Valen Graye lounged against a crooked shelf labelled Hexed Romance, lazily flipping through a tattered novella that hissed at him with every touch, like a feral cat disguised as literature. The cover, The Duke's Demise and Other Cursed Courtships, shimmers with angry pink ink that pulses as if trying to outdo itself in typographical dramatics. The title cycled violently between gothic calligraphy and something suspiciously close to glittery cursive.
Every page he turns snaps at his fingers with the vengeful precision of a hungry swan.
Snap.
Valen winces. "Oh come on now, that was barely a critique."
The book responds by puffing a plume of green smoke directly into his face.
He coughs and mutters, "Honestly, the writing's worse than the venom."
Across the room, Elara sits cross-legged in a velvet armchair that may once have been elegant, but now resembled a moth-eaten hedgehog having an existential crisis. A floating book hovers inches from her nose—Mapping the Mythical: A Cartographer's Guide to the Emotionally Unstable Lands…its pages occasionally twitch like they were embarrassed to be read.
"Try the one with the corset demon," she calls out, without looking up. "That one eats the reader if you mispronounce the heroine's name. Arabelia, not Arabella. Important distinction. Ask Moony."
"Never again," Moony grumbles from somewhere behind a stack of cursed cookbooks, lounging on a windowsill. "I still have nightmares about being half-swallowed by satin and bad dialogue."
Valen shoots her a flat look. "I quite like having my appendages, thanks."
With a theatrical sigh, he snaps the novella shut. It hisses in protest, spits a final puff of spite-smoke, and sulkily shuffles itself into a pile that shivers with offended dignity.
They were nestled in Isadora's upstairs library—technically titled The Northward Spell Repository & Interpersonal Disaster Records, if one were to believe the tarnished brass plaque hanging askew by the door. The room had no patience for logic or spatial rules. The carpet insisted on rearranging itself every time no one looked. The bookshelves whispered about each other behind their spines, their voices like crinkling parchment and jealous sighs. And the tea tray had walked off with the biscuits twice now and was currently hiding under a drape, sulking.
On a makeshift table (really just a crate stacked on three unstable volumes of Curses You Can Cuddle and one very argumentative copy of Seduction Spells for the Emotionally Stunted), they had spread out Isadora's cipher-map. It glowed faintly, pulsing every time someone said the word "shard"...like an enchanted heartbeat keeping rhythm with their doom.
Moony was draped across the windowsill like a particularly judgmental scarf, one golden eye cracking open.
"If you two are quite done flirting with literary doom," he drawls, "can we please get back to the part where everything's about to go horribly sideways?"
Valen doesn't even blink. "Why rush what's already inevitable?"
Elara taps her pencil against the map, her tone wry. "Second shard. Any leads that don't involve cursed literature or sentient stationery?"
Valen's expression shifts from amused to thoughtful. A quiet tension slides into the room, as if the shelves themselves were leaning closer to listen.
"The second shard will be harder to find," he says, fingers brushing the map's glowing threads.
She arches her brow. "Because?"
"Because the first clue was designed to draw attention," he says, tapping the edge of the parchment. "Like bait. It wanted to be found. Public. Loud."
"Like Moony's singing voice," she murmurs.
"Hey!" comes the muffled protest of Moony, from behind the cookbooks.
Valen's lips twitch, then refocuses. "But this one…this one's hidden. Buried under misdirection and ruin. It doesn't want to be found."
At the far end of the room, Rowan leans silently against the wall like an elegant statue carved from thunderclouds and restraint. His arms crossed. His expression is unreadable.
"And how do you suggest we track it?" he asks, voice calm but cool.
Valen's smile is maddening. "Magic."
Elara shoots to her feet, planting her hands on her hips. "Not good enough. You don't get to smug your way through vague nonsense this time. What kind of magic? Divination? Blood-trailing? Whisper threads? Interpretive jazz hexing?"
Valen opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then gives a thoughtful response, "...That last one might actually work."
"Valen." Elara growls his name in warning.
He holds up his hands in mock surrender, his grin tilting dangerously and charming. "Your aunt left behind a ciphered legacy. That shard you found? It's part of a larger spell-thread. If we can attune something to its resonance…tune ourselves to it…we might be able to follow the echo it leaves behind."
"I don't need a tracking spell," Elara says quietly. "If that is what you mean. I am already attuned to it."
Everything stills. Even the map's glow dims, as if the room itself was listening.
Rowan straightens. "Come again?"
Valen's eyes flicker with sudden focus. "Attuned how?"
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the first shard…the one they had found. It pulsed in her palm, black glass veined with gold, glowing like a memory that refused to die.
"It spoke to me," she says. "In the Vault. And again, when I touched the shard. It called me a portal."
Valen blinks, his smirk replaced by real intrigue and mystery. "Not a key. A portal. Fascinating."
Rowan's posture tightens. "Which means this thing…whatever it is…wants her. It is trying to reach through her."
"Exactly," Valen murmurs, pacing now. "She's not just holding the key. She is the key!"
Moony rolls over on the windowsill with a dramatic groan. "Just going to say it again: this sounds wildly unsafe. We should all be wearing matching caution signs. And perhaps consider going into early retirement."
Elara's hand closes protectively around the shard. Her voice is steady, even as her eyes shimmer with something unreadable.
"I'm not walking away from this. Isadora left me this path. And if I have to be a key to unlock that door, I'll damn well decide who gets to open it."
There is a beat of silence.
Then Valen's smile returns…slower now, sharper, like silk over steel. Like something dangerous dressing up as charm.
"Good girl."
Rowan's scowl could've cracked granite.
Elsewhere…The Council
In the hidden chamber beneath the Northern Vale, the Council stands beneath a dome of illusion and memory. A silver pool ripples at the centre, flickering with images…moths, blood and the girl.
"She's found the first piece," says a voice cloaked in shadow.
"Faster than we thought."
"She wasn't meant to survive the Vault."
"Nor wake the shard."
Another figure steps into the moonlight, their mask carved like bone. "We underestimated Isadora Finch."
The one in the silver mask adjusted hers delicately. "The awakening stirs old bindings. If the Night Name is restored…"
"It cannot be restored," snaps another. "We burned that name from time."
"But Isadora remembered."
"And now Elara feels it."
A cold silence follows.
"Do we send the Binders?"
"Not yet," Silver Mask responds. "Let her gather. Let her believe. Every piece she finds uncovers what Isadora dared not speak aloud."
"And when she reaches the Name's heart?"
The Speaker's voice turns to frost.
"Then we erase her. And everything that follows."
That Night – Isadora's Cottage
Elara tosses under the patchwork quilt, the room too still. The shard pulsing faintly on her nightstand, casting crooked shadows that flutter like moth wings across the walls.
Her dreams are scattered like ash in the wind.
Then a voice…not spoken, not heard, but known.
Come find me.
The bells still ring where the dead do not rest.
Third tomb. Left of the cursed fountain. Under the stone that bleeds.
She jolts upright.
"Moony," she hisses. "Wake up. I think I just got a clue."
A groan comes from beneath a pile of enchanted scarves. "No more tombs. My paws just dried from the last one."
Instead she ignores his complaint, already scribbling into her notebook, lest she forgets, the shard's light pulsing in rhythm with her excited heartbeat.