Deep within the limestone Labyrinth, the air grew cold and the forced joy of the surface disappeared. In a central chamber lit by floating globes of black fire, a man stood with his back to them. He was tall, his hair tinged with gray, wearing the tattered remains of the Redwood Alpha's regalia.
"Father," Elara said, her voice echoing off the damp walls.
Alpha Thorne turned slowly. He didn't look like a villain; he looked like a man who had been hollowed out from the inside. In his hand, he held a small, golden fragment, the Shard of Joy. It hummed with a terrifying, hypnotic melody.
"You grew up, Elara," Thorne said, his voice devoid of emotion. "And you chose the Lycan King. Typical. You always were more interested in the wolves than your own blood."
"You left me to die!" Elara screamed, the violet light flickering around her. "You used your own daughter as a decoy while you ran to the shadows!"
Thorne let out a dry, hacking laugh. "Decoy? No, Elara. You weren't the decoy. You were the investment."
He stepped closer, the golden shard pulsing in his palm. "Why do you think your mother, a woman with the purest Whisperer blood in history, was in the Redwood Pack? Why do you think I mated with a human-passing outcast?"
Elara felt the ground shift beneath her. "What are you saying?"
"The prophecy needed a vessel," Thorne hissed, his eyes suddenly flashing with a sickening green light. "I didn't leave you because I was a coward. I left you because you needed to be traumatized. The Whisper only awakens in the dark, Elara. You needed to be betrayed. You needed to be captured by the Obsidian King. You needed to hate, and fear, and love until your soul was cracked enough for the Moonstone to fit inside."
He smiled, a cruel, jagged thing. "I didn't sell the world to the Void, Elara. I bred you to be the one who could control it. And now that you've purified two shards and bonded with the King, you are finally ready."
"Ready for what?" Lyraki roared, stepping between them, his obsidian sword raised.
"To be the sacrifice," Thorne said. He crushed the golden shard in his hand.
Suddenly, the Labyrinth began to collapse. Black shadows—the Elder God's tendrils—erupted from the floor, wrapping around Elara's ankles. Thorne wasn't trying to rule the world; he was trying to use Elara as a lightning rod to draw the Void out of the shards so he could absorb the power.
"You were never my daughter," Thorne whispered as he disappeared into a cloud of black smoke. "You were just the key."
The betrayal was total. It wasn't just that he had abandoned her; it was that every moment of her life, every ounce of her suffering, had been carefully orchestrated by the man she once called father.
As the shadows pulled her down, Elara looked at Lyraki. For the first time, she didn't project fear. She projected a single, clear thought into his mind: I am not his key. I am my own before managing to snatch the golden shard of joy.