Mr. Collins' voice continued to drone across the lecture hall, steady as rain, punctuated only by the squeak of a marker on the whiteboard and the occasional cough. I should have been writing, nodding along, pretending I was paying attention to the druids.
Instead, my gaze drifted to the window. The glass was fogged, blurring the world into soft gray smears.
Daydreaming. Again.
I know the look Cassie gives me when I zone out—eyebrows arched, lips pressed, like she's trying to decide if I'm hopeless or just stubborn. She wasn't here today to elbow me back to reality. And maybe that was for the best, because no amount of sharp nudges could stop where my mind went.
I met Cassie in my sophomore year of college. Our first conversation wasn't even supposed to be one. I was just standing in line at the campus coffee shop, half-asleep, clutching my wallet like it might run away.
She glanced at me once and said, totally serious, "Don't get the latte. You're going to spill it in about… six minutes."
I blinked at her, thinking, who even talks like that?
But she was right. Six minutes later, I tripped over my backpack strap and wore the latte all the way back to the library. Cassie just appeared out of nowhere, handing me a wad of napkins like she'd been waiting for the show. "Told you," she said with a grin that made me laugh even though I was dripping caffeine down my shirt.
Most people thought she was strange, with all her little predictions about things that hadn't happened yet. But I got it. Maybe it's because I'm Wiccan, and I've already lived in that space where the unseen mattered. She called herself a seer, and maybe she was joking… but maybe she wasn't. Either way, I liked her instantly.
Back to the library. Back to the forbidden scrolls.
The vivid memory pulsed so strongly that Mr. Collins' voice faded into static, and the classroom dissolved until I found myself once again in the dim aisle, with rain drumming faintly on the roof and the smell of dust sharp enough to sting my throat.
I hadn't been looking for anything dangerous or mystical. Honestly, I was just wandering. Killing time. The older part of the library was practically begging to be explored—crooked shelves, lights that buzzed like angry bees, and enough dust to make you wonder if anyone had been in there since the '20s.
That's when I saw it. Not it, exactly, but a sliver of wood paneling that didn't line up right on the back of a shelf. At first I thought, "Great, secret snack stash." If I were a stressed-out graduate student, this is exactly where I would hide a bag of chips.
Curiosity won. I pressed on it, and the panel shifted with a creak. My stomach gave a weird flip, the way it does when you know you're crossing into "probably not allowed" territory.
Behind it was a narrow hollow stuffed with dust thick enough to choke on. And inside, tucked away like someone meant for it to stay hidden forever, was a scroll. Real parchment, rolled tight, sealed with silver wax.
Then the moment I touched that scroll, the air shifted. The lamps overhead flickered, and shadows stretched and retracted like they were breathing. A low hum filled the room, not loud, but deep enough that I felt it in the hollow of my ribs, like the breath of something ancient stirring awake.
My fingertips left streaks as I dragged it out, the smell of old parchment clinging to my skin. The shelf groaned under my weight, as though it disapproved of what I was doing.
For a second I just stared at it, half-expecting it to crumble into confetti if I breathed too hard.
My brain whispered the sensible thing: Shut the panel. Walk away. Pretend you never saw it.
The seal bore a symbol I'd only ever seen once before—an ouroboros coiled around a crescent moon, its eye a burning star. That memory nagged at me, but the details slipped away like wet sand. My fingers tingled as I brushed the wax. The enchantment was old, layered with wards that tried to push me away, whispering, "Not for you." But curiosity is a dangerous blade. Whoever had hidden it wasn't expecting someone like me to come snooping.
With a sigh of relief, the wax finally cracked under my thumb.
Cold air spilled out, carrying the faintest trace of ozone and something sweeter—like burned honey. For an instant, I swore I heard my name, too faint to be certain, too close to dismiss.
Inside was a prophecy.
The words shimmered, not written in ink but something alive, pulsing faintly with light. The glyphs danced across the parchment like fireflies caught in moonlight, shifting even as my eyes tried to fix them. I didn't so much read it as feel it—each line sliding under my skin, threading itself into my bones, sung directly into my marrow.
It spoke of the Evermore Keeper…
Blood shall bind where gods have severed,
Threads long torn shall weave together.
One cast down shall call the rest,
The keeper wakes, the chosen test.
From shadow's womb, a daughter rises,
Death obeys no crown's disguises.
Tide shall roar and storm shall break,
Wrath of war the world shall quake.
Moonlight guides through crossroads burning,
Seed and root in ash returning.
Seer shall speak what none can see,
Truth unveiled: what's meant to be.
When crowns to embers, thrones undone,
The daughters merge—they weave as one.
No god shall rule, no chain remain,
For Fate reborn shall break the chain.
The scroll pulsed in my hands like it had its own heartbeat so I clutched it tighter to keep from dropping it, breath shallow, my chest too tight. The words wrapped around me, heavy and suffocating, like a memory I'd forgotten but could no longer escape.
Until that final stanza, I had always believed the Evermore Keeper was a single figure—one life fated, one destiny bound. That's what the myths said. What we'd all been taught. But the prophecy spoke of daughters. Of threads weaving together. A keeper not born of one, but of many.
The air in the library pressed heavy against me, the silence so deep I could hear the hammer of my pulse in my ears. I felt it in the hollow space behind my eyes, in the depths of my bones: The Evermore Keeper was more than just a myth.
The prophecy went further. It told of a prison where a keeper was hidden away in a temple carved from obsidian and silence, veiled even from her own memory. The keeper was guarded by a warrior of Ares, forged of war, sculpted from starlight and steel, and then bound by an oath to ensure she never escaped.
But fate has a sense of irony.
For centuries he watched her and in that endless vigil, something impossible happened.
The guardian fell in love.
Not the fleeting kind whispered about at Shakespearean plays, but the kind that could rewrite the stars. He saw her as a soul—lonely, radiant, aching for freedom. And she, in turn, saw the man beneath the mask of duty.
Their love became a secret hymn. And when the time came, he did the unthinkable.
He let her go.
Some say she tricked him. Others say he failed. But the prophecy said the truth:
He chose her over Olympus.
This guardian helped her vanish into the mortal world, where the gods would not follow. For his betrayal, his name was erased, his memory scattered like ash across the stars.
But the keeper remembers.
And now, as the Umbra Ascension stirs once more, the prophecy whispers she will return—not as a prisoner, but as a reckoning.
That was nearly a century ago.
Since then, the gods have searched in secret, terrified of the ones who could end them. The prophecy promised the keeper would return when the Games begin again—when the sun rises on the summer solstice, the first name will be claimed.
And now, I believe the signs are aligning.
The nightmares. The whispers. The invitation.
The Masquerade Ball is more than a tradition. It's a threshold. A veil. A choice.
And I've been invited.
The envelope waits in my satchel, black as midnight, sealed with the same ouroboros sigil. No return address. No explanation. Just my name, written in silver ink that shimmered like starlight.
I haven't told anyone. Not even Shelby. How could I? She'd know by the look on my face. She'd tell me to hand it over to the headmistress, or burn it, or run. But I can't. Something hums in my veins when I touch it, like recognition. Like inevitability.
The prophecy said the keeper would return when the cycle began again.
I blink, and the library fades. The prophecy's words dissolve back into the edges of my memory, leaving only the rain-tapped glass and the steady drone of Mr. Collins' voice.
Someone shifts beside me, and the real world sharpens all at once.
I don't notice the hand reaching until it pokes my back.