Poppy’s breath hitched. Lysandra. Poppy felt it, like a cold hand closing around her heart.
“Outside,” Shenwu snarled. “Now!”
Chapter 52
Mingxi didn’t wait. He took Poppy’s hand and ran, pulling her through the shrine corridors as foxfire dimmed violently overhead. The doors to the courtyard banged open, and Mingxi and Poppy froze.
Lysandra stood in the center of the courtyard.
Barefoot. Dressed in the same soft white nightgown she had died in nineteen years ago. Her long chestnut hair shifted gently in the morning breeze. Half her face was untouched by time—the same skin Poppy remembered, the same delicate cheekbones, the same bright-blue eye already swelling with tears. But the other half…
Black veins writhed beneath her skin like serpents of shadow. They pulsed. Shifted. Crawled upward and downward like living ink. Her corrupted eye was a swirling, black eclipse. A void where light went to die.
“Poppy…” Lysandra’s voice cracked, raw with recognition and grief. “You awakened.”
A Guardian charged forward, spear raised.
Lysandra did not even turn her head.
She flicked two fingers. A whip of shadow—liquid blackness—lashed outward and flung him across the courtyard. He struck stone and slid limp to the ground. Sunlight dimmed around her form, bending unnaturally, as though recoiling from her presence.
Mingxi stepped in front of Poppy, protective stance rigid, ready to fight.
Lysandra tilted her head, shadows crawling across her cheek.
“Move,” she whispered. “She is mine.”
“No,” Mingxi said coldly. “She is not yours.”
The black veins on Lysandra’s skin throbbed with pain or rage, Poppy wasn’t sure which.
“You left me,” she whispered, voice trembling. “You left me alone in the dark.”
Poppy’s knees weakened.
“I-I thought you died, Lys. I didn’t know— I screamed for you.”
Lysandra’s blue eye filled with tears. “I reached for you. And you never came.”
Mingxi growled, “She was ten.”
Lysandra’s corrupted eye flashed blacker. “She was my Poppet.”
Poppy sobbed. “I missed you every day. I would have saved you if I could have. I swear I—”
For one fragile moment—one heartbeat—Lysandra seemed to soften. Her blue eye shone with aching love. Then something inside her twisted. The black veins surged, crawling across her throat, spreading like cracks in shattered obsidian.
“I’ll come back,” she whispered. Her voice broke into two tones—one loving, one monstrous. “And next time… you’ll come home.”
She lifted her trembling hand. The veins ruptured, and the shadow exploded. A void ripped outward in a storm of black magic, swallowing sunlight, swallowing the courtyard, swallowing sound—
Mingxi wrapped Poppy in his arms, shielding her as the darkness slammed into the shrine walls, cracking stone and extinguishing foxfire.
For one breathless moment, the world turned pitch black.
In that split-second flicker, Poppy saw Lysandra’s blue eye. Wide. Terrified, and not of Poppy, not of Mingxi—of herself. Just before the darkness swallowed her, Lysandra’s lips shaped one final, silent word.
“Poppy.”
