The river near their camp had risen overnight, bloated by the relentless rain. It churned now like something furious, dragging branches, bones, and secrets down its winding path. No one dared approach it. Even the horses refused to drink from it.
Alera stood at its edge.
Not because she trusted it.
But because she needed answers.
And in her experience, the most dangerous places always whispered truths others wouldn't.
Behind her, Seris approached slowly, her cloak clinging wet to her legs.
"You should rest," she said quietly.
"I can't."
"You're not made of stone, Alera."
"I don't need to be."
Seris stood beside her in silence. For a while, there were only the sounds of the river and distant thunder. Then:
"Did the tree tell you his real name?"
Alera didn't look at her. "No. Just that Kael's name… wasn't his."
Seris nodded, eyes on the river.
"The old magi used to say names are masks. And the truest ones can unravel everything."
"Do you think I was in love with a mask?"
"I think… sometimes we fall in love with the lie that feels safest."
Later, back at the camp, Alera summoned Lysandria and Saphine to the command tent. She had a map spread across the table and candles burning at the four corners. A wet breeze kept pushing the flames sideways.
Lysandria looked tired but focused. Saphine looked furious and didn't bother hiding it.
"I don't like sitting still," she said, crossing her arms.
"We're not," Alera replied. "We're preparing to move."
"Where?"
Alera circled a small region on the map a crescent of ruins near the edge of the sea.
"The Drowned Archives," she said. "There was once a citadel there. A center of forbidden knowledge. Burned down by the old kings during the Purge."
Lysandria frowned. "Why go there?"
"Because if there's one place that remembers names not meant to be spoken, it's buried under that ash."
Saphine stepped closer to the map, peering at the markings.
"It's five days out. Swampy, cursed, and crawling with ghosts."
"Then we'll bring salt," Alera said.
The next morning, they moved.
The rain didn't stop.
The forest grew darker with every step west.
Roots tangled underfoot like veins, and even the birds seemed to avoid certain branches.
Seris kept close to Alera, her fingers glowing faintly at times like she was feeling for something just beneath the surface of the world.
On the second night, the dreams came.
Alera stood in a throne room, but everything was reversed.
The sky bled up from the floor.
The pillars were made of hands reaching inward.
And Kael sat on the throne.
Only it wasn't him.
His eyes were hollow.
His mouth stitched shut.
And across his chest, etched into his skin with glowing ink, was a name she couldn't read shifting with every blink.
She tried to reach for him, but the floor swallowed her feet.
He raised his hand.
And pointed to her belly.
The child inside twisted.
The blade on her back screamed.
Then everything shattered.
She woke gasping, drenched in sweat.
Lysandria was already awake, sharpening a blade by the fire.
She looked over, eyes narrowing.
"Same dream again?"
"Worse."
"Was it Kael?"
Alera nodded slowly.
Lysandria hesitated, then asked, "Do you want to know the name? The real one?"
Alera blinked. "You know it?"
Lysandria stared into the fire.
"I knew his brother. The real Kael died three years before you met him."
Alera's breath caught.
"Who did I love?"
Lysandria whispered it.
One word.
One name.
And the moment it touched the air, the fire sputtered and hissed like it had been burned by the sound.
"Raevir."
Alera closed her eyes.
She had heard that name before.
Not in Kael's mouth.
Not in the court.
But in the prophecies.
Raevir. The lost prince of the Hollow Flame.
The one who vanished.
The one who was supposed to bring either rebirth or ruin, depending on who found him first.
Saphine stormed into the circle moments later, cloak soaked, hair clinging to her face.
"We've got movement. East ridge. Half a dozen riders. No flags."
Alera was already on her feet.
"Followers of the Prophet?"
Saphine nodded grimly. "Or worse."
By dawn, the riders had vanished.
But they left behind a symbol carved into a dead tree:
A single eye. Split down the middle.
Seris said it was a mark of the Woken Flame an ancient sect believed extinct. They worshipped fire not as a source of warmth or destruction, but as a sentient force.
"They believe fire chooses," she explained. "That it picks hosts. Uses them."
"And what does it want?" Alera asked.
Seris hesitated.
"To be seen. To be obeyed. To be free."
On the fourth day, the land turned to ruin.
Fallen towers slouched sideways like broken teeth.
The earth cracked in strange spirals, and bones jutted from the ground as if trying to crawl back toward the surface.
They reached the Drowned Archives before nightfall.
The entrance was half-buried beneath vines and stone.
Saphine cut through the overgrowth.
Inside, it smelled of ink and mildew and time.
Scrolls, burned and blackened, littered the halls.
But deep in the back beneath a collapsed stairwell was a chamber untouched by fire.
Seris's hand trembled as she pressed it to the door.
"There's blood magic on this," she whispered. "Ancient. Wild. Not from our time."
Alera stepped forward.
"I'll open it."
Lysandria moved to stop her, but Alera raised a hand.
"No. If Raevir left anything behind… I have to face it."
She placed her palm to the door.
It was cold.
Then searing.
It bit into her like teeth.
She didn't pull back.
Didn't flinch.
The door groaned.
Opened.
Inside was a single room.
Stone walls, lined with silver etchings.
A mirror in the center tall, tarnished, untouched.
And a name scrawled across its surface in blood that never dried:
RAEVIR.
The mirror shimmered.
Alera stepped forward.
And saw herself.
But not as she was.
As she could become.
Eyes black.
Skin cracking with firelight.
Crown of bone.
Throne of ash.
Child on her lap eyes open, lips moving, speaking words no mortal should hear.
And behind her… Raevir.
Smiling.
Always smiling.
Alera stepped back.
Trembling.
The mirror hissed, then cracked.
The room went still.
And the voice that followed wasn't hers.
"Now you know what he was."
"Now ask yourself who you are."
Outside, the storm began to break.
But in Alera's chest, a new one formed.
And she wasn't sure which side of it she'd survive.