The silence shattered the moment Casamir laid his hand upon the sarcophagus.
No sooner had his fingers touched the stone than something inside him convulsed. The Threads—those strange, flickering sensations he'd only just begun to feel—erupted into chaos. They tore through his chest, flooded his spine, bent his breath into a shape that didn't belong to him. A thousand unseen strings bucked against his will, not to punish—
—but to warn.
But Casamir didn't let go.
He never let go when he should.
Warmth surged up his arm. Not heat—warmth. Living. Ancient. Radiant. Symbols etched along the lid lit from within, veins of violet and gold pulsing in rhythmic light. The crypt glowed faintly around him, as if it remembered sunlight for the first time in centuries.
Behind him, the Hermit stumbled into view.
His face had drained of all color. Not just fear—but something older. Recognition. Grief.
"You fool," the Hermit whispered—not in rage, but sorrow. "You touched it."
Casamir couldn't answer. The world had already begun to shift around him—half-dissolved into dream and memory. Every breath tasted like starlight and ash. The Threads inside him no longer obeyed. They danced to another rhythm now.
And then—
The sarcophagus moved.
⸻
Stone groaned. Ancient seals cracked. A low exhale—too deep to be wind—spilled from the base of the tomb. Not the release of death, but of something older, something held between forgetting and return.
Casamir stepped back, breath caught between awe and dread. The Hermit did not move.
Then the lid began to shift.
A gentle light spilled out. Not blinding. Not sharp. Deep. Like moonlight soaked in memory. It spread across the crypt like an exhaled truth. Dust caught in the air and shimmered like starlit ash. The walls sighed. Glyphs along the far alcoves blinked once and dimmed—like candles bowing before sunrise.
And there she was.
Within the tomb lay a girl.
Rested. Not preserved. Not entombed.
Held.
Unmoving, save the faint rise and fall of breath. The rhythm of someone not lost, but waiting.
Casamir's heart skipped.
She looked no older than him.
Her skin bore the faint shimmer of something he could not quite understand as he was not born of this world. Her hair curled like ash-smoke against her brow. Her robes—woven from silk he didn't recognize—breathed gently with her, stitched with runes too subtle for ink and too alive for thread. Beneath her ribs, a faint scar glowed dimly, pulsing with a rhythm that didn't feel entirely hers.
Something in that glow resonated with the Threads in his spine. His fingertips tingled. Every part of him screamed to step away—
But he did not.
Her eyes fluttered.
Casamir forgot how to breathe.
The Hermit fell to his knees. "No…" he whispered, voice like a cracked leaf in autumn. "Not yet. She was not meant to wake."
The girl gasped.
Not sharply. But deeply. As if drowning had been a long dream, and breath a stranger she'd almost forgotten the name of.
Her eyes opened—silver-gray, unfocused.
She looked past Casamir. Past the Hermit.
As if through time.
Her lips parted.
"Where…"
The Hermit moved instantly. His hand pressed gently to her brow, voice low and unsteady. "You are safe," he said. "Sleep. You are safe."
But she didn't close her eyes.
She blinked slowly.
"I dreamt…" she whispered. "A burning gate. And a lion… falling."
Her voice rasped like wind against frostbitten glass.
Casamir stepped closer, the Threads still humming against his spine. "She's—" he stopped. "She doesn't remember?"
"She mustn't," the Hermit said, not looking up. "Not yet."
⸻
Casamir stepped forward, hand trembling. Not in fear, but recognition. Something in her gaze called to him—not memory, not prophecy.
Resonance.
And for just a moment, he saw himself reflected in her pupils—not as he was now, but as he might become. Firelight behind him. Starlight before him. Her hand in his.
A life not yet lived.
A vow not yet spoken.
And already it ached.
Something had just passed between them.
Not word. Not Thread.
Recognition.
Not from this life—but the memory of something threaded through a thousand almosts.
Casamir blinked, and for the briefest instant, her silver eyes mirrored something more—something vast. A shore without stars. A bell broken in the shape of a crown. Her gaze held it all.
Then it was gone.
Just a girl again.
Wounded. Waking. Cold.
The chamber trembled.
Stone cracked beneath their feet. Glyphs across the sarcophagus flickered—once, twice—then began to dim, as if struggling to remember their purpose.
"She's too weak to walk," Casamir said. "Help me."
The Hermit hesitated. His eyes stayed on her face—searching, haunted.
Then he nodded.
"I'll hold her head. You take her legs. Carefully."
They lifted her.
Too light. Not sick—but unanchored. Her body felt like something still half-asleep. Threads clung to her limbs like mist, casting faint arcs of light behind them. Symbols shimmered, then dissolved.
Casamir's grip steadied. Her fingers caught faintly in the folds of his coat.
"You're all right," he whispered, not sure if he believed it.
Her lips moved.
No words. Just breath.
Her gaze met his—briefly.
Searching.
⸻
Behind them, the corridor split with sudden force. A surge of dust exploded from the archway. Stone screamed.
"The seals are breaking," the Hermit said. "We've seconds. Go."
They ran.
The tomb groaned and collapsed behind them, hurling stale air through the tight corridors. Roots snapped like rope under strain. The light of old glyphs died one by one.
But they ran.
Through narrowing paths. Past symbols Casamir couldn't read. Past a world that didn't want to be seen.
The girl didn't speak again. But her grip didn't loosen. Her breath stayed shallow—but steady.
⸻
When they finally emerged into moonlight, it was like surfacing from drowning.
The stars above shimmered cold and unfamiliar. Patterns twisted overhead like a script only the gods could read.
Casamir dropped to his knees.
Gasping. Shaking.
His hands still hummed with invisible threadwork, threads drawn too taut and still singing from the touch of her.
The Hermit stood behind him. The girl now slept in his arms again—though something in her still watched the sky, even with her eyes closed.
"She will sleep," the Hermit said. "But not as before."
Casamir looked up, voice hoarse. "Who is she?"
The Hermit turned his gaze skyward.
The wind answered first.
A low moan through branches not yet present. A hush that made no promise, only memory.
"She is a kept promise," the Hermit said finally. "And a question the world forgot how to ask."
"But what does that mean?"
The Hermit didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Because overhead, the stars shifted.
Just slightly.
One constellation pulsed and bent—no more than a breath.
But enough.
⸻
Far to the east, in a chamber of prophecy and gold, a mirror cracked.
Beneath the catacombs, the Dreamwatcher sat among mirrors and ash.
His face was veiled. His eyes sewn shut. But still, he saw.
A pool of silverglass cracked beneath him. Not broken by force, but by memory returning where it had been denied.
He did not speak the name.
The name spoke him.
It unwound from his throat like smoke too long contained.
Not shouted. Not prayed.
Mourned.
His hands lifted as if to hold something, someone—
—but they passed through air.
He fell back, breath stolen.
His scribes did not move. They had already forgotten what he said.
But not the mirror.
The mirror remembered.
Its fractures pulsed once.
Twice.
Then stilled.
⸻
And in the boy who carried her from death's silence—
A thought repeated.
Not who is she…
…but why did she wait for me?
And somewhere, very faintly—
a rhythm matched the beat of that question.
A pulse.
A bell's breath.
A promise.
Waiting.