The Draven archives were never silent. The faint hum of data crystals, the flickering of old holographic records, and the whispers of preserved parchments created a kind of living heartbeat within the chamber. Astra stood alone inside, the pale glow of the screens painting her face in soft light.
She hadn't told Kaelen, not even hinted at what gnawed inside her since the video call with Avni. Instead, she'd buried herself here, under the pretense of reviewing expedition data. But this was no mission report. Tonight, she hunted something personal, something that had unsettled her to her very core.
Her slender fingers trailed across the shelves, pulling loose a bundle of aged documents Kaelen's father had once collected. The Dravens were archivists of their own lineage, keepers of stories that stretched far beyond borders.
"Come on," she murmured, scanning through yellowed sheets and data drives. "If there's a reason… it has to be here."
Page after page yielded nothing but routine histories, battle records, and genealogies. And then—her breath caught.
Tucked between reports was a fragile sketch, its edges worn, almost forgotten. Astra froze as her eyes fell upon the drawing.
It was of a little girl. Barefoot, hair loose, a shy smile sketched with delicate precision. The likeness was undeniable—it was her. Not just similar, not just familiar. It was her, exactly as she remembered herself at six years old, before the training, before the guild, before the name Draven had ever been hers.
Her knees weakened, and she sank into a chair, the paper trembling in her hands. "This… this isn't possible."
The sketch was dated years before the Dravens had ever taken her in. Scrawled at the corner was a name: Aria.
Astra's chest tightened, her breaths short and uneven. The word seemed to claw at the locked corners of her memory, stirring flashes she had long buried. A woman's warm voice calling out. A hand holding hers as they ran through a sunlit courtyard. Laughter. And then… silence.
Her vision blurred, and she pressed the sketch against her chest as if it might steady her pounding heart. "Why is this here? Why would they have this?"
For a long moment, the chamber seemed to spin, and she couldn't move. Every instinct screamed to deny it, to shove the paper back into the archives and pretend she had never seen it. But another voice—quieter, older, and far more insistent—whispered that this was the truth she had been running from.
The memory of Avni's face surged into her mind again. That inexplicable pull, the warmth that had struck her like a thunderclap during the call.
Her hand shook as she whispered, "Avni… who are you to me?"
Astra closed her eyes, struggling to breathe, clutching the sketch until it crumpled slightly at the edges. She had always believed herself wholly of the Dravens, forged by their training, given a purpose by their name. Yet here was proof—a thread binding her to something far older, far deeper.
And the name at the bottom of the page—Aria—echoed like a bell in her mind, too sharp, too familiar to ignore.
She rose shakily to her feet, forcing herself to slide the sketch into her cloak. This was no longer just about missions or alliances. This was about her.
Her secret search had uncovered something far more dangerous than she had imagined.
As she left the archives, Astra whispered to the shadows:
"If this is true… then I am not who I thought I was."
The silence that followed her was heavy, and for the first time in years, Astra felt afraid—not of enemies, but of the truth.