The square looked different at night.
Not just because of the lanterns—though they still floated like drifting prayers above us—but because of how the people moved. How they looked at one another. Earlier, there had been celebration. Now, there was expectation. A hush beneath the talking. A tightening of air.
I felt it the way I always felt things—through skin, breath, shift. The story was leaning forward.
And we were walking straight into its teeth.
"They're watching," I said.
Antic, beside me, didn't ask who. He never did when it mattered.
"Reckon that's what makes it a proper entrance," he muttered. "If someone ain't whisperin' or swoonin' in a corner, we're not doin' it right."
Dolly hummed, twirling her parasol—still open despite the night air. "They're trying to guess what part we play. Lovers, spies, heroes, traitors. They can't tell yet. That makes us dangerous."
Grin kept pace in silence. His cloak moved like smoke around him, steps slow, patient. I could feel the way he anchored the group without trying. Like an old tree in a shifting grove.
We passed under the marble arch into the Council Hall.
It was built like a temple: round walls, high dome, everything echoing like memory. Torches burned blue in sconces. The smell of cedar and spell-oil clung to the air. Stone steps led down into the hollowed center, where a circle of chairs faced inward—each carved with a different symbol.
Twelve were filled.
The thirteenth sat empty.
And in its place, Elara stood.
She wore silver now—long sleeves, high collar, braided hair tight against her scalp like armor. She looked every inch the heir she was supposed to be. Except for the eyes.
The eyes were still grieving.
"My honored guests," she said as we approached. Her voice filled the space like rain against stone. "You've been summoned to hear the matter of Orion's return. And to speak what the roots have whispered to you."
The council murmured softly. One of them—a woman with antler-shaped earrings—tilted her head toward me.
"She is the Nullseer," she said. "Is she not?"
Elara nodded. "She is."
"And yet she does not speak first?"
Elara's gaze flicked to me. "She speaks when she chooses. Not when summoned."
There was a beat of silence. I stepped forward, slow. Felt the room turn toward me like petals to sun.
I didn't bow.
I didn't curtsey.
I said, "The roots say nothing yet. They are waiting."
A ripple moved through the council.
Antic chuckled under his breath. "That's my girl."
I ignored the heat that climbed up my neck.
Elara gestured—and from a side archway, he entered.
Orion.
He looked... wrong here.
Not because he was messy—he wasn't. His cloak had been exchanged for a formal tunic, dark with silver trim. His hair, damp and tied back. He stood tall. Composed.
But something about him still shimmered at the edges. Like he wasn't made of the same matter we were. Like the world kept trying to blur his outline.
He didn't flinch as all twelve members of the council turned toward him.
"I do not come as an enemy," he said. "But the roots have been strangled. And someone must name the blade."
The words struck something in me.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The kind that lives under your skin and waits to wake up.
Dolly moved slightly in front of me—protective, but not obvious.
Grin's hand hovered at his belt.
Antic didn't move. But I felt him leaning. Just a little. Like he was ready to place himself between me and whatever might go wrong.
Orion saw it. All of it.
And when his eyes met mine, he said: "Nullseer. You've walked the breathpaths. You know."
"I don't," I said truthfully. "Not yet."
"But you will."
That wasn't a question. Or a challenge.
It was a promise.
Elara cleared her throat—tight. "We are not here for riddles. We're here for clarity."
Orion didn't blink. "Then ask your seer. Let her name what you will not."
The room turned again.
Twelve pairs of eyes.
One story.
And me.
I stepped forward.
The roots didn't speak.
But my blood did.
I turned toward Elara and said, "You love him."
She flinched. A ripple again.
I turned toward Orion. "But you left. And not just the village. You left the story."
He didn't deny it.
"I walked out," he said. "Because I knew it wasn't mine. It was hers."
The council murmured. One man stood. "You would forsake your birthright?"
Orion's eyes were moons behind clouds.
"I would rewrite it."
And the world shifted.
Not literally.
Not yet.
But I felt it.
The kind of shift that only comes when a story finds its fracture.
Dolly whispered behind me, "Oh, love. That was the wrong answer to give a council of tradition-bound elders."
Antic muttered, "Or the right one. If we're here to break something open."
Elara looked between us. At Orion. At me.
And then she said, very quietly:
"The festival ends tomorrow."
And we all knew what that meant.
Whatever this was—whatever story we'd been stitched into—it would climax at dusk.
And something—no, someone—would not survive it
The air inside the Council Hall pressed inward, thick with expectation and spellwork. Somewhere in the stone, old magic listened—not active, not awake, but waiting. The kind of waiting that thrums beneath your ribs like a name you haven't spoken in years.
We left that room not with answers, but with echoes. And dusk was already beginning to bleed into the sky.
⸻
Back outside, the square had changed again.
Banners had been raised. Incense burned in crooked spirals from temple doors and open windows. The Breaths sang low—not words, but tones that threaded through the crowd like memory. The Festival of Reconciliation was in motion. But it didn't feel like celebration.
It felt like a countdown.
We moved through the crowd as a unit, like shadows stitched to one another by fate. Antic at my side, one hand grazing the small of my back now and then—casual, but grounding. Grin just behind, unreadable. Dolly stalked a few paces ahead, lips tight, parasol tucked beneath her arm like a sheathed blade.
Something was unraveling. Not quickly, but like a seam being pulled stitch by stitch.
"What happens at the end of the festival?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"Someone gets crowned," Dolly replied, not looking back. "Or killed. Or both. Depending on how the ancestors are feeling."
"Charming tradition."
Grin said nothing.
Antic let out a slow breath beside me. "It's like one of those old ballads. Everyone dances, drinks, pretends they aren't bein' watched by ghosts."
"Are they?"
"Oh, definitely. Probably elbowin' each other right now, makin' bets."
"And us?"
He gave me a sideways look. "We're the twist."
That wasn't comforting.
⸻
By nightfall, the festival's rhythm had shifted again.
Gone was the parade of painted children and floating lanterns. In their place: cloaked figures by firelight, masked dancers weaving through smoke, music that pulsed like heartbeat and thunder. People whispered prayers and curses alike. They watched each other the way animals do—carefully. Suspiciously.
There was no feast, but offerings glowed along the edges of the square: bowls of honey, knives wrapped in silk, locks of hair braided around candle stems. Magic coiled in the open. It wasn't hiding anymore.
And the thirteenth chair remained empty.
Antic leaned close, breath brushing my ear. "They're waitin' for the story to pick someone."
"They think it's me."
"They think it's whoever survives the next act."
He said it lightly, but his fingers found mine. Interlaced. Warm. A silent promise in the noise.
That's when the firelight flared.
The Council emerged from the Hall in ceremonial robes. Elara led them, her silver gown now streaked with indigo, shoulders bare, hair adorned with iron leaves. Behind her—Orion. Unbound. Unafraid.
People parted for them like smoke before wind.
They stopped at the center.
And Elara lifted her hands.
"Tonight," she said, her voice steady, "we offer the breath of our lineage to the roots. We speak truth not for comfort—but for continuity."
A murmur. Then stillness.
She turned toward me.
"Nullseer. Come."
My feet moved before I realized it.
I felt everyone's eyes. I felt the Breaths hum harder, threads tightening. The square had become a stage. The story had narrowed to its center.
And I was walking straight into its teeth.
⸻
The stone beneath my feet pulsed—not literally, not in the way magic sometimes likes to show off. This was deeper. Older. Like walking on breath that had congealed into memory. I stepped into the circle, and time folded in.
Elara stood like a statue carved by grief and duty. Orion, beside her, had the strange stillness of someone who'd already seen the ending and wasn't sure if he deserved it.
I stood between them.
And the council waited.
"The Breaths demand choice," Elara said. Her voice did not shake. "Two heirs. One chair. Nullseer, you will witness."
Dolly made a strangled sound behind her teeth. Antic shifted beside me, but didn't speak. Even he knew that the story had slipped its leash.
Grin's voice carried from the shadows. "The Breaths don't demand. They reveal."
Elara ignored him. "Tonight, Evergreena must choose who will carry its truth forward. Its songs. Its name."
"And if it doesn't want either of them?" I asked.
Elara looked at me then. Really looked. Not like I was a threat, or an asset. But like I was a variable she'd tried too hard to ignore.
"If the Breaths reject us," she said, "they'll pick someone else."
Her gaze flicked down. To the stone beneath our feet.
To the roots below.
My stomach dropped.
"You mean me."
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
⸻
A wind stirred, smelling of sap and smoke.
The council circled us, arms outstretched. Magic rose—not a single burst, but a lattice, invisible to most, shining through the air in shifting patterns. I could see it. I always could. Threads of memory woven into spell-forms. Old stories told through motion and breath.
Orion stepped forward. His voice was quiet but clear.
"I do not claim the right to lead," he said. "But I claim the truth of who I am. I left. I changed. And the forest changed with me."
He reached out—not to Elara, not to the council—but to the stone.
To the rootlines hidden below.
"I offer what I am," he said. "No more. No less."
Magic rippled.
Elara stepped forward next.
"I have never left," she said. "I carried every law, every rite, every loss. I was made to bear them. But I do not mistake duty for destiny."
She knelt, and for the first time, I saw her break.
"I offer what I became. Even if it isn't enough."
And then… nothing.
No light. No roar. No divine thunder.
Just breath.
Stillness.
Waiting.
Until the roots began to glow.
Not under Orion.
Not under Elara.
But under me.
⸻
I didn't move.
Couldn't.
The glow wasn't showy. It was soft. Thread-thin lines of gold stretching outward from my boots, like veins in glass. The Breaths weren't choosing loudly. They were choosing with intent.
"No," I said, but my voice was paper.
Elara didn't speak.
Orion just watched.
And then Antic whispered, right behind me, "Course they chose you, No Eyes."
"I don't want this."
"You never did. That's why it's you."
I turned, finally, and found him there—smiling like he was proud and terrified at once.
"But I'm not... anything," I said.
He stepped closer. "You're the one who saw through the curse. The one who made liars weep and ghosts remember how to sing. You're the one who kissed me in a forest of falling blossoms and made me forget my own name for a second."
I flushed. "That was your fault."
"Probably. Still counts."
He took my hands.
"The story picked you because you don't want the throne. Because you've been carrying Evergreena in your spine this whole time and didn't even know it."
And then, softly:
"Because you make even broken things feel like they're worth healing."
The roots flared.
The council gasped.
And somewhere behind them, the thirteenth chair—long empty, long cursed—began to bloom.
A single white flower unfurled on its seat.
Waiting
I didn't move.
The flower waited.
So did everyone else.
Antic's hands were still wrapped around mine, his thumbs brushing slow arcs against my skin. I didn't know if it was meant to ground me or him. Maybe both.
"Go on," he said gently. "Before Dolly steals the flower and turns it into a crown."
Behind us, Dolly whispered, "Don't tempt me."
Grin made a sound like the ghost of a laugh.
But I couldn't walk forward.
Not yet.
Because to sit in that chair wasn't just a choice—it was a rewriting. Of everything. Of who I'd been. Of who I thought I'd get to be.
And the Breaths were watching.
Not judging. Just… waiting. Like roots in winter. Like breath before the word.
I took a step.
And another.
And then I was in front of it.
The thirteenth chair.
Up close, it was less grand than I'd expected. Less carved legend and more weathered presence. The kind of seat someone could sit in for hours, listening. The kind of throne that invited rather than commanded.
The white flower on its seat glowed faintly, petals edged in silver.
I reached down.
Touched it.
And memory hit.
Not mine.
Everyone's.
The Breaths poured it in. The first sapling ever grown. The wars. The unions. The blood spilled between families and the songs that tried to stitch the wounds. I saw hands that shaped peace. Tongues that spoke lies and truths alike. Lovers who met in secret. Enemies who wept together in old age.
And I saw her.
The last Nullseer.
She had my mouth.
My stubbornness.
And her final act had been not prophecy, but mercy.
She had chosen to leave the story unfinished.
So someone else could write the rest.
I gasped, blinking as the visions ebbed. My knees shook.
Antic was still there. At my side. His eyes wide, mouth parted like he wanted to say something stupid and knew he shouldn't.
I looked back at the chair.
And I sat.
The moment I did, the ground hummed.
Roots lit up beneath the Council Hall in wide, spiraling rings. The torches dimmed, and overhead, the lanterns outside flared bright—each one catching with golden fire like stars dropping one by one into the dome.
The council stood.
Every. Single. One.
Even the doubters.
Even the ones who had whispered Nullseer like it meant danger.
Elara stepped forward. Her voice cracked. "So be it."
Orion followed, but this time he bowed.
Not out of obedience.
But recognition.
He met my eyes. "Finish the story."
The Breaths surged.
Magic arced up my spine—not painful, not overwhelming. Just… real.
For the first time, I could feel every name that had ever been spoken in Evergreena.
And they weren't heavy.
They were roots.
And I was the soil.
Antic leaned in, voice low. "You realize this means I have to behave now."
I looked at him. And smiled.
"No," I said. "You just have to behave publicly."
His grin cracked like dawn.
The flower in my lap pulsed once, then dissolved into mist.
And the forest, for the first time in generations, felt whole.