The horizon burned with dusk when Caelina reached Eclipse Hollow.
But there were no sentries at the ridge.
No patrol drums.
No smoke trails from the night forges.
Even the wind felt cautious.
"When the market is quiet at midday, a blade is being sharpened behind the stalls."
She dismounted slowly, her hand hovering near her dagger.
At the gate, one of the Moon Guard lay slumped, breathing—barely.
His chest was clawed, not pierced.
A warning, not an execution.
"Who did this?" Caelina asked.
The guard's lips trembled. "Not… not wolves."
The Hollow was still standing.
But it felt vacated.
No footsteps.
No hammering.
Just that eerie, open silence where life should have been.
Then came the scent.
Blood.
Old.
Familiar.
Elara's.
Caelina sprinted to the council grove beneath the baobab.
The stone table was cracked in half.
Blades were embedded in the roots.
And across the tree's bark was a message, burned in runes:
"THE MOON LIED. THE WOLF FALTERED. THE CROWN RETURNS."
Zela emerged from shadow, limping, one side of her head wrapped in ash-cloth.
Her eyes widened at the sight of Caelina.
"You came back."
"I promised."
Zela fell into her arms, trembling. "They came three nights after you left. Not a raid—a reclaiming."
"Who?"
Zela swallowed. "The children of the silver oath. Myra's loyalists. And something else. Something they called The Pureborn."
Caelina stiffened. "Where is Elara?"
"They took her."
Caelina's blood ran cold.
"How?"
"She wouldn't yield. So she challenged their leader. One-on-one. She lost."
"She doesn't lose."
"She was drugged, Caelina."
Caelina's jaw clenched. Her veins glowed faintly.
"Where did they take her?"
"To the Iron Vale. The place Myra once bled her enemies dry."
Zela pulled something from her pouch. A shard of iron, still wet with rune-ink.
"She left this behind. She knew you'd come back."
That night, Caelina sat by the ruined council tree, unmoving.
She didn't cry.
She didn't scream.
She simply waited for the dark to settle fully.
Then she stood.
Her voice carried to the few that remained:
"We rebuilt this Hollow to honor what we lost.
But now, those who built nothing come to claim it.
Let them come.
Let them see what the sea gave back to the moon."
She walked alone to the weapons vault.
Removed her crescent blades.
Tied her mother's salt-beads around her wrist.
And pressed the pendant—the one forged from the enemy's spear—against her chest.
The silver in her blood answered.
It did not rage.
It burned slow. Steady.
Like a hearth before war.
Elara was alive.
But thrones, even broken ones, do not bleed quietly.
To reclaim the Hollow…
She would have to face the ghosts she didn't summon.
And the wolves who still believed Myra's death was a lie.