burns on her face where Lira's blood had scalded her were still raw puckered flesh.

"Still breathing?" Vesper crouched, tilting Lira's chin with a claw. "Pity. I hoped the cold would finish you."

Lira spat blood. It froze before hitting the floor. "Tell Selene she'll have to try harder."

Vesper backhanded her. The blow split Lira's lip, her blood spattering the Hollow Fang chalice chained to the far wall. The relic hissed, its obsidian surface rippling like oil.

"Your mother grows impatient" Vesper said, wiping her claws on her armor. "The chalice is useless without your blood. Cooperate and she'll make your death quick."

Lira laughed the sound hollow. "You don't want me dead. You want me broken."

Vesper's claws twitched. For a heartbeat Lira glimpsed it the girl beneath the monster the one Orion had twisted into this.

"You're wrong" Vesper hissed. "I want you to suffer like I did."

She stormed out leaving Lira alone with the chalice's whispers.

Let me in it murmured. I can free you.

The Sewers

The Fringe stank of desperation and rot.

Ryen gagged as he waded through waist-deep sludge the sewer's brackish water sloshing against Kael's makeshift map. Nina's prophetic sketches had guided them this far a labyrinth of crumbling tunnels marked by crimson Xs and warnings only she could decipher.

"Left here" Kael grunted, his human senses straining in the dark. "The ice vaults feed Frostspire's magic. Collapse them and Selene's fortress crumbles."

Jax adjusted his UV lantern its flickering light catching on something pale floating in the water. "Is that a finger?"

Mira elbowed him. "Focus. Selene's sentinels patrol these tunnels."

As if summoned a guttural snarl echoed ahead. Ryen froze. Amber eyes glinted in the shadows feral hybrids their mismatched fangs dripping saliva.

"Orion's rejects" Kael growled, unsheathing a silver dagger. "They'll alert the whole damn citadel if we don't silence them."

Ryen's hand drifted to the wolfsbane grenades at his belt. "Make it quick."

The fight was brutal. Claws tore through leather fangs grazed flesh. Nina's sketches fluttered to the ground trampled underfoot as Ryen drove his blade into a hybrid's throat. Its death scream echoed but not before Kael crushed its skull.

"They're getting smarter" Mira panted, binding a gash on Jax's arm. "Orion's refining them."

Ryen stared at the corpse. Its eyes one silver one gold stared blankly. Like Lira's.

"Move" he said.

Selene's Lament

The throne room's ice mirrors reflected Selene's exhaustion.

She traced the locket hidden beneath her armor. Its twin rested in the dungeon a tether to the daughter who'd rather die than kneel. Frostspire's walls shuddered the ice vaults groaning as the mortals scrabbled at her foundations. Pathetic.

A sentinel knelt frost crackling on his armor. "The vaults destabilize Majesty. The mortals…"

"Let them come" Selene said. "They'll die screaming."

But her hand trembled.

Lira's chains snapped at midnight.

Not from strength from the chalice. It had inched closer all day its shadow-legs skittering like spiders until it clamped onto her cuffs. Now freed she cradled the relic its hum syncing with her pulse.

Hurry it whispered.

Alarms blared as she fled the dungeon. Frostspire's corridors warped around her walls weeping ice. She followed the pull of Orion's blood left then right past the fountain of frozen tears until she found the east tower.

Ryen and Kael fought Selene's sentinels their blades flashing under UV grenade light. Jax lobbed explosives while Mira dragged Nina from the fray.

"Lira" Ryen shouted his voice raw.

A sentinel's spear pierced his side.

No.

Her scream shattered the vaults. Frostspire's heart ruptured ice cascading like glass.

Vesper cornered her in the collapsing throne room.

"You'll die here" she snarled, but her claws hesitated.

Lira flung Selene's locket at her feet. "Take it. Or die her slave."

The relic glinted a promise and a curse.

Vesper froze.

The ceiling cracked. Lira leapt into the void Ryen's arms catching her mid-fall.

Orion's Gambit

Deep below Frostspire the vaults' collapse triggered a seismic shift.

Orion's hidden lab stirred. Amber tanks illuminated rows of hybrids perfect pristine their eyes snapping open.

Vesper's voice crackled through the comms "I'm done being your pawn."

Orion smiled. "You've only just begun."

Sanctuary

Dawn bled over the Hollow Fang Tavern.

Lira clasped the twin lockets their weight a reminder. Mother. Monster. Me.

Ryen winced as Mira stitched his wound. "They'll come for us."

"Let them."

Outside Nina painted a new sign Sanctuary for the Broken.

Somewhere in the Eclipse Wilds a hybrid howled a sound not wolf not vamp but hungry.

Lira's fangs glinted. "We'll be ready."