Chapter 12: Mirrors and Smoke

The campfire's embers hissed as rain began to fall, each drop sizzling against the Eclipse Wilds' poisoned soil. Lira clutched the chalice to her chest, its obsidian surface slick with condensation or sweat, she couldn't tell. Eclipse's touch lingered on her wrist like frostbite, the skin beneath mottled blue and throbbing.

It felt like staring into a twisted mirror, she thought. My face, but hollow. My eyes, but dead.

Ryen bandaged Jax's shredded forearm, his hands steady, but his gaze darted to Lira every few seconds. "We need to move. Eclipse will be back."

Kael kicked dirt over the fire, his scarred throat flexing. "The rogues won't follow if we run. We stand and fight."

"With what?" Mira snapped, crushing wolfsbane into a paste. "Half our ammunition's gone, and the slummers won't send reinforcements unless we deliver Selene's head on a spike."

Vesper leaned against a gnarled tree, cleaning her claws with a silver knife. "I could get the head."

Silence.

Lira stood, the chalice's weight pulling her toward the earth. "Selene's mine."

Ryen caught her elbow. "You're not thinking straight. That thing…"

"I'm fine." She wrenched free, her voice layered with a growl that wasn't hers.

Nina's pencil scratched furiously. She tore out a sketch and pressed it into Lira's hand a chalice overflowing with shadows, its rim cracked by a single silver hair.

The Howling Quarter's Doubt

The rogue wolves circled Kael at dawn, their alpha's lips peeled back in a snarl. "You promised a fight, not a slaughter."

Kael didn't flinch. "Orion's hybrids slaughter everyone. You want vengeance for your dead? Earn it."

A younger rogue stepped forward, his eyes darting to Lira. "Why trust her? She's one of them."

Lira unsheathed her claws, the chalice humming at her hip. "I'm what Orion fears. And if you're too blind to see that…"

"Enough." Ryen shouldered between them, his amber eyes blazing. "We're wasting time. Orion's lab is north. We move in an hour."

The alpha spat. "You lead us to our graves, Thorn."

"Then die standing," Kael growled.

Eclipse's Lament

The hybrid knelt in Orion's lab, her perfect face tilted toward the amber tanks. "Father, I… felt her. The other one."

Orion stroked her hair, his touch clinical. "Lira is flawed. A prototype. You are perfected."

Eclipse's crimson-and-gold eyes flickered. "She… hurts."

"Pain is weakness." He pressed a syringe to her neck, its contents swirling silver. "And you are strength."

Her pupils dilated, the doubt dissolving. "I am strength."

Jax pried open a rusted floorboard in the tavern cellar, revealing a cache of Orion's journals. "Bingo. Blueprints, test results even a map to his old crypt."

Mira leafed through a journal, her frown deepening. "He wasn't just making hybrids. He was breedingthem. Eclipse is… a clone."

Ryen stilled. "A clone?"

"Of Lira." Mira held up a sketch a fetal hybrid suspended in amber, its features unmistakable. "He's been refining her DNA for decades."

Above them, the tavern door creaked open. Lira froze on the threshold, rainwater dripping from her silver-streaked hair. "Where's the crypt?"

Frostspire's ruins loomed like broken teeth. Selene stood amidst the rubble, her ice-blonde hair matted with ash. The locket around her neck pulsed faintly Lira's heartbeat, a ghostly echo.

Vesper materialized from the shadows. "You look like hell."

"You're late." Selene didn't turn. "Orion's hybrids are coming. You'll die with me."

Vesper's claws twitched. "I didn't come to die. I came to watch you fall."

Selene laughed, brittle and cold. "We're both already dead, girl. We just haven't stopped moving."

A howl rose Eclipse's hunting cry.

The Crypt

Orion's crypt stank of formaldehyde and rot. Lira traced the alchemical symbols on the walls, the chalice's hum syncing with her racing pulse. Here. It has to be here.

Ryen aimed his gun at the shadows. "What are we looking for?"

"The source." She pressed her palm to a mural of a hybrid eclipsing the sun. The wall slid open, revealing a chamber bathed in sickly green light.

Rows of tanks lined the room, each holding a fetal hybrid Lira's face, Lira's eyes, Lira's clones.

"Gods," Ryen breathed.

The chalice vibrated, its whispers crescendoing. End it. Claim your throne.

Lira raised it, light gathering…

A blade pressed to her throat.

"Father said you'd come." Eclipse smiled, her hollow eyes reflecting the chalice's glow.

Nina's sketch fluttered to the tavern floor a chalice shattered, its shards piercing two identical hearts.

In the crypt, Lira's blood dripped onto the chalice as Eclipse's grip tightened.

"You'll thank me," Eclipse murmured. "When you're perfect."

Ryen's gun clicked.

Orion's laughter echoed through the vents.