Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Five: Threads of Fate

Kestra's Point of View

She kicked open the door. Her hand, in a perpetual state of being half-covered in paint, could have opened the door well enough, but it would have taken too long. Her long black hair (also with a small sprinkling of paint) caught on a branch as she rushed out to see Myra, but as she was unable to untie it, she snapped off the offending branch and kept running. Reaching Myra at last, her mother wrapped her up in her arms and held her close.

"I missed you," Kestra whispered, not caring about the way the metal of her mother's armour dug into her skin. She couldn't remember feeling happier in all of her dozen years.

"I missed you too, Kestrel." Her mother whispered back. When at last their rather awkward embrace ended (awkward because of the heavy armour and the helmet Myra had barely managed to get off her head), Kestra turned to see Viktoria, who gave her a piece of fudge, a little squished but still very good. nonetheless. Kestra tried to memorise everything-the laughs of Vera and Viktoria, the smile in her mother's sapphire eyes-while still basking in the joy of it all.

"Breaking news, everyone." Viktoria shouted at them. "Her High Dragoness has decided she will be returning with us when the holidays end." Kestra felt she might collapse.

"Really?" She asked her mother.

"I realised my home isn't the Hawk Mountains anymore." Myra told her and picked her up again. "I told you I missed you, didn't I, little Kestrel?" Her mother was coming home with her. Her mother would be there at the end of every day, tucking her into bed at night, picking her up from school and asking how her day had been. Quite unexpectedly, she began to cry.

"Oh, come on, my company can't be that bad," her mother laughed, but she knew what Kestra meant. That was the thing about her. She always understood.

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Kestra was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming, but not because the world around her didn't feel real. The world around was sharp and clear like broken glass.

She knew she was dreaming because she was not wearing her own skin.

The Keeper Heir stood there, as her mother, on a ruined plain.

She could see that red hair flying in the wind and felt a sword in her hand. Was this what it felt like to be Myra?

The dream was vivid, so Kestra knew it was like the other dreams. The dream she'd had two years ago when she'd seen Aunt Vera's cat die and woke up to find it motionless at her feet. The dream she'd had a night before a storm. The dream she'd had when a fire had come close to her academy.

These dreams always had meaning. They always had purpose. They gave her a glimpse into a soon-to-be future.

More them all of this, the dreams were always true.

Slowly, she turned towards the moon, and then watched the moon go black as night. Stared toward the stars and watched them disappear. No, they didn't disappear. Instead they burned a different colour. They burned black. Black as night, as death, as coals, as the colour of Aunt Vera's cat's eyes.

The sky turned black. Burned black.

And the night reached for her, a harsh blanket, and swallowed her whole. As the darkness enveloped her, she could feel herself travelling, feel her body shifting...

This time she was in her own body, fleeing from the burning capital of Azul, standing on the hill behind the city, and watching as a black flame raced across the streets.

The city was swallowed by the darkness.

When she woke up, she knew it would not be a dead cat, or a storm or a fire.

When she woke up, she knew it would not be an earthquake, a cold or a broken sword.

War was coming. And the world had been waiting for this war for a long, long time.

The threads of fate were weaving. Tighter and tighter, around the throat of the lost continent.