Chapter 11
The first light of dawn bled across the northern sky, pale and raw like a wound too fresh to heal. Dravencourt's high towers cast long shadows, their silhouettes jagged and still.
Elira stood alone in the frost-covered courtyard.
Her cloak fluttered around her legs. Her eyes were fixed on nothing—but the world around her trembled. The air pulsed faintly, as if the earth itself held its breath.
Kael watched her from the archway, unmoving. He had woken to the sudden silence of the manor—too quiet. Not even the wind stirred. The guards were alert. But everyone… felt it.
A pressure. A weight in the air.
Then he saw her. And he knew.
The seal was breaking.
Her fingertips shimmered faintly with an eerie silver-blue light. Barely noticeable—except to those who understood the impossible.
Kael approached slowly, his boots crunching softly over thin ice. "What happened at the tower?"
She didn't look at him. Her voice was low. "He told me I was created. That I was never meant to live… only to hold something greater. Something cursed."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Did he touch you?"
She shook her head. "Words are sharper than blades. And he left me with enough wounds."
He stepped closer. "Then you feel it, don't you? What's waking inside you?"
Elira's breath misted in the cold air. "It's not just magic. It's something older. Something… watching."
Kael's expression hardened. "You shouldn't be alone."
"I am alone," she said. "Even when I'm with you."
He said nothing for a long moment.
Then, she turned to him—her eyes glowing faintly, barely noticeable, but unnatural. There was something in them that hadn't been there before. A sharpness. A flicker of something not human.
"I remembered something last night," she whispered. "Just for a second. A voice. It said… 'You are the gate.'"
Kael's jaw tightened. "You weren't the only one created in that ritual. You were the vessel, yes. But something else was called. Something meant to come through you."
"What was it?" she asked.
"I don't know yet," Kael admitted. "But I know this—it still wants in. And the more your memories return, the more that seal crumbles."
Her fingers flexed, and a spark jumped between them—silver and black.
She looked down at her hands. "How do I stop it?"
"You don't," Kael said. "You learn to control it. Or it controls you."
A silence fell between them.
Then, without warning, a piercing crack echoed through the sky. A raven fell from the clouds, its wings engulfed in smoke before it hit the ground. Dead.
Kael's head snapped toward the sky.
"Someone's watching us," he muttered.
A wind surged through the courtyard.
And a single word formed in the air, written in frost across the stones at Elira's feet.
"Awaken."
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 12: The Masked Priest of Emberfall
A letter arrives bearing an unknown seal, inviting Elira to a long-forgotten temple buried beneath the Emberfall mountains. There, a masked priest claims to know the full truth of her origin…
But what she finds beneath the temple isn't a priest.
It's a grave.