The high peaks of Myrren's Crown were not meant for human dwellings. Wind scoured the slate ridges to bare bone, and the old gods' breath lingered in the ravines like frost that never melted. Yet nestled in the shadow of the highest spur, hidden behind a waterfall that had long since run dry, stood the Vault of Whispers.
It had no official name on any map. Only those who had once served the ancient orders knew of it. And even among those few, fewer still remembered how to enter.
Isolde stepped into the cold chamber, her breath frosting as she lowered the fur-lined hood from her face. She'd climbed alone—three days of silence, carrying a satchel of unbound scrolls, and one name repeating over and over in her thoughts:
Corwin Vale.
The vault had been sealed for a hundred years, locked behind alchemical riddles and sigil-keys forgotten to time. She hadn't broken the seal; she'd been called. The lock unmade itself when she traced the faded glyphs with blood drawn from her own finger.
Now she stood beneath a ceiling of smooth obsidian, the chamber shaped like a downward-pointing cone. Scroll racks spiraled down the walls, most broken, many empty, but a few glimmering faintly with preserved sigil-ink.
In the center of the room stood a pedestal. Upon it: a basin filled with quicksilver.
She approached, hesitating only once.
Her reflection stared back—pale skin, sharp eyes, lips drawn tight with the knowledge of too many secrets. She had once served the Guild of Second Fire, in the years before it was purged. They had branded her an oathbreaker when she refused to turn in her master during the purges. She had fled, like so many others, into silence.
But silence had never been enough.
She reached into her satchel and withdrew a broken pendant: silver and iron fused together by force, its surface engraved with the Ouroboros—though this one coiled around a human skull.
She dropped it into the basin.
The quicksilver shuddered. Then it bloomed outward, becoming a mirror that showed something else:
A ruined watermill. A cracked sphere. A boy with the mark on his hand.
Corwin.
Isolde's fingers twitched. "So it's begun again," she whispered.
She had warned them—warned those who still whispered the old rites in secret—that the Circuit would awaken if one day someone dared to bind its fragments. But no one listened. Not truly.
And now the Vault itself stirred.
Behind her, the scrolls shifted. Windless. Soundless.
One lifted itself from the highest rack and floated down toward her, its seal glowing red.
She caught it before it hit the floor.
It bore a symbol no living alchemist should know: the Tri-Spiral of Transcension, the last sigil of the First Alchemist.
Isolde unrolled it with trembling hands.
Inside were instructions. Locations. Warnings.
And a name. Not Corwin's.
Not even the Carrion's.
"Lumen Astra — Architect of the Broken Veil"
She swallowed hard.
That name hadn't been spoken in a century.
It hadn't needed to be.
Because Lumen Astra was not supposed to be alive.
She folded the scroll with care, tucked it into her coat, and stepped back toward the mouth of the vault.
Outside, a crow waited—silent, with feathers black as pitch and a single white ring around its right eye.
Isolde nodded to it. "Find the boy. Watch him."
The crow took flight, vanishing into the grey clouds above.
And deep in the Vault behind her, something old began to hum again—quiet and steady, like breath returning to lungs long thought dead.