She looked at her hands—glowing, steady, sure.
“No,” she said quietly. “Not unstoppable. Just ready.”
Mingxi stepped closer, his voice low and tender. “You shine like the moon herself.”
She didn’t blush.
She lifted her chin and said, “Good.”
Because as the moon climbed higher, as her glow strengthened, as the valley hummed with ancient lunar power, a strange, heavy silence fell. Themoss stilled. The foxfire in Mingxi’s blade flickered. The moonwell rippled once, sharply. Mingxi turned toward the far path leading out of the valley.
His voice dropped. “They’re close.”
Poppy felt it too.
A pressure at the edge of the valley. A pull on the mark beneath her ribs. A wrongness moving steadily closer.
Lysandra was coming.
Chapter 69
Poppy breathed in, her moonlight rising in a calm, steady pulse.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
Mingxi nodded, stepping beside her. “Then we face it,” he murmured. “Together.”
The moon climbed. The valley waited, and the night began to change. The valley held its breath. One moment, the moonwell clearing was still and silver-lit, the air soft against Poppy’s skin. The next, a cold draft rolled through the moss like a warning, brushing her hair back from her face. It carried a scent she hadn’t smelled in years—ash, old herbs, and something metallic, something that made her gut clench with recognition.
Poppy stiffened. “She’s close.”
Mingxi was already turning toward the narrow stone path that wound down the ridge. His posture shifted into something both ancient and lethal, blade-hand loose, shoulders squared.
“They are at the boundary,” he said.
The mark beneath Poppy’s ribs pulsed—once, twice—sharp enough to make her gasp. It wasn’t pain. It was contact. A tether stretching across worlds. Her breath trembled as she straightened.
The valley changed around them. The silver moss dimmed by a fraction. The trees drew inward. Even the moonwell’s glow retreated into a quieter, guarded light, as if it too sensed what approached. Mingxi moved half a step in front of her, a shield shaped like a man.
The dragon vein stones at the valley’s far entrance began to hum—a low, discordant vibration that made Poppy’s teeth ache. They flickered and then fell dark.
Something had crossed the threshold.
Poppy’s pulse hammered in her throat. She stared into the shadows. A figure stepped forward with bare feet, a soiled hem, arms limp at her sides, hair hanging in tangled waves.
Lysandra.
Her body was thinner and her cheekbones sharper than Poppy remembered. Lysandra’s skin was pale under the moonlight. But her face… her face was still Poppy’s sister’s.
It was the eyes that had changed.
They were open—but hollow. Not lifeless. Inhabited. A darkness sat behind them like a second presence, watching through Poppy. Her knees nearly gave way.
Her lips parted with a broken sound. “Lys—”
“Do not call her,” Mingxi said sharply, without turning. “Not yet.”
Poppy bit down on the cry, swallowing hard. Lysandra took another step into the moonlight. It was wrong—every movement was a hair too delayed, like her limbs were resisting invisible threads.
