The rain had not stopped for three days.
When the clouds finally began to fade, the world outside Kaylin's window looked washed clean—quiet, fragile, as though time itself had been rinsed away. She sat on the edge of her bed, fingers tracing the carved rose symbol on the wooden frame. That symbol had always been there, yet tonight, under the faint silver of the moon, it seemed to pulse faintly, like a heartbeat.
Her heartbeat.
Downstairs, the house creaked. The ancestral manor, built two centuries ago by her forebears—the Counts of Alverynthra—was a labyrinth of marble corridors and forgotten rooms. Every portrait stared with cold eyes, and sometimes, when she passed by one, she could swear their gaze followed her.
She didn't come here often. The manor was too vast, too quiet. Her parents had moved to the city of Varnethra years ago, leaving this place to dust and memory. But after everything that happened—the cracked mirror, the words "The first seal is open"—Kaylin had felt an inexplicable pull to return. To the beginning. To her blood.
That night, thunder growled in the distance, though the skies above were clear.
Kaylin walked through the corridor barefoot. Her reflection flickered in the old mirrors that lined the hall, warped by age and time. Somewhere, deep inside the manor, a piano played a single note—soft, trembling, like a whisper from another world.
She followed the sound.
It led her to the west wing—sealed for decades since her great-grandfather's death. The door was locked, but when she touched it, the handle turned by itself. A faint scent of old books and candle wax drifted out, mingling with the cold air.
Inside was a study. Shelves lined with dust-coated tomes, a grand desk in the center, and a single candle that burned though no one had lit it.
And on the desk—an open diary.
The ink was black as obsidian, the handwriting elegant but trembling. It wasn't hers. Yet the first words on the page made her throat tighten.
"To my descendant, the blood that carries the Moon's curse."
Kaylin's fingers trembled as she turned the page. The writing continued, older, frantic.
"When the first seal breaks, the whispers shall return. The ones we silenced will seek their voice again. The Count's oath must be remembered—'Protect the Seventh until the stars bleed.'"
The words didn't make sense, but something deep in her bones remembered. A memory not her own—a vision of a woman in a silver gown standing beneath a burning moon, her eyes reflecting centuries of sorrow.
The candle flickered.
Kaylin whispered, "Who are you?"
And the mirror across the room answered.
A shadow moved within its glass—a woman's outline, familiar and distant. Her lips parted, and though no sound came out, words etched themselves across the mirror's surface in glowing letters:
"Serya lun aethel nor'en. The Second awakens."
Kaylin stepped back, her breath catching. The symbols shimmered before fading into dust. She felt the air shift—the temperature drop.
Then a whisper, so faint it could have been the wind:
"Find the Heart beneath the silver roots…"
The floorboards groaned beneath her feet. She turned to run, but the diary on the table snapped shut with a loud thud. Dust rose like smoke, forming the outline of a symbol—seven interlocking crescents, each glowing with pale light.
She felt a sting in her palm.
When she looked down, she saw it: the same symbol, burned into her skin.
The next morning, the manor was silent again. No whisper, no candlelight. Only the lingering scent of old ink.
Kaylin sat in the library, sunlight spilling across her face. The symbol on her palm had faded, but the mark remained faintly golden under her skin. She had spent hours searching through the archives—records of the Alverynthra bloodline, their history, their secrets.
That's when she found The Chronicle of the Lunar Pact.
The book was written in an archaic tongue, older than any human language known in Eryndora or Myreneth Vale. But strangely, when she looked at it, part of her could understand.
"The Seven Seals were made in blood, not faith. Each heir bears the burden of silence. Each moonrise marks a choice."
Her ancestors had not been mere nobles. They were Keepers—guardians of something ancient and dangerous.
Her gaze drifted to the portrait on the wall—a woman with her eyes, her face, her sadness.
Countess Elyra of Alverynthra. Born 1712 of the Old Calendar. Died mysteriously at twenty-three.
In the portrait's corner, faintly hidden under layers of paint, were words in the same ancient script.
Kaylin whispered them aloud.
"Seyra lun vel nath."
The room shifted.
Shelves groaned, dust spiraled upward, and the wall behind the portrait cracked open, revealing a hidden staircase descending into the dark.
Her pulse quickened. She grabbed a lantern, its light flickering like a heartbeat, and stepped down.
The air grew colder. The steps led into a vast underground chamber—a crypt. The walls were carved with symbols that pulsed faintly as she passed. In the center stood a coffin of silver and glass.
Inside lay Countess Elyra.
Perfectly preserved.
Kaylin's breath trembled. The woman's hands were crossed over her chest, holding a silver medallion engraved with the same seven crescents. Beneath it, carved into the stone:
"When the Seventh falls, the Moon shall awaken."
A sound echoed—soft, melodic, like a hum from the medallion itself.
And then, she heard it again.
The voice. The same as in her dreams.
"You opened the first seal, Kaylin of Alverynthra. The second waits beneath the roots of time."
Her lantern flickered out. The chamber plunged into darkness.
Then, faintly, through the silence, she saw the medallion glow—and a drop of silver light rose from it, floating toward her palm. When it touched her skin, the golden mark on her hand flared brighter, forming the shape of a crescent moon.
She gasped, her mind filled with fragments of memory not her own: fire, blood, chanting in the ancient tongue, the sound of bells beneath the sea.
And then—one phrase repeated endlessly, like a heartbeat from beyond the veil:
"Serya lun aethel nor'en…"
"The Second awakens."
When she finally stumbled out of the crypt, dawn had broken.
The manor looked unchanged, but something deep in her soul had shifted.
She no longer doubted what she had seen.
The Seven Seals were real.
And she—Kaylin of Alverynthra—was bound to them by blood.
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End of chapter 8
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