The void between worlds stretched endlessly before the heir, a vast expanse of darkness punctuated only by the shimmering droplets of Kaelion's memories. The heir floated weightlessly, their body suspended in the nothingness, their silver-threaded hand outstretched toward the shattered quill that glowed with an eerie, persistent light. The broken writing instrument hung motionless, its once-elegant silver filigree now blackened and twisted, the sharp nib snapped clean as if some great force had torn it apart in a moment of rage or desperation.
As the heir drew closer, they noticed how the quill pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat, like a dying heart clinging stubbornly to life. Each throb sent ripples through the surrounding droplets of memory, distorting their surfaces and making the images within flicker wildly. The heir's fingers tingled with anticipation, the silver threads woven through their skin vibrating in sympathy with the artifact's energy.
When their fingertips finally brushed against the fractured shaft, the void exploded into chaos.
The heir gasped as they were violently yanked forward, their consciousness hurtling through layers of time and memory until they crashed to their knees on cold stone. The impact jarred their bones, the pain startlingly real. They blinked rapidly, their eyes struggling to adjust to the dim torchlight of the Scriptorium's lowest vault after the endless darkness of the void.
The air here was thick with the scent of burning parchment and something darker beneath—the coppery tang of fresh blood. The heir pushed themselves up from the stone floor, their hands coming away sticky with a substance they didn't dare examine too closely. All around them, the vault was in ruins. Shelves had been toppled, their precious contents scattered across the floor. Scrolls floated in midair, frozen in the act of unraveling, their edges blackened by some unnatural fire that burned without consuming.
And there, at the room's center, hunched over a writing desk that was slowly being consumed by those same eerie flames, knelt Kaelion's sister.
The heir's breath caught in their throat at the sight of her. In all the fragmented memories they'd witnessed before, she had always been a distant figure, glimpsed through the haze of Kaelion's recollections. But here, now, she was vibrantly, painfully real. Her silver hair normally so meticulously braided in the formal Arcanthus style hung in damp, tangled strands around her face. The elegant blue robes of a senior scribe were torn and stained, one sleeve nearly burned away to reveal angry red blisters beneath.
Yet despite her injuries, despite the destruction surrounding her, she wrote with single-minded intensity.
The heir moved closer, their footsteps silent on the stone floor. They watched as her hands so like Kaelion's, long-fingered and elegant despite the ink stains and fresh burns moved across the parchment with desperate precision. The quill she wielded was unmistakably the same one the heir now sought in the void, though here it was still whole, its silver filigree gleaming in the torchlight even as the nib began to blacken and crack with each stroke.
"Come on," she muttered through clenched teeth, her voice raw. A thin trickle of blood escaped the corner of her mouth, but she wiped it away with the back of her hand without breaking her rhythm. "Just... stay... legible..."
The heir leaned over her shoulder, their eyes widening at what she wrote. The page before her showed intricate diagrams of something that made their vision blur when they tried to focus too closely—concentric circles within circles, geometric patterns that hurt to look at, all surrounding a central shape that could only be the Hollow Crown. But not as the heir knew it. This depiction showed the crown fractured, its jagged edges not some aesthetic choice but the visible evidence of containment, like bars on a cage.
The notes scrawled in the margins in her tight, precise handwriting sent a chill down the heir's spine,
"The vessel is failing.
It speaks through the cracks now.
It will come for him when I'm gone.
Kaelion, if you're reading this, I'm already dead. Don't trust what it offers you."
A thunderous boom shook the vault, sending dust raining from the ceiling. The sister's head snapped up toward the door, where the reinforced metal had begun glowing red-hot. The heir watched her face go pale beneath the blood and soot, watched her eyes dart to a particular stone in the wall one that looked no different from any other to the heir's untrained eye.
With movements born of desperate practice, she folded the page precisely three times, kissed it once, and thrust it into a narrow gap between stones just as, The door exploded inward with a sound like the world breaking apart.
The heir had only a heartbeat to see the figures silhouetted in the doorway tall, radiant, terrible before the memory dissolved in a burst of white light that left them blind and gasping. They tumbled back into the void, their fingers clenched so tightly around the broken quill that silver blood welled up where its sharp edges bit into their palm.
For several long moments, the heir could do nothing but float there, breathing hard as the afterimages of that final moment burned behind their eyelids. The droplets around them had rearranged in their absence, forming a new constellation that pointed unmistakably toward one they hadn't noticed before a black droplet veined with silver, pulsing like an infected wound in the fabric of the void.
Even from this distance, the heir could feel its pull, could sense the terrible knowledge it contained. They knew, with a certainty that chilled their bones, what memory lay trapped within that darkness.
The Bargain.
The moment Kaelion had said yes.
The broken quill in their hand grew warm, then hot, then burning, until the heir cried out in pain. But when they tried to drop it, the implement wouldn't be dislodged it had fused to their flesh, the silver filigree weaving into their skin like living wire. As the pain crested, the heir received one final, fleeting vision,
A hand, their hand, but not their hand reaching into the gap between stones to retrieve a folded page. The texture of parchment against skin. The weight of terrible understanding settling in their chest.
Then nothing.
The heir floated in the void, cradling their injured hand against their chest, staring at the infected droplet that held the Bargain's memory. The quill's binding had changed something fundamental in them, they could feel its knowledge seeping into their bones, its purpose settling onto their shoulders like a mantle.
They knew now why they'd been led here.
Knew what they had to do next.
With a deep breath that wasn't really a breath at all in this place between places, the heir reached out toward the black droplet with their quill-bonded hand. The void seemed to hold its breath as their fingers made contact. And then.