The corridor outside the Pale Court stretched in stillness. The echo of judgment still clung to Caelan's skin like frost.
Seraphyne did not speak.
Velrath walked ahead, his crimson and gold robes whispering with every step, staff in hand. The Pale Sentinels followed behind Caelan like shadows detached from light. No one explained what had happened in the chamber—no one dared to name the hooded figure who now sat where none had sat for centuries.
But Caelan felt it.
A gaze that followed.
A presence that had not left with the others.
The throne watched him still.
---
The procession ended at a balcony overlooking the western edge of Noctisfall. Twilight shimmered beneath a silvered sky. Below, the River Vire coursed through the city like a vein, cutting through obsidian streets and crimson-glass bridges. Lanterns glowed with soulfire. The night was never silent in Noctisfall—but here, the quiet felt absolute.
Seraphyne stepped forward, placing her hands upon the edge of the railing. She stared into the dusk, as if listening to something only she could hear.
"You were seen," she said at last. "And now you are remembered."
Caelan stepped beside her. "That throne… the one at the end. It wasn't occupied when we entered."
"No," Seraphyne replied. "Not for three thousand years."
He waited for more.
She gave him none.
"Who was it?" he asked. "That figure. I could feel them. Like they were waiting for me."
Seraphyne's lips tightened. "Some thrones do not remember names. Only echoes."
Caelan blinked. "You're saying it wasn't a person?"
"I'm saying not all that sits in the Pale Court draws breath."
Velrath's voice followed, smooth and ritualistic. "The throne you saw once belonged to the First Witness—the only one who stood beside the Crown when it was whole. The one who recorded prophecy not as divination… but as testimony."
"Whisperbound," Caelan said, turning to him. "She delivered something. A scroll."
"Yes," Velrath nodded slowly. "From the Archive. It will be read beneath the Blackspire Moon."
Seraphyne's voice darkened. "Which is two nights from now."
Caelan looked back toward the tower rising in the distance—its spire coiled in metal thorns and crowned by ravens.
"And what happens beneath the Blackspire Moon?" he asked.
Seraphyne met his eyes. "We read what has not been written."
---
Later that night, Caelan sat alone in the quarters Seraphyne had given him.
He had expected grandeur—marble floors, silk bedding, chandeliers of bone and glass. Instead, the room was sparse, built from duskstone and sealed with wards he could not name. A single candle burned in the corner, casting a low light against the sigils carved above the door.
The ring on his hand hummed faintly.
He turned it over. The faint, near-invisible spiral in the center now glowed like an ember beneath skin.
The Second Mark.
He remembered the vision—the battlefield drowned in silver mist, the woman in white armor who knelt, the throne that bled shadow. It wasn't a dream. It never was.
As he closed his eyes, the sound returned.
Not a whisper.
Not this time.
A heartbeat.
One slow, echoing thump that came not from his chest—but from the fragment bound to his ribs.
And in that beat, something moved behind his eyes.
A vision.
---
He stood in the Pale Court again.
Alone.
But this time, every throne was filled.
Not with nobles, but reflections. Twisted versions of the ones he'd seen—bone turned to rot, silk into blood, faces hollowed and eyes glowing from within. They watched, unmoving.
Only the last throne—the one newly occupied—remained unchanged.
The hooded figure sat still.
Then it lifted its head.
And for a moment, Caelan saw beneath the hood.
His own face.
Older.
Eyes gold like duskfire.
The spiral burned on the figure's brow.
Then came the voice—not from the vision, but from within the walls of his room.
A whisper in an ancient tongue.
He didn't understand the words.
But he understood the meaning:
"You are the echo of what broke the world. And its only memory."
---
Caelan woke, breath sharp.
The candle was out.
His hand shook as he reached for the pendant beneath his shirt.
It glowed softly, like it remembered too.
Someone knocked once on the door.
Not urgent.
Not forceful.
Just... a signal.
He opened it to find Whisperbound standing there, scroll still in hand.
She did not offer it to him.
Instead, she said one word:
"Come."
---
They walked without guards this time. Through narrow halls beneath Noctisfall that bled into carved caverns and rune-lit tunnels.
The air thickened. The stone changed.
They passed murals—some whole, most cracked and weeping dust. They showed kings with no crowns, wolves with wings, and a woman burning beneath a bleeding moon.
Whisperbound stopped before a sealed door shaped like a fang.
She placed the scroll against it.
It opened with a sound like bone splitting.
Inside was a circular room lined with mirrors that reflected nothing.
She finally turned to him.
"This place was sealed when the First Witness vanished," she whispered. "No one has entered since. But the scroll asked for you."
Caelan stepped in.
Alone.
The door shut.
And the mirrors flickered.
One by one, they began to remember.