It started with a letter.
No seal. No courier. Just parchment, folded and placed on my pillow as if it belonged there—as if it had always been there.
I recognized the handwriting instantly.
Isolde Vaylen.
Except… she had been dead for over 300 years.
The letter read:
> "You have done what I could not. You've opened the Vault without letting it devour you. But the Vault is not singular. We built more than one. And not all remained sealed."
"If you would finish what I began, go to the Hollow Spire. Beneath its roots lies the Second Vault. And there, the first true heir waits—undisturbed… and untouched by time."
"Do not trust them."
I read it three times before I whispered, "Them?"
---
By midmorning, I had gathered Kael and Elyra in the council chamber now cleared of velvet corruption. Camden, ever tired but never surprised, stood nearby with a map already unrolled.
"The Hollow Spire," he muttered, brushing dust from the old chart. "Abandoned centuries ago. Used to be a monastery—then a prison—then swallowed by the forest."
"And what lies beneath?" Elyra asked.
Camden tapped the ink-stained parchment. "Whatever it is… it was warded by the same magic that guarded the Vault."
"Another Vault?" Kael asked.
"Or worse," I said. "A failed one."
---
By twilight, we rode west.
No banners. No trumpets.
Just three heirs to fire, frost, and flame, bound by legacy and heading toward a ruin spoken of only in nightmares.
---
We arrived at the Hollow Spire on the second night.
It wasn't a spire anymore. It was a ruin. Half-buried. Half-consumed by trees with bark like blackened bone.
The glyphs on the broken archways pulsed faintly in Elyra's presence.
"This place feels wrong," she whispered. "Like it remembers war."
Kael drew his sword. "Then we're in the right place."
We descended into the crypt—this one colder, quieter, less alive than the Vault Temple had been. And at the heart of it…
A throne.
Shaped from obsidian and pale roots. And on it sat a figure wrapped in crimson robes—face covered, motionless.
"Is that—" Elyra began.
They stirred.
And spoke.
> "So. You're the ones who cracked the First."
"Tell me—do you rule it? Or does it rule you?"
Kael stepped forward, blade half-raised. "Who are you?"
The figure rose, slowly, with the grace of something both regal and ancient.
They pulled back their hood.
Their face… mirrored mine.
A perfect copy. Younger. Colder.
"I am the twin the line forgot."
"I am the Second Heir of the Flame."
"And I was never meant to sleep."
---
The chamber shook.
Glyphs lit across the walls like veins in a beating heart.
Camden, watching through a scrying mirror from the capital, whispered to himself:
> "Gods save us. It's not a second Vault. It's a second legacy."
Back in the crypt, the twin smiled at me.
"You're fire, Seraphina Vale. But I am flame perfected."
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