Some memories return like echoes. Others arrive as warnings.
---
The fragment still pulsed.
Even hours after Caelan had emerged from the chamber below, its weight had not left his hand. He had washed it. Wrapped it. Hid it. Still, the shard of the crown hummed like it remembered a name he hadn't spoken yet.
It throbbed not with life, but with remembrance—a strange and ancient rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat. That belonged to no heartbeat at all.
He sat on the edge of the bed, hand trembling slightly, the fragment tucked in cloth on the stone beside him. Seraphyne hadn't said a word since returning him to his quarters. No warning. No comfort. Just the look in her eyes—quiet, hard, unreadable.
She knew something.
They all did.
He rose when the silence grew too loud. The room felt smaller now, like the walls were closing in, or like he had stepped into a place that was no longer his. Even the shadows were watching.
The spiral on the floor—burned black from the night before—still hadn't faded. No servant had come to clean it. No guards posted. No attempt made to speak to him again.
He was alone.
Until the knock came.
Not a knock, exactly.
A tap, slow and deliberate, like a clock marking a moment it had been waiting for.
When Caelan opened the door, a figure waited in the corridor. Cloaked in violet and black, hood shadowing most of his face. Not Velrath. Taller. Leaner. His presence felt colder.
"I am Malachai," the man said. "Warden of Midnight."
Caelan stared, unsure whether to speak.
"You bear the Second Mark now," Malachai continued, tone neither welcoming nor hostile. "So you will meet many of us. Some will come with answers. I do not."
"Then why are you here?" Caelan asked.
Malachai's eyes—wolf-bright amber—gleamed under the hood.
"To listen."
He stepped into the room without waiting for permission. His boots made no sound.
"You were touched in memory," Malachai said. "The woman in white. The temple. The moon split in two."
Caelan blinked. "How do you—"
"I do not see your dreams," the Warden replied. "But I see what follows them."
Caelan looked down at the wrapped fragment.
"She gave this to me. Said I carry what she once gave."
"She gave it to others before you." Malachai's voice dropped. "Not all of them lived long enough to carry it far."
That line chilled the air.
Caelan hesitated. "Was she real?"
The Warden turned his gaze slowly toward him. "She was memory. She was what remains when memory becomes burden."
A beat of silence.
"Did she weep?"
Caelan nodded. "Yes."
Malachai exhaled. "Then the Crown remembers its wounds."
After Malachai left, Caelan barely slept. But at some point, his eyes shut—and when they opened again, something was waiting.
Dust.
Arranged carefully on the stone windowsill. Not scattered, not wind-blown.
Drawn.
A spiral. Just like the burn on the floor. Smaller. Precise.
Next to it, scratched faintly into the stone, a single word:
REMEMBER.
Caelan touched it. The dust clung to his fingertip, warm.
It hadn't been left long ago.
The next day, Seraphyne said only one word: "Come."
He followed her through the castle—not the polished spires or glowing halls of the Court above, but downward again. Into the cold.
This time, the corridors were stranger. Twisting, bone-lined. Arched like ribs in a long-dead beast. The air thinned. The torches here burned black and blue.
Finally, they entered a long passage with no doors. Just statues.
Each one blindfolded. Each one holding broken instruments—flutes with no holes, drums with no skins, bells without tongues.
Caelan slowed. "What is this place?"
"The Hall of Echoes," Seraphyne said.
He looked around. "What echoes?"
She stopped walking. But did not speak.
Then, softly, Caelan heard it.
Not words. Not sound. A pressure. A flicker behind his eyes. Like a scream from a throat long sealed shut.
He turned. The last statue was weeping dust.
He returned to the Archive without being told. Whisperbound was there—always, it seemed—her porcelain face half-shadowed under her hood.
"You've begun to fracture," she said, not looking at him.
"I saw her again," Caelan said.
Whisperbound raised her gaze. "Then the Crown is breathing."
"I don't understand any of this."
"You were never meant to," she replied softly. "Not yet."
He moved closer. "Was she real? The woman in white?"
"Once." Whisperbound touched the edge of a tome. "But memory has claws. It does not let go of those it marks."
Caelan opened his mouth to ask something—anything—but Whisperbound closed the book with a soft thud.
"You are not the first, Caelan Duskwither," she said. "But you may be the last."
That night, the dream came again.
But colder.
He stood in a field of snow, where the bones of kings and beasts rose like statues from the ice. The sky was starless. Silent.
In the center, the Crown hovered. Shattered. Glowing faintly with a breath that wasn't light.
And beside it stood the third figure.
Faceless. Robed in silence.
The faceless one lifted a hand, and Caelan did not step back. He only watched as the hand reached out—not to harm, but to mourn.
Their fingers brushed his chest.
And a third heartbeat answered.
Not his.
Not yet.
When Caelan woke, his hands were trembling.
The fragment had changed. Its silver vein now glowed faintly. A crack ran through its center, but did not break it. Instead, it sang—not in sound, but in presence.
It wanted to be whole.
Seraphyne stood at the window. "The Court stirs," she said without turning. "They've begun to whisper your name."
Caelan rose to his feet. "Because of the Mark?"
"Because of what stirs beneath it."
He stepped toward her. "Do you believe the prophecy?"
A pause.
"I believe in what prophecy breaks."
She turned to face him.
And for the first time since they met, her mask cracked—just a little. There was something behind her eyes he had never seen.
Fear.