The Ash Circle breathed like a living thing — walls soaked in memory, air heavy with whispers that didn't belong to now.
Elira moved through the dim halls long after nightfall, candle in hand, heart aching with questions she didn't know how to ask aloud.
"Serelune."
She whispered it again, just to hear it. It felt wrong on her tongue—and too familiar.
Where had the name come from?
She couldn't remember anyone saying it… but she knew it meant something. Her dreams had sharpened ever since hearing it, and every glyph she passed now pulsed faintly when she walked by.
—
In the Archive Sanctum, beneath a broken stair she once feared as a child, Elira found the door her mother always kept locked.
It took blood to open it.
Her own.
Inside, the air was dead and cold. Dust hung unmoving. Shelves bowed with books bound in iron, some in skin. One scroll remained unburned in the center, its title torn off, its wax seal long broken.
Elira unfurled it with trembling fingers.
Most of the script had faded, but one line—scrawled sideways in a darker hand—remained:
"The serelune shall shatter time to bind the flame. One seal is false. One memory forbidden. The rest will burn in her name."
She stared at the scroll, mind spinning.
Serelune wasn't just a name.
It was a title, maybe. A fate.
Or worse—hers.
And then the torch behind her flickered, and for a breath, she saw someone in the mirror glass of a nearby cabinet—her, but not. Pale-robed, glyph-marked, hair the color of winter.
And smiling.
—
Elsewhere…
Caelum stood on the ridge overlooking the Daggerdeep Cleft.
Vireya beside him, arms folded. "She's moving faster than expected."
"She always does," Caelum murmured.
"She's close to the name."
"I know."
Vireya glanced at him. "You could stop this. One word from you, and it all ends before the fifth opens."
"She chose to forget," he said. "I won't steal that choice again."
He turned from the wind, his voice low.
"But if the Court reaches the fifth seal before she remembers… it won't be her fate they burn."
—
*Back in the Ash Circle*
Elira left the scroll in place. She didn't take it. Couldn't. It felt wrong — like touching it too long would make it real.
She returned to the surface as dawn broke grey over the stone.
Tovin waited at the garden gate, sleepy-eyed.
"I saw her again," he said quietly. "The girl with your face."
Elira knelt. "What did she do?"
"She told me your name."
Elira's breath caught. "What name?"
Tovin frowned. "But I forgot it. She said I'd forget. 'Til it's time."
He reached into his pocket, then handed her a small stone carved with a symbol she didn't recognize — not a known seal, not a glyph from any archive.
But it was shaped like a key.
And it pulsed warm in her hand.