Elara could not keep away from the north wing.
By the following evening, the whisper of the raven's call had wormed too deeply into her mind. The sound seemed to echo in her bones, urging her back to the carved door. She resisted as long as she could, pacing her chamber, scribbling nonsense words to distract herself. But every attempt collapsed beneath the same pull.
At last, she took her candle and returned.
The hall was colder tonight. The air pressed heavy, as if she had stepped not into a corridor but into a throat, walls closing around her. Each step toward the door dragged, her legs leaden.
The symbols were waiting for her.
Silver in the candlelight, sharp and jagged, pulsing faintly like veins beneath skin. They no longer looked carved. They looked alive.
Her hand shook as she reached out.
"Elara…" the raven croaked, perched now above the doorway. Its black feathers shivered in the draft. "Blood calls to blood."
She pressed her palm to the carvings.
The wood burned cold against her skin. The symbols flared.
And then the door gave way.
The chamber beyond was far larger than the house should have allowed. A circular vault opened before her, lined with shelves that climbed high into darkness. The air smelled of damp parchment and ash.
At its center stood a stone pedestal, cracked and weathered, etched with the same spiraling language. Around it, in a perfect ring, waited a murder of ravens, silent and still as statues.
Her stomach clenched. The silence pressed until her ears rang.
Then, a voice not from the birds, not from the air, but from everywhere at once.
"Elara Veyne."
The sound cracked through her skull like thunder. She staggered, clutching her head.
The ravens lifted as one, wings beating in a storm of black. They circled overhead, blotting out the candlelight, until the chamber was nothing but the rush of feathers and her own pounding heartbeat.
She stumbled toward the pedestal. Drawn. Compelled. Her fingers brushed its surface.....
And the world shattered.
She stood in a field.
The moon hung low, enormous and swollen, painting the grass silver. Ravens filled the sky, thousands of them, blotting out the stars.
In the distance, the manor burned. Flames licked its towers, smoke twisting into the shape of wings.
"Elara."
The voice again this time softer, feminine. She turned.
Her mother stood behind her.
Alive.
The same sharp cheekbones, the same dark eyes but colder than she remembered, drained of warmth. Her mother's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.
"You've come further than I expected."
Elara's throat tightened. "You're dead."
Her mother tilted her head. "Dead? Perhaps. But not gone. Not for us."
"For us?"
Her mother stepped closer, her gown fluttering as though caught in a wind Elara could not feel. Ravens swirled around her, their wings silent, their eyes glowing with a strange silver fire.
"You are mine, Elara. You are the blood of Veyne. You carry what I carried, what my mother carried before me. And you will carry it evermore."
The word struck like a hammer. Elara stumbled back, but her mother's shape followed, gliding rather than walking.
"What do you mean?" Elara whispered. "What have you bound me to?"
Her mother's eyes sharpened. "You hear them already. The whispers. The call. That is our inheritance. The Veyne line was marked long ago. We serve as the mouth through which the ravens speak."
Elara shook her head violently. "No. I won't. I don't want this."
Her mother's smile thinned. "Want has nothing to do with it. Blood does not ask. Blood remembers."
The fire at the manor roared higher, sparks spiraling into the sky. The ravens screamed as one, their wings blotting out the moon.
Elara covered her ears. "Stop! Please, stop!"
Her mother's form flickered, her face shifting between familiarity and something skeletal, hollow-eyed. "You can run from it, child. You can resist. But you will return. You always return. Because it is in you. It is you."
The world warped.
The field blurred. The fire collapsed. Her mother's figure dissolved into shadow and wings.
And Elara was back in the chamber.
Her knees buckled. She fell against the pedestal, gasping. The ravens had returned to their circle, silent once more.
Only one moved.
The same raven that had followed her for days. It hopped forward, cocked its head, and spoke not croaked, not whispered, but spoke.
"Evermore."
The word cracked in her chest like ice.
Her candle guttered and died, plunging the chamber into black.
When she opened her eyes again, she was on the floor of her bedroom. Her door was bolted. Her hands were covered in ash.
And on her desk lay a page she did not remember writing.
A single word filled the parchment, scrawled over and over in her own hand.
Evermore.