The sky above the Ash Circle was the color of damp parchment, heavy and unmoving. Elira moved through the southern wing like a shadow, heart pacing against the noise of silence. In her hand, she held the red parchment—creased now from too many times unfolding it.
She hadn't shown it to Naerina again. Not after last night's warning. Let the lie hold.
But lies had weight, and hers were beginning to crack.
She slipped past the herbarium, down a hallway she hadn't walked since she was a child. The dust there didn't rise; it waited. And at the end—an iron door half-covered by ivy. Her mother's hidden scrying chamber.
The room pulsed faintly with dormant magic.
Candles, long melted to knobs, still lined the stone altar. And etched into the floor, nearly invisible, was a glyph—one she didn't recognize, until she pulled out the parchment.
The shapes matched. Not exactly. But enough.
She crouched, fingers brushing the carving—and immediately, a pulse of energy snapped up her arm.
Elira gasped as the walls seemed to tilt. The air became thick with smoke.
Then came the vision.
Cloaked figures around a circle. Ashes. Her mother's voice. Her own name—no, not Elira… Serelune.
A voice: "You were never meant to remember."
She staggered back, breathing hard.
The glyph glowed for only a moment—then went dark.
Elsewhere in the Circle, Tovin convulsed in his sleep, skin fevered. Naerina hovered nearby, muttering incantations. Vessa had left again—searching for a healer in the northern villages.
Tovin's eyes snapped open.
He stared straight at Naerina, pupils like pinpricks.
"The flame wasn't stolen," he whispered. "It was given."
Then he fell back into unconsciousness.
Naerina's heart sank. Not just because of the words—but because she had heard them before. Spoken years ago, in the old tongue, by someone no longer living.
In the northern spires of Daggerdeep, Caelum waited in the ruins of an old shrine—one long abandoned by the court.
Orien stood at the archway, wary.
"You shouldn't be here."
"I need the truth," Caelum said flatly.
His contact arrived. A withered man dressed in weather-beaten robes. The lore-keeper. Human, but touched by vampire time.
In exchange for a cut of Caelum's blood, he whispered:
"The glyphs weren't born from witchcraft. They were drawn by someone in love with fire. Obsessed with it. She etched them not to hide power—but to *remind herself who she had been."
Caelum flinched at the final word: she.
The lore-keeper grinned. "You know her. And you know she doesn't remember."
As the blood moon drew nearer, Caelum began to wonder if fate was ever on their side—or if it had always been a cage.
Back in the Circle, Elira stood again before the now-dormant glyph. She could still smell the ash. Still hear that voice.
If her mother had lied, if the coven had conspired—
She touched the pendant around her neck. The only thing salvaged from the fire that destroyed her home.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.
No answer. But in the air, something stirred.
From far beyond the wards, unseen eyes watched. Smoke curled against the trees. Shadows moved unnaturally.
And above, the moon—still pale—began to take on the faintest blush of red.