Then, the Head of the Meeting, Grand Duke Rochester, lifted his gaze.
Cold. Majestic.
"Enough," Duke Rochester said, voice low but resonant, carrying the weight of authority. "Whether he—or she—is a blessing or a curse…" he said. "if we want answers, we must find him or her first. What is the point of all this endless chatter if we do nothing?"
A tense silence fell over the chamber. No one dared to challenge the Grand Duke.
At the far end of the table, the Baron of Viremore scoffed, his voice sharp as a drawn dagger.
"Hmph. So what if they are powerful? If he/she dares stand against us, we'll eliminate them. Completely."
Duke Aurenhall leaned forward, fingers steepled together, voice cool and deliberate.
"If you have the power to," he said. "But he is right. Should this being truly become a threat, we cannot afford to wait."
His gaze darkened, sharp and cold as a blade. "After all… beings like that don't grow old. They either become legends—or graves."
A chill swept the room, despite the fire crackling in the hearth.
And far beyond the city walls, beyond the murmurs of nobles and shadows of crowns, a storm was rising quietly.
And at its center… a girl.
Unaware the world had already started to choose a side.
—
Far east of Laencris, beyond the silver-burnished spires and velvet-lined corridors of the capital, lay lands untouched by imperial grandeur.
Past border towns where fires had long died, past rivers that whispered of lost saints, past lands erased from memory. Maps curled at the edges, burned as if the wind itself refused to remember what once lay here.
Past the river Eldrith, now dry as bone. Past the Vale of Crowned Crows, where no birds flew anymore. Past silence.
There, buried in the forgotten marrow of the Cristiane Empire, stood the husk of what had once been sacred—the Monastery of Virelay.
Its stones were scorched.
Its towers, shattered.
Its bells, rusted silent.
Once a bastion of divine magic, it had stood proud against the tides of war and winter, its bells tolling blessings over kneeling pilgrims.
But now, only ruins remained.
The courtyard's carved saints had lost their faces to moss and rain. The fountain ran dry. Ivy clawed at every seal. Stones bore scars of fire long extinguished. And yet the air still carried the bitter scent of burned incense… and something older.
Once, it had been a temple of miracles, where the sick came to be healed and the seers to be heard. The faithful believed the god spoke through its stained glass, and once, perhaps.
But now, it was a ruin of smoke and broken hymns.
Beneath the collapsed arches, in a sanctum carved into the belly of the monastery, an old woman sat curled near a guttering fire.
Her frame was thin, half-swallowed by voluminous robes—once crimson, now blackened by soot and time. Ash clung to her sleeves like snow, her hair the color of old bone, braided and stiff with dried herbs.
Ink clung to her knuckles like soot, and her breath rasped through thin lips as though she coughed up ghosts.
The Saintess of Virelay, they once called her. The last of the seers who saw too much—and spoke too little.
Before her, on a cracked obsidian altar, lay fragments of history: torn parchment, yellowed scrolls, shattered scrying stones, and faded maps burned at the edges as if the world itself had tried to erase them.
A dozen ink-blotted names were scrawled in desperation by hands long dead.
At the center of it all, laid reverently like a holy relic, was a small, tattered scrap. Ink had nearly faded from its surface, but one name remained, etched deep into the very weave of the parchment.
She reached forward and traced it with trembling fingers, her voice rising from cracked lips like the rustle of dead leaves.
Her right eye—milky with cataract—remained still.
But the left burned.
Gold.
lit from within, as though it remembered what the stars forgot.
A long silence stretched. Then she spoke, her voice dry as charred parchment, cracked from too many truths swallowed over too many years.
"So… you walk the thorned path, child."
The Old Seer's words echoed once, twice, before being devoured by the stone walls themselves, as if even the monastery wished to forget them.
Her finger hovered, then pressed gently against the parchment.
The name burned under her touch, though the fire near her was dying.
She paused.
Not in doubt, but in recognition.
The wind began to rise.
Not merely outside, but through the monastery itself.
It hissed through shattered murals, carrying with it the dust of ruined faiths and long-dead prayers. It slithered over the floor, curling past her like a serpent of forgotten time.
The wind moaned as it passed through.
And with it, came the voices.
Dry.
Timeless.
Ancient.
The Hollow Gate will open…
And only the noble one shall stand against it.
They did not arrive as whispers, but as truths embedded deep within the marrow of the world—truths no living soul had asked to remember.
The fire guttered.
Its flames twisted into shapes: towers crumbling, swords broken, wings torn from heaven.
The scent of iron and roses filled the room, and the shadows leaned closer, eager.
The old woman did not flinch.
"The Gate stirs again," she said calmly, "and the veil grows thin."
She reached beside the flame and lifted a cracked hourglass. The sand within was black, unnatural, and it had begun to fall.
Grain by cursed grain.
Her single golden eye narrowed.
"You were never meant to survive, little thorn," she murmured. "Only to bleed. Only to choose."
Another gust tore through the chamber, scattering scrolls like dying feathers.
And then, somewhere within the bones of the monastery—a bell tolled.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Yet no hand had rung it.
Slowly, the Old Seer turned her head toward the darkness, as though staring at something none alive could ever see.
"…The Hollow Gate will open."
Her voice dropped, heavy as a verdict.
"And when it does—either the world will kneel…"
"…or it will burn."
The fire died.
And with it, the last warmth in that place.
—
Back within the Black Rose Palace, the training field lay quiet under a pale afternoon sky.
Cassia rubbed at her wrist absently, the runes beneath her feet faintly glowing from the morning's failed attempt.
Nearby, Lora limped slightly from a misstep in sparring.
Lily sat alone at the edge of the training ground, palms scorched and trembling faintly—she had tested her fire resistance for too long again.