The Memory That Was Stolen
Mira stood at the edge of the Old Circle, where the earth cracked like a wound and time seemed to move in spirals. The druids who once governed this sacred grove were long buried beneath moss and root, but their echoes lingered like ghosts trapped in prayer. She had come alone, without escort or seer-guard, guided by a dream so vivid it had nearly torn her from sleep in a scream.
In the dream, she had seen Caelen's rebirth.
But it was not the violent transformation spoken of in whispers among the court.
It was surgical.
Ritualized.
Engineered.
There had been hands involved. Not gods. Not destiny.
People.
She stepped between the leaning stones, each taller than a man and humming faintly as if tasting her presence. In the center, the circle narrowed into a pit where ancient roots clawed through stone. Here, the air shimmered faintly—veil-thin, veil-torn. This was where the dream had ended. And now, where her waking vision began.
She knelt and pressed her hand to the dirt.
For a moment, nothing.
Then—
—a jolt of power through her palm, up her arm, across her skull.
The world split open.
---
She was standing in the circle, but it was years ago. The stones were clean. The air charged with runic light. And she wasn't alone.
Three figures in long robes.
One bore the crest of the Ardent Path. One, the sigil of the old Southern Hex. The third wore nothing but a circlet of woven steel—and around his shoulders was a wolf-pelt cloak.
They spoke in low voices.
Caelen's body—his corpse—lay upon a slab of white rock, his chest unmoving, skin gray. His heart had been removed, and beside him, a silver bowl pulsed with black flame.
The wolf-cloaked one spoke.
"He's the last true heir to the blood-oath. If we seal him in fire and shadow, the power won't scatter. It will crystallize."
One of the others hesitated. "But his soul—what of it?"
"It was already fractured. The moonless mark is older than him. It chose this vessel. We're only finishing what began long before."
"You mean controlling it."
The wolf-cloaked man smiled. "If he wakes under our bindings, he'll be ours."
They poured the black fire over Caelen's chest.
He screamed.
The slab cracked.
And then—his eyes opened.
Not silver, not gray, not even red.
But void.
And then Mira was thrown back.
---
She hit the ground hard, breath torn from her lungs. The stones of the circle rang with energy, and her skin steamed from the contact.
She lay panting, eyes wide.
Caelen hadn't just survived the void.
He had been shaped by it. Forged through betrayal not only of those he loved, but of those who claimed to protect him. He had not found darkness. He had been delivered into it.
By factions of the very Council that now hunted him.
"Alaric must know," she whispered.
But even as she rose, stumbling from the circle, one thought haunted her more than the rest.
The wolf-cloaked man. His voice. His aura.
She had never seen his face.
But she knew that presence.
He had stood beside the throne of the First Council for decades.
He had once been Alaric's mentor.
And if he lived still…
…then the true war had not even begun.