Chapter 40: The Trial of the Promised
The chapel door slammed shut behind them.
Kael turned. It wouldn't open.
The handle melted in his grip like wax.
"Of course," Maerin muttered, drawing her blade. "A cursed trial. Always ends in a courtroom."
But Lyra wasn't listening.
She was staring at the altar where the noose swayed gently over an open book, its pages turning on their own.
The pews were filled.
Not with townsfolk.
With memories.
Seren. Oran. Her mother. The Hollow Saint. A version of Kael from when he still wore shadows beneath his eyes.
And somewhere in the very back herself, younger, eyes wide, a candle burning in her chest.
---
A gavel rang out.
The sound didn't echo.
It multiplied.
Dozens of gavels slammed inside Lyra's skull.
Then a voice like velvet over rot said:
"The trial of Lyra Elowen Vale is now in session."
She stepped forward because something inside her made her.
Kael moved, but the moment his feet left the circle of salt at the doorway, the floor screamed beneath him.
Lyra raised a hand.
"Stay there."
A judge appeared behind the pulpit.
Faceless. Robed in root threads. His gavel was made from bone.
"The accused is charged with the following:
Abandoning her given role.
Witnessing the truth and denying it.
And living… when she was meant to burn."
Kael shouted, "This isn't real!"
But Maerin hissed, "Don't break the circle. This is binding magic. If you interrupt, it starts again."
Kael's fists clenched. "She's in there alone."
Maerin whispered, "She has to win this in memory, or we all lose in reality."
---
Lyra stood before the judge.
"I didn't abandon anything," she said. "I was a child. I didn't know."
"Ignorance does not erase debt," the judge replied.
The gavel slammed again.
The pews shifted.
Every memory-Lyra turned to face her.
One by one, they stood.
Each one spoke a word.
"Coward."
"Liar."
"Witness."
"Thief."
"Failure."
"Saint."
"Daughter."
She flinched.
The courtroom walls closed in.
Suddenly she was ten again, shivering in her old village, whispering to Oran that she couldn't sleep because her shadow wouldn't stay attached anymore.
The candle inside her flickered.
"I didn't want this," she whispered.
The judge leaned forward.
"Then why did you come back?"
That question silenced her.
Why had she?
To find Oran?
To uncover her past?
To fix what had been broken?
Or to burn it all down and see if anything could grow in the ash?
The gavel slammed again.
"You have one final witness."
The door behind the altar opened
And Kael walked out.
But not the Kael beside her in the chapel.
This Kael had no eyes.
Just black root tendrils pouring from the sockets.
He looked at her and smiled.
"You dragged me back."
Lyra shook her head. "No. No, I didn't."
"You fed it. Every time you tried to fix it, you fed it. Every name you called, every memory you touched, every lie you exposed…"
He stepped closer.
"You kept it alive because you needed to matter."
The gavel raised.
Lyra dropped to her knees.
And then
She laughed.
The room froze.
The false Kael's face twisted. "What's funny?"
She looked up, her eyes wet but fierce.
"That's the curse. That's always been the curse."
She rose, candle still flickering.
"It's not the root. Or the pact. Or the Saint."
"It's the belief that I was born to die."
She turned to the judge.
"I choose not to."
The book on the altar burst into flame.
The noose unraveled into ash.
The gavel cracked down
But the floor beneath it split open.
A scream rose not human.
Not god.
But town.
Whisperwood shrieked like it was being torn from its own bones.
Lyra was thrown back into Kael's arms as the circle shattered.
Maerin caught them both as the chapel imploded behind them roots, pews, judge, all dragged into the screaming sinkhole where memory had been sentenced.
The trial was over.
But something darker had awakened.
Not beneath them.
Above.
The sky was bleeding now.
And in the clouds, something massive stirred.
A shape made of names.
And in its center, one word glowed:
Nyra.
Kael whispered, "Who the hell is Nyra?"
Lyra stared at the sky, frozen.
Because she knew.
But she'd forgotten she had ever been called that.