The temple trembled in the night.
It was not an earthquake or a storm. It was older. Deeper. A whisper beneath stone, like something ancient waking from long slumber.
Serelith felt it in her bones.
She followed the call alone, leaving her chambers in silence, guided only by the pulse of the Codex beneath her skin. It led her beyond the sanctum, beyond even the library where Faelan forbade her to go.
To a door sealed by runes she didn't recognize—but her blood did.
With a whisper of ancient syllables—ones she'd never learned but remembered—the door split open.
A stairway spiraled downward into shadow.
---
The descent was long.
The air grew colder, denser. Dust clung to her lips. Her light flickered, shadows pressing close. But the Codex urged her on.
And at the bottom, she found it:
A forgotten chamber, untouched for centuries.
Its walls shimmered with layered glyphs, some etched in gold, others in blood. A great stone dais rose at the center, and on it—floating, humming—was a sphere of liquid darkness, shaped like a heart.
The Codex in her skin pulsed wildly.
This was its origin.
Not the first Codex—but the core of them all. The seed of memory. The first memory ever torn from time.
And as she approached, her mind opened—
---
She saw a world before gods.
Before courts. Before the veil.
A world of harmony and raw magic, where beings moved like music, not flesh. From their unity came the Codex: a living record of all that was, all that might be.
But then the gods came. They were not born—they emerged. Forces of will, of hunger, of fear.
And they feared the Codex.
So they split it, scattered it, sealed it.
And cursed those born with its mark.
---
Serelith stumbled back, breath ragged.
This power—it wasn't divine.
It was truth.
She had not been chosen by the gods.
She had been targeted.
---
Above, in the flickering halls of the temple, Faelan faced a different storm.
A raven had come—black as pitch, eyes glowing silver.
It bore the seal of the Hollow Court.
A summons.
A warning.
A threat.
He burned it without reading.
The Hollow Queen had seen Serelith's awakening. She knew time was unraveling. And she wanted Faelan back—to leash him, to control her.
But he would not return.
Not yet.
He turned from the smoking ashes and drew a blade he had not touched in years: a thin curve of starlight and shadow. A gift from his mother. A promise.
> I will not let them chain her. Not like they did you.
---
When Serelith emerged from the depths, her eyes shimmered like glass catching starlight. The truth sat heavy in her chest—but it steadied her.
Faelan looked up from the blade.
"What did you find?"
"My beginning," she said quietly. "And maybe... your end."