The stone key Tovin gave her refused to be still.
It pulsed faintly in Elira's palm even when she wrapped it in warding cloth, even when she buried it beneath runes meant to dull magic. It hummed like it had a voice of its own — and a memory that didn't belong to her… but was waiting.
She didn't sleep that night. Instead, she walked to the west sanctum — the forbidden wing — where Naerina's personal chambers overlooked the burning pool known as the Veiled Fire.
Naerina stood alone at its edge.
"I read something," Elira said. "A name. Serelune."
The air shifted.
Naerina's gaze remained fixed on the flame. "Where?"
"In the archives."
"Then it should have stayed there."
The coldness in her voice wasn't fear — it was recognition.
Elira stepped closer. "You know it."
Naerina didn't deny it.
"Elira," she said slowly, "names hold weight. Especially the ones you choose to forget."
A beat of silence.
"I didn't choose to forget anything."
Naerina turned to her, eyes soft with something that felt like regret. "Then why did you bleed willingly at the first seal?"
Elira's throat tightened. "You're lying."
Naerina stepped past her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. "Then don't remember. Some locks were sealed for love, not fear."
Caelum — Daggerdeep Summit
The summons from the vampire court had arrived again — and this time, it wasn't inked.
It was branded, through a rune-scarred courier whose mouth had been stitched shut with truth-thread.
"They know," Vireya said, watching the body dissolve in the sun.
"They've always known," Caelum answered. "Now they remember."
He didn't wait for another argument. He turned toward the path into the underlands — toward the court.
But his mind wasn't on the summons. It was on Aethros's warning days earlier:
"If she remembers before the fifth seal she might still choose mercy. If she remembers after... we all burn."
Caelum clenched his fist.
Because the key had already been found.
And the girl who once called herself "Serelune" was waking up.
Ash Circle – Lower Sanctum
Tovin had fallen ill.
He slept, but muttered in strange tongues — words older than the coven. Glyphs flared around his bed in patterns none of them recognized.
Vessa watched over him, but even she admitted: "He's channeling something not meant for him."
Elira sat by him, holding the stone key in one hand.
Then suddenly, his eyes opened — but they weren't his.
They were hers.
Not Elira's. But the girl from the memory. Serelune.
Tovin spoke in a voice not his own:
"You broke it to protect them. But the price is due. The fifth will not hide forever."
The glyphs pulsed. The lights dimmed.
And in the shadows, the Silent One watched, unseen — until his cloak brushed the wall, and one of the wards shattered with a soundless ripple.
Elira turned — but he was gone.
Yet in Tovin's hand, clenched now, was a scrap of parchment.
Not aged. Fresh. Ink still damp.
It read:
"When the deathless bleeds…"
And below it — half-formed, scrawled like a desperate reminder:
"She asked you to forget. You swore you would."
Elira stared.
She had no memory of writing it.
But it was her handwriting.