The War Room, Aerenthian Royal Palace
The candle had burned low. A thin vein of wax ran down the bronze candlestick like blood. Shadows curled across the iron map of the realm in the center of the table, casting tiny silhouettes of mountains, valleys, and borders onto the floor like ghostly ink.
Prince Thorian Vexar had not spoken in minutes.
He stood with both hands braced on the edge of the war table, his eyes fixed not on the maps, but on the file that lay unopened before him.
The seal on the folder was cracked.
VESRYN PROJECT – CLASSIFIED BY ROYAL DECREE – UNDER ORDER OF REGENT SELVYN
The script was a style not used since the reign of his grandfather.
Across from him stood Lord Commander Bastian Corven, a man built from silence and scars. The grey in his hair was earned in battle and buried beneath it. He had watched three kings rise and two fall. Now he watched Thorian.
"You knew about this," Thorian said at last, his voice low, almost flat. A blade sheathed in control.
Corven's gaze didn't waver. "I did."
"You served my father. You swore to protect the Crown. And you let this live in its shadow?"
Corven's expression didn't change. "Your Highness, the Vesryn Project was shut down long before your birth. I was not meant to know of it either. But war has a way of unearthing things best left buried."
Thorian finally opened the folder.
What he found was not what he expected.
There were no spells. No diagrams of runes or weapons. No pages soaked in magic.
Just… a sketch.
Rough, but unmistakably precise. A woman in profile.
Strong cheekbones. A high brow. Hair drawn back in tight braids. Cold eyes, set beneath a sharp gaze that did not belong to a lady, but to a tactician. A general.
There, on her hand, was a ring. A black band etched with a serpent coiled through a star.
He had seen that ring before.
Just hours ago—on Aria Valtoria's finger.
The sketch was dated 471 A.E. Forty-three years ago.
Thorian stared at it in silence.
It wasn't possible.
And yet…
"It's her," he said quietly.
"Yes," Corven replied. "We believe she was one of them."
Thorian looked up sharply. "'One of them'?"
Corven's voice dropped like the weight of stone.
"Seven vessels. Seven bloodlines. Seven lives. A single soul passed like a secret—through generations."
"A reincarnation ritual?" Thorian asked, disbelief cracking through his tone.
"Worse," Corven said. "A memory seal. Each new body is born untouched. Blank. But once the seal fractures, the soul recalls everything—every version it has ever been."
Thorian's mouth felt dry. "And Aria?"
"Aria is the seventh," Corven said. "The last."
Meanwhile – Valtoria Manor, Crypt Chamber
Aria Valtoria stood before the open stone chest, a strange, bitter weight pressing against her sternum.
The journal lay in her hands like a whisper from another life. Its cover was cracked leather, the stitching ancient but unmarred. On the first page, her own handwriting stared back at her.
"To the one who remembers:You are the end of us."
She turned the page.
"There were seven. Each of us with the same blood. The same face. The same fire. I was the sixth. I died in the Vashari campaign, blade in hand, name forgotten. You are the last. The soul cannot be passed again. If you are reading this, it means the seal is gone. The memories are coming. You will not be able to stop them."
Aria pressed her hand to her temple. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.
The dreams. The instinct. The languages she'd never learned but understood. The strategies that came as second nature.
She hadn't been lucky.
She'd been prepared.
She had been engineered.
Later That Night – The Palace, Thorian's Private Study
Rain tapped against the windowpanes. The capital slept uneasily beneath a curtain of clouds. Thunder rolled distant across the mountains.
Thorian sat in silence, the Vesryn file open beside him, Aria's letter—creased at the fold—held loosely in his hand.
His reflection in the glass looked like someone older. Someone hunted.
He replayed her words in the crypt.
"Someone in your court will betray you before the season ends."
And now?
Now he believed her.
Because if this was true—if the Crown had sanctioned this kind of soulbinding, if his own mother had known—then he wasn't just sitting on a throne.
He was standing in the middle of a burning map.
Far Below – In the Dungeons of Aerenthia
A cell door opened with a groan. A candle flickered. Guards did not patrol this hall. Most believed it abandoned.
But tonight, a single figure stepped into the dark.
The prisoner did not rise.
But he smiled.
"I was wondering," the man rasped, "when someone would remember."
The figure approached. The candlelight caught on their cloak.
And their ring.
Serpent and star.
He laughed—quiet, cold, reverent.
"The seventh has awakened," he whispered. "Long live the fire."
End of Chapter 5