The temple's breath had changed.
The runes glowed dimmer now, flickering like candlelight in a storm. Serelith walked its ancient halls with the Codex burning low on her skin, each step echoing with quiet knowing—like the stones themselves remembered her.
And every night, the dreams grew heavier.
Not visions, but warnings.
She stood in a thousand veils of smoke, her own voice speaking to her from distant corridors. She saw the Hollow Queen not as a tyrant, but as a guardian. She saw gods crying over broken cities. She saw herself—eyes blazing, mouth open in a scream that unmade the world.
But worst of all, she saw Faelan, lying in a pool of starlit blood, his eyes still open, reaching for her name.
---
She didn't tell him about that part.
Instead, she trained harder. She forced the Codex into her blood, into her voice, her hands. She summoned light from shadow. Fire from stillness.
Faelan watched with growing unease.
"You're forcing it," he said one morning, as a spell crackled and shattered in her grip. "The Codex is part of you—but not your servant."
Serelith's face was pale with sweat. "Then what is it? A curse? A leash?"
"No." He stepped closer, gentler now. "It's memory, Serelith. It's choice. It only shows you what could be. Not what must."
Her lips trembled. "But what if I become what she saw? What if I become like her?"
Faelan held her gaze. "Then I'll remind you of who you were. Who you are."
She looked away.
"I saw a city fall, Faelan. Because of me. I saw gods weep."
"Then we change the story."
---
That night, the veil between realms thinned again.
But this time, Serelith did not enter a dream.
She entered a memory not her own.
She walked through a place scorched and ruined. Pillars lay broken, the ground stained with ash and gold. Above her, a tear in the sky flickered—bleeding color, sound, truth.
And at the center of it all stood a woman in shadow.
The Hollow Queen—before the crown. Before the fall.
She turned slowly.
> "I remember you," she whispered. "Even before you were born."
"I tried to save them, Serelith. I tried to stop the gods. But I failed. And when they chained me, they called me mad."
"You carry the Codex now. They'll use you. Like they used me."
Serelith's throat closed.
"You were never trying to destroy the world," she whispered. "You were trying to protect it."
> "Yes," the queen said. "And in the end, it cost me everything."
"They will lie to you, child of memory. The gods, the courts. Even the Codex."
"But the truth is simple: you were made to rewrite the ending."
Serelith blinked—and the memory vanished.
---
She awoke with a scream caught in her chest.
Faelan was already there, sword at his side.
"What did you see?" he asked.
Serelith stared at the ceiling, heart pounding.
"I saw the world before the fall. I saw the Queen... before she became what she is."
Faelan tensed. "Don't believe her, Serelith. She manipulates. She infects."
"I don't know what to believe anymore," she whispered.
Faelan touched her shoulder gently. "Then believe in what you are. Not what they say you'll become."
Serelith closed her eyes.
But in her mind, the Hollow Queen's words lingered like smoke.
> "You were made to rewrite the ending."
And for the first time, Serelith wondered:
What if that meant burning down the beginning?