The Prophecy: Empress Returns

Prologue

Prologue

There was no light, only a screaming, relentless pressure. It had been my world for two years. I was the anchor, the boundary, the sheer force of will that kept the ancient, malignant soul of Radcliffe locked in its hellish prison. I was supposed to be gone. Annihilated. My sacrifice was meant to be final.

But the pain, the terrible psychic weight of containing such darkness, somehow became the very thing that kept a desperate, residual spark of me alive. Even within that void, something was pulling—an instinct, a raw, desperate tug that transcended the annihilation I’d suffered. It was an urge to be—the urge to get out.

I didn't know how, but I clung to that tug. It was stronger than the crushing dark, stronger than Radcliffe’s endless malice. It was a fragment of a memory I couldn't access, a love I couldn't name, a partnership that refused to be severed.

With a soundless, impossible tear, I broke free. I shed the containment field I had become, exploding back into the realm of the living.

But the victory was a devastating unmaking. The sheer psychic toll of trapping Radcliffe had not just damaged me—it had shattered my consciousness.

I was a formless power, a wolf spirit made of instinct and urgency, yet completely blank.

My name, Empress, was a silent word I didn't know.

My tremendous power was a force I couldn't direct.

My human counterpart, the queen I died to protect, was a face I couldn't picture.

I was just a powerful, lost spirit. But the instinct remained: Danger. The prison was broken, and Radcliffe's freedom was now looming. And I had to find someone.

It was a frantic, terrifying need. I was pulled toward the land of the living by an invisible, powerful thread, but when I looked around, there was no map, no scent, and no name. I had to warn her. I had to find...

Her. The one person. The one I desperately needed to find.