A/N: This story takes place at the end of A Court of Wings and Ruin, if you haven't made it that far there will be slight spoilers.

"Speaking"

Thinking

Disclaimer: I do not own The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess nor the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. They belong to their respective owners Shigeru Miyamoto and Sarah J Maas.

A Court of Shadows and Twilight

Prologue: The Rift

The Cursebreaker absconded through the narrow steps of the stairwell deep within the mountain that made up the Court of Nightmares. Her breathing was ragged and uneven as she ascended the thousand steps that made up the distance between her and the Ouroboros. She nearly collapsed once she finally arrived in the chamber where the ancient mirror slumbered. But what kept her body from slumping over was the bitter cold air from the snow that bathed the room.

Moonlight filtered through the windows, causing the flurries of ice crystal to twinkle under the ethereal glow, only adding to the mystical atmosphere as she beheld the mirror before her. The perimeter of the looking glass was made up of an unrecognizable alloy that twisted into an unsettling image of a serpent devouring its tail. While the mirror itself was like staring at a massive slab of polished obsidian.

Feyre's teeth chattered as she approached, contrasting with her quiet and purposeful footsteps against the snow. Once she was in front of the mirror, her breath formed a thin mist on the onyx-like sheen of the surface, which fogged until her reflection, obscured by a cloudy film, appeared back at her.

One moment she was looking at herself, the next she was staring at a blue-gray-eyed beast amidst an unfamiliar world without light. The world beyond was coveted in black particles that floated in the sepia sky, a masterpiece of dread that she would title:

A Wolf in the Hour of Twilight

A fitting title to capture the beasts' beauty within the macabre, its dark scale-like fur contrasting with the reddish-brown hues of the landscape. Feyre's gaze remained locked on the majestic beast staring back at her, its eyes gleaming with an intelligence that seemed too familiar. Its sharp, glistening claws dug into the ground as though ready to pounce, yet there was something in its posture… something she recognized.

She lifted her hand, hesitating as her breath caught in her throat. The wolf mimicked the motion, raising a massive, clawed limb. The connection, subtle at first, bloomed into a cold realization that sent chills down her spine...

Primal energy emanating from the ancient being crackled through the war-torn landscape of Prythian. Its mighty wings carried it through the devastation in a calculated sweep, razing Hybern's forces scattered throughout the rocky terrain.

The Cursebreaker could only observe the bloodshed with wide eyes as she witnessed the true nature of the ever enigmatic, Amren. Everything she passed; ethereal white flames followed, like the searing flash of lightning tearing through a storm, leaving nothing except silence and ruin in its wake.

Finally, when Amren circled the sea and the last wisps of her power faded behind the mighty rays of the sun, it was over.

Feyre finally let out a sigh of relief she didn't realize she was holding.

'Amren served her purpose…she's gone, and the war with Hybern was o—'

Before she could finish her thought a loud crack immediately drew her attention from the battlefield to the ancient stoneware…or what was left of it.

"The Cauldron…" She breathed out as she gaped at the sight of the ancient relic broken into five huge fragments, and in between the shards was a rift. The fissure radiated the same ancient energy that Amren possessed, far removed from the magic in Prythian.

As Feyre took a tentative step towards the growth, familiar calloused hands clasped around her wrist. She whirled around to find the High Lord of the Night Court, his face and body covered in the blood of his enemies. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?" He took her face into his talon-tipped hands, his piercing violet orbs thoroughly examining her.

"I'm okay…just a little disoriented." She voiced before letting him into her mind to replay all the events leading up to seeing the rift in the fabric of their world. As she allowed him to see pivotal moments that shaped the outcome of the war, she couldn't stop the tears that were streaming down her face from the losses she experienced.

The High Lord's eyes darkened with a mix of anger and concern as he felt Feyre's pain through the bond they shared. When the final images from the war faded away, he removed his hands from her cheeks and enveloped her in a tight embrace. "It's over," he murmured against her hair, holding her close. "We've won."

The tang of metal and sweat burned her nostrils as she buried her face into the hard planes of his chest. Despite the impending threat of whatever was beyond that rupture, she permitted herself to melt into her mate's arms. "My father…Amren…Bryaxis…the Bone Carver…" She sobbed as her torrents of grief wracked through her body. So many lives have been claimed on the battlefield, far worse than the attack on Velaris that happened months ago.

Rhysand whispered words of reassurance as he unfurled his wings and wrapped them around her in a protective cocoon. The world fell away, leaving them in a fleeting moment of solace amidst the remnants of war. He felt the weight of her sorrow and the pain of all those lives lost. His chest ached with the knowledge that he couldn't shield her from the grief, but he vowed to carry it with her, to support her through the weight of their losses.

He gently brushed his thumbs over her cheeks, trying to soothe her through the bond. "I'm here," he murmured, as he placed a soft kiss on the top of her head. "I'm here."

But reality swiftly returned in a heartbeat.

In that instance, the rift began pulsing an otherworldly glow of tangerines and obsidians and then the chasm expanded. The solid earth beneath them crumbled, dragging down the Cursebreaker along with the Cauldron fragments, into the maw of the rupture.

"Feyre!" Rhysand shouted and instinctively tucked in his wings as he lurched forward to follow her into the depths.

"Rhys!" She cried as she reached for him despite the rest of her body succumbing to gravity. In return, he outstretched his hand until he was close enough to where his fingertips grazed hers. However, the brief contact ended when a falling Cauldron piece made an impact with her head, knocking her unconscious.

The collision seemed to only accelerate her descent, because the next thing the High Lord knew, she was meters away from him. Rhys tried to winnow, to do anything to close the distance, but the magic in the rift rendered all their powers useless and she was plummeting too fast for him to catch up. Dread began to pool in his gut when he realized whatever attempts he made to save his mate were futile. The only thing fueled with magic in this descent was…

The Cauldron fragments!

He extended his wings and surged towards a piece that whizzed past him, in hopes that the shard would have any means of saving his mate. But as soon as he grasped the fragment, it summoned a powerful updraft that propelled him skyward, back towards the surface of the rift.

Rhysand's hands desperately clutched at the Cauldron fragment, his eyes fixated on his mate's unconscious form falling through the ether of the rift. His heart raced as he held onto the ancient relic, summoning all his strength and will to stop the whirlwind that threatened to drag him back up.

"NO!" He bellowed against the force of the updraft, his wings powerfully fighting against the current. He couldn't lose her, wouldn't lose her. Not like this.

The High Lord's frustrated roars echoed through the abyss as he found himself getting farther and farther away from his mate until she was swallowed up by the darkness. When he unceremoniously landed back at the mouth of the rift, his first instinct was to go back down there. But before he could commit, a voice shattered his frantic thoughts:

"Rhys…wait!"

At that moment, Rhysand was torn between the desperate need to follow Feyre into the dark and the command of the voice that stopped him in his tracks. His chest heaved with exertion and frustration as he clutched the Cauldron shard in his hand.

He finally tore his gaze off of the rift and whirled around to find the remaining members of his Inner Circle, the Archeron sisters, and the Solar courts in the aftermath of the battle against Hybern. But the sight that made his blood go cold was the inky black void that consumed parts of the seasonal courts.

"What's going on?" Rhysand finally found his voice after scanning through the devastation. He was still shaken from losing Feyre, and the hollowness of the world only added to it.

"It's the Cauldron…without it, our world will cease to exist." Helion, the High Lord of the Day Court spoke up. "The seasonal High Lords and their courts… were pulled into the rift."

Upon hearing that information, Rhysand felt bile rise to his throat. In the measly minutes, he spent in that abyss trying to save Feyre, four courts that made up Prythian were gone, reduced to cavities in the earth. His grip tightened on the fragment of the Cauldron he held, the jagged edges of the piece digging into his skin as he processed Helion's words. The implications of what they had just witnessed and its loss hit him like a ton of bricks. "We must go back. We have… We need to find Feyre."

"You weren't able to retrieve the High Lady?" The Shadowsinger asked, his usually stoic face flickering with surprise.

"No. I thought maybe getting one of the pieces would change the outcome, but it just blasted me back to the surface." Rhysand sighed as he looked over at the cursed Cauldron piece. The damn thing was eerily quiet as if it didn't just prevent him from saving his mate.

"First Hybern and now this rift that just swallowed up our High Lady and the very thing that keeps us tethered to this existence; this day couldn't get any better." Cassian managed to let out a wry chuckle as he held onto the eldest Archeron sister to keep him upright.

Of course, his brother would try to make light of the situation, but Rhysand wasn't amused. The Night Court superior cast a glare at the Illyrian general before his eyes met the stormy blue ones of Nesta Archeron then Elain's. "Do you still feel your connection to the Cauldron?"

"It doesn't matter anymore; we're all going to die anyway." Came her usually frigid retort that was immediately glossed over by Elain's soft voice that held a note of quiet determination. "Yes… I know that piece is the only reason our world hasn't been fully consumed."Her brown eyes, usually so distant, were sharp with the clarity of her vision. She stared at the fragment in Rhysand's hand as if it were a lifeline to everything that still existed.

"So this fragment is the only thing keeping our world from collapsing into the void…" Thesan, the High Lord of the Dawn Court's voice was quiet, yet filled with the chilling weight of understanding. His brown eyes flicked between the shard and the growing darkness at their borders. "If that's true, then the only way to restore Prythian… is to find the other shards hidden beyond the void."

Rhysand exchanged a tense glance between Helion and Thesen, their expressions mirroring the same grim understanding.

"Then it's settled, we're going down there," Rhysand said, determination strengthening his tone. "The Archeron sisters are crucial to the task. They were Made by the Cauldron, so if anyone can find the fragments, it's Elain and Nesta."

Nesta instinctively moved in front of Elain in a protective stance. "Don't even think about asking me to scry or about Elain's visions."

"Do you not even care about what happened to your sister?" Rhysand growled, his wings flaring out in frustration as he took a step towards her, his imposing figure towering over hers. He knew that Nesta had very valid reasons for refusing to cooperate considering the Cauldron had taken so much from them, but he couldn't find the means to be sympathetic in this situation.

Nesta just shrugged and held up her chin defiantly, "Not the first person I lost today."

Rhysand's eyes narrowed at Nesta's obstinate answer. Anger and hurt flared in his veins as he took a step closer, wings spreading wider. "And yet, you're willing to let Feyre become another one?"

His question hardly did anything to break Nesta's icy exterior. She just rose her chin higher as if her father's death and potentially losing her youngest sister didn't phase her one bit.

Rhysand nearly lost his restraint and almost added another number to the death toll, but Morrigan ever the mediator spoke up. "Enough. We need to tend to the hurt and help restore whatever we can."

"I agree." Helion added, "We need to address the damages in Prythian from the war before we can even begin to think of diving into the rift to retrieve the Cauldron pieces and your mate."

Rhysand let out a long exhale, fighting to regain control of his raging emotions. The weight of the Cauldron shard in his hand only reminded him of the colossal void that had claimed Feyre, along with the seasonal courts and their respective High Lords. Whole swaths of Prythian now existed only as dark voids, eerie and gaping in the earth.

"The seasonal courts are gone, Rhysand," Helion murmured, his voice heavy with grief. "We've lost a third of our world in moments. The Day, Dawn, and Night Courts barely stand, and there's nothing left to protect the people who survived."

"We need you here," Mor added softly, her voice steady but urgent. "We need to rally the survivors, and restore order before it's too late for all of us."

Rhysand's mind raced. His wings twitched with the need to dive back into the rift and follow Feyre, to find her before she slipped beyond his reach. But Helion's words echoed in his ears: a third of their world was gone. The balance of power in Prythian had shifted dangerously. Without those courts, their realm was on the edge of collapse.

He gritted his teeth as Cassian limped up beside him, his usually light-hearted demeanor now etched with grim determination. "If we don't act fast, what happened to the seasonal courts is going to happen to the rest of us. We'll lose everything."

His heart screamed to dive into the void after Feyre, but his duty screamed louder. Prythian was hanging by a thread, and Rhysand knew that as High Lord, the fate of his people was still his responsibility. He wanted to scream in frustration, to lash out at the very gods who had placed him in this impossible position.

"And what about Feyre? My mate is down there in that abyss, and every second we spend 'stabilizing' could be the one that costs her life." Rhysand hissed, his violet eyes wild with fury.

"The people need you," Mor urged again, catching his gaze. "You're our High Lord. We can't do this alone."

Rhysand clenched his fists. How could he make this choice? Save his mate, or save Prythian? There wasn't time for both.

Mor stepped closer, her voice quiet but unyielding. "You don't have to do this alone. We will find her. But Prythian needs you now."

Helion's voice joined in, harsher this time, "If the Night Court falls, there will be nothing left for Feyre to return to."

Rhysand's shoulders slumped, his wings sagging as the weight of responsibility crushed him from all sides. Duty warred with love inside him, and the weight of both threatened to tear him apart. His mind screamed to abandon everything and dive into the rift, to fight through whatever darkness lay there, to find her. But his court, his people, needed him.

"You don't understand," he murmured, barely above a whisper. "I can still feel her. She's alive, but that bond… it's getting weaker. If I don't go now, I might not be able to find her again."

Elain's soft voice broke the silence. "We'll find her, Rhys. The Cauldron's piece—it's our guide. As long as we have it, Feyre's still connected to this world."

He looked down at the shard in his hand, the fragment of the Cauldron that had both saved and cursed them. It pulsed faintly, as if it too was struggling to maintain a thread between realms. His gaze flicked to Nesta, who was still standing with her arms crossed, her expression unreadable.

Rhysand closed his eyes, taking a long, shuddering breath. His entire body screamed to dive into the rift, to tear through the void and drag Feyre back, no matter the cost. But they were right. If he went in blind, he could lose more than just his mate...he could lose everything.

But the thought of waiting, of leaving her there, it was unbearable. "We move quickly," he growled. "I'll stabilize what I can here. But as soon as we're able, we're going after her. I don't care if it means going through every layer of that damned abyss."

His wings flexed and then slowly folded behind him, a gesture of reluctant acceptance. He couldn't abandon the people of Prythian...not yet.

Feyre's eyes snapped open with a violent gasp, her heart pounding against her ribs. The room spun as she instinctively reached out for that familiar tether in her mind—the mate bond. But instead of the warm, steady pulse of Rhysand's presence, she found... nothing. A hollow, suffocating void.

"Rhysand?" she called, her voice trembling with rising dread. "Rhys?" The words shattered in her throat, warping into a guttural growl that echoed off the cold stone walls. Her breath hitched, eyes widening in horror. Her voice...was gone, replaced by the sharp, incoherent sounds of something... animal.

She recoiled, her body stiffening in terror. The sensation was wrong, everything felt wrong. Feyre's gaze dropped to her hand...except they weren't hands. Where her slender fingers should have been, massive, clawed paws trembled beneath her. Her entire body was cloaked in thick, dark fur, every inch of her alien and unrecognizable.

No... No, no, no.

Her mind reeled, scrambling to process what couldn't be possible. The familiar bite of panic tightened around her chest as she lurched to her feet—four feet—her limbs trembling under the unfamiliar weight of her new form. Her muscles screamed in protest as she staggered forward, forcing herself to move despite the instinctual terror roaring in her veins.

She stumbled toward the dim light filtering through iron bars, each step unsteady, claws scraping against the stone floor. In the murky reflection of a puddle, her eyes met her own.

Except it wasn't her.

The creature staring back was monstrous, black fur bristling with a primal savagery that felt sickeningly familiar. She had seen this beast before the same one in the Ouroboros chamber. Now, it wasn't a reflection. It was her.

Trapped.

A strangled whine escaped her throat as she turned her head to the shadows, desperately searching for the glowing sigils of magic, for any clue as to what had been done to her. The silence of the dungeon pressed in, suffocating. She was alone, her mind fractured between human thoughts and primal instincts clawing their way to the surface.

Feyre's heart pounded, each beat louder, faster, as the crushing weight of her reality sank in. She was no longer Feyre Archeron, High Lady of the Night Court. She was something else now. Something that could be hunted, caged, and broken.

And she had no idea how to escape.