Chapter 5: The Memory That Bled Through
Rain whispered against the windows, the sound weaving through the quiet like a lullaby long forgotten. Professor Ardyn sat hunched over his desk, shoulders stiff, eyes dimly lit by the candle burning low beside him.
The room smelled faintly of parchment and ash. Scrolls, sealed letters, and ancient tomes crowded the surface before him, yet his gaze was fixed on one folded document that had slipped loose from an old book, the Treaty of Peace between Elarion and Rhavenne.
He rubbed at his temple, exhaustion dulling his focus. The candlelight glinted off the silver cuffs at his wrists. On them was carved the head of a wolf, its eyes inlaid with tiny sapphires. A family relic, though he could never remember acquiring it.
His thumb traced the engraving absently. It felt cold… familiar. Too familiar. A flicker of recognition stirred in him, the unshaped, nameless emotion mirrored the same cold weight that always followed her name.
Aurelia.
Her face flickered in his thoughts. Those distant, golden-hazel eyes during class that morning. Something in them had unsettled him. Not sorrow, not fear, but recognition. He had felt it too, an inexplicable sense that her silence was an echo of something he should already understand.
He exhaled sharply and looked back at the treaty. "Focus," he muttered. "You're imagining things."
But as he adjusted the parchment, his finger caught the edge of the page. A shallow cut split his skin, a bead of blood welling and dripping onto the treaty.
The ink beneath it blurred.
Steel clashing.
Rain.
Mud beneath his boots.
He was no longer in his study. The candlelight was gone, replaced by a storm that howled across the hills. His sword flashed, his breath burned, and the air reeked of smoke and iron.
He fought through it, slashing, parrying, surviving. The attackers came in waves, their insignias smeared by rain. He moved with instinct his sword a blur of silver. One fell. Another. The next came from behind; he turned too late, the blade biting into his shoulder. Pain flared white-hot. Still, he gritted his teeth, pressing on through forest and mud, driven by duty. until dawn broke pale over the towers of Elarion.
When the gates opened, he barely stood. His body tilted, and voices faded. The guards shouted his name.
"Get him to the healers' wing!"
The world blurred into corridors of marble and light. Voices echoed urgent, distant until one rose above the rest.
"Bring him here."
Then, light.
Warmth.
The scent of lavender.
Someone's hands pressed gently against his wound. "You're safe," a voice whispered, firm yet soft. Everything else dissolved into the sound of her voice and the calm it carried, cutting through the pain like sun through mist.
He tried to open his eyes, to see who spoke. With the light blinding him, his vision blurred, then cleared. The first thing he saw were glimmers of gold.
Eyes.
Her eyes.
He couldn't make out her face, only those eyes, steady, alive, endless. They held something that made the ache in his shoulder fade beneath a sharper, sweeter pain he couldn't name.
He didn't know her, yet he did. Not by memory, by instinct. A strange, nameless certainty settled in his chest, as though he had crossed the ends of the earth to find this single moment.
She leaned closer, whispering something he couldn't quite hear. Her fingers brushed his temple, featherlight. His heart stuttered.
"You shouldn't move," she whispered again. Her tone was soft, but her hands didn't tremble. Her touch steadied the world.
He wanted to ask her name, to thank her, to say something, but his throat betrayed him. All he could do was watch, memorizing the sound of her breath, the faint rhythm of her pulse beneath her wrist as she worked.
And for the briefest moment before the darkness returned, he knew, without knowing how, that his life had just changed.
And just as suddenly, it was gone.
The study returned. The fire was out. His desk was before him again his blood still staining the treaty.
Ardyn sat motionless, chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven breaths. His heart thundered. The image lingered, the eyes, the warmth, the scent and he couldn't tell if it was memory or madness.
He forced himself to look back at the parchment.
The words seemed clearer now, as if the ink itself was mocking him:
"By the accord of peace, Prince Lysander of Rhavenne shall wed Princess Lyra Elarin of Elarion."
Something inside him recoiled.
His pulse roared in his ears. The name Lyra sat like ash on his tongue. He didn't know why, but the sight of his name beside hers made his stomach twist, as if he were betraying someone, someone whose face he couldn't remember.
And then, unbidden, a name surfaced.
Aurelia.
He froze.
Why her?
He hadn't spoken it aloud. He hadn't even thought of her in that way. Yet the moment her name brushed his mind, something deep within him stirred, a strange ache that felt too personal to belong to the present.
"No…" he whispered, gripping the edge of his desk until his knuckles whitened. "This is absurd."
He folded the treaty sharply, the motion too fast, too deliberate, like someone slamming a door shut on something dangerous. He shoved it back into the ancient book and forced it closed, the sound echoing through the room like a final word.
The candle sputtered, casting shadows across his face. He sank back into his chair, eyes fixed on the flame's dying glow, trying to steady his breathing.
His mind told him it was exhaustion. A trick of overwork and old ink.
But his chest told a different story, one that whispered in a language he couldn't remember yet somehow felt written into his bones.
Outside, the rain eased into silence. And within that silence, Lysander sat unmoving. The moonlight caught on the silver wolf, and for an instant, its eyes seemed to gleam ; alive, watching, unnoticed.
Aurelia's name lingered.
And for the first time in years, Lysander felt… unmoored.