Luca had known fear before.
He'd watched cities fall. He'd walked through the ruins of civilizations erased by power. He had seen the dead rise not as monsters, but as echoes that whispered to the living.
But this?
This was different.
Esmé's eyes when she returned from the Veil had not been the same.
She had looked at him as if she'd seen more than the end.
She'd seen the origin.
—————
He stood now in the deepest level of the Council archives, surrounded by dust and silence, beneath sigils that had been outlawed by every ruling Order for the past five centuries.
The place was sealed to all but the oldest blood.
And Luca's blood, cursed and altered as it was, had long since ceased to obey rules written by others.
He moved carefully through the vaults, lighting no flame, needing none. The shelves here were carved from petrified wood, and the scrolls bound in leather no living creature would recognize.
At the far wall, behind a false panel, he found the one thing he had hoped not to find:
A scroll bound with black thread.
No title. No seal.
Just the scent of faded prophecy.
He unbound it with fingers that did not tremble—only slowed.
And read.
The Threadwalker shall come not as a child of war, but of memory.
The rose shall bleed once more.
The world will twist, and truth shall be weighed not by judgment… but by choice.
And if she remembers too much, the Veil shall unmake her.
Luca's breath stilled.
He touched the scroll, tracing the old symbols. They were older than Florence. Older than the Pact.
He turned to the margin, where a single line had been added in red:
Alaric—do not let her fall.
He froze.
That name.
His name.
From before.
Before Luca.
Before this life.
He staggered back a step.
Someone had written this centuries ago.
Someone who knew he would find it.
—————
He took the scroll and left the vaults in silence, returning not to his room, but to the outer gardens, where Esmé now slept curled under the rose tree, exhausted from her journey into the Veil.
He stood above her, watching her breathe, pendant clutched in her hand.
He felt the scroll's words like thorns in his chest.
"Not a prophecy," he whispered. "A warning."
And it was meant for him.
He sat beside her and unrolled a fresh parchment.
For the first time in a century, Luca began to write.
Not in the language of scholars.
Not in the tongue of the Pact.
But in the script of the Veil.
And with every letter, he gave form to something he'd long buried:
The truth of what he had seen the night before Esmé was born.
The truth of what he had promised and failed before.
And the truth of what he would not allow again.
When Esmé stirred awake, her first word was his name.
"Luca…"
He looked up.
And for the first time since she'd met him, he looked afraid.
Not of what she was becoming.
But of what it might cost to protect her.