All eyes snapped to her.
She leaned forward, her voice low, steady, chilling. “The shard was only a fragment.”
A shiver passed through the room.
Lysandra added, far too brightly, “Yes! A nibble. A sample size. An amuse-bouche of doom.”
The Councilor nearest her flinched.
Poppy continued, ignoring her sister entirely, “When the shard was destroyed, something… stirred beneath the moonwell. Something larger. Older. It wasn’t the shard. It was reacting because the shard died.”
“Reacting how?” the Sentinel asked, tone sharp.
Poppy hesitated. “It moved.”
The Councilors froze.
Yunlian spoke quietly for the first time. “The well itself trembled. As though something was waking.”
Lysandra tapped the table. “Waking or rolling over. Hard to tell. Might be both.”
A senior elder snapped, “You expect us to believe this thing still exists?”
“It does,” Poppy said. “It looked at me. Through the shard. It recognized me.” Her hands trembled in her lap. “And when it died… it remembered me.”
A cold murmur swept through the High Council.
Mingxi’s jaw clenched. “Poppy, why didn’t you say—”
“Because it didn’t make sense,” she whispered. “And I hoped I was wrong.”
“You were wrong,” another Councilor barked, voice rising.
“This is fear talking. The moonwell has been stable for centuries—”
“Oh, my gods,” Lysandra said, eyes widening with faux sympathy, “he’s stupid. Poppy, they let this one make decisions?”
The Councilor sputtered. “How dare—”
“That is enough!” another elder thundered.
“Lysandra, you will show respect in this chamber or—”
Lysandra slowly turned toward him, expression sharpening like a blade catching moonlight. “I’ve lived a million lives—beginning, middle, end, and everywhere in between,” Lysandra said, entirely unbothered. “I exist outside time. So forgive me if I no longer play by your archaic little rules.”
A Councilor whispered, horrified, “The Devouring One…”
Lysandra arched a brow. “Oh, please. Don’t say its name like you discovered fire. I’ve known that thing longer than any of you have been alive.”
Half the chamber recoiled, and the other half stopped breathing.
Mingxi’s foxfire flared so sharply the lanterns rattled.
Poppy’s heart slammed painfully against her ribs. “Lysandra—”
But her sister was already leaning back in her chair, composed, almost bored.
“It gnawed at my mind for years,” Lysandra said lightly. “Whispered futures in reverse. Showed me endings before beginnings. Annoying creature, really. No indoor voice.”
