I woke to the scent of burnt wax and dried sage.
The light filtering through the chamber windows was dim, barely brushing the polished floor in golden slivers. I wasn't in my room. The walls were stone, old, lined with scrolls and thick velvet curtains to mute the sound.
Camden stood at the far end, arms crossed, reading from a worn folio. Beside me, Elira sat with a damp cloth pressed gently to my forehead.
"You're awake," she said, relief breaking through her usual poise.
I tried to sit up. Pain lanced through my spine like lightning through iron.
"Elira—why are you—"
"I insisted," she said. "Dahlia carried you out of the cathedral after the bells. Barely breathing. She refused to say what happened."
I glanced down at my arms. The glyphs were gone—but a faint silver tracing remained under my skin, like scars the light couldn't reach.
Camden approached, closing the folio.
"You triggered the Vault," he said. "Fully. That kind of magic hasn't been touched in centuries."
"And yet," I rasped, "I'm still breathing."
"For now," he muttered. "But your bloodline seal is active. And that means the Vault will begin... calling."
I frowned. "Calling how?"
He pulled a scroll from his pocket, unraveled it. The ink was smeared—but I recognized the symbols. The same ones etched in the tome at the crypt's heart.
"Dreams. Visions. Fractures in memory. It'll start slowly—names, images, maybe feelings that aren't yours."
"So I'm going mad," I said. "But usefully."
Camden didn't laugh.
"Elira," I said softly, "thank you for staying."
She bit her lip. "I'm not leaving again. Not unless you send me."
---
That night, sleep came like a tide—slow and swallowing.
And the Vault whispered.
> Rosen Ashborne.
Knight of the Last Flame.
He did not die. He fled.
Isolde Vaylen.
Your grandmother's grandmother.
The first to bind the Madness. The first to break it.
> You are not the last.
I woke gasping, clutching my chest.
They weren't just dreams.
They were memories. Not mine. But mine now.
---
Across the palace, Prince Kael met in secret with Lord Dren Halvors—a minor noble from the outer coast who should have died with his bloodline during the Scarlet Purge.
Instead, he stood alive, robed in plain traveling garb, his sigil carefully hidden.
"My house served the First Queen," Dren said. "Until it served truth. And for that, we were erased."
"Why come to me now?" Kael asked.
"Because we've seen your shift. And we believe you're not blind like your father. Or bound like your brother."
Dren slid a sealed scroll across the table.
"Our ancestors kept records. The Pact. The Cover-Up. The names. We've waited three generations to show them to someone who might undo the rot."
Kael opened the scroll. Read. Paused.
And whispered, "Gods help us all."
---
Back in my chamber, the names still echoed in my ears.
Rosen Ashborne.
Isolde Vaylen.
I reached for my diary—no longer for plans and observations, but for what was now becoming a record of revelations.
I began to write.
> If the Vault holds memory, and memory holds power, then I must become its keeper. Not its prisoner.
> The kingdom is built on bones no one mourned.
> If I must burn to unearth the truth…
> Then let the fire begin here.
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