Keiran didn't open the door when the morning came.
Light bled pale through the fog, too thin to warm the floorboards. The stone she had given him lay on the table beside the broken wand, still warm to the touch, though he hadn't held it in hours.
The mark on his wrist pulsed again—gentle, rhythmic. Not pain. Not warning.
A beat.
Not his.
Something else's.
He hadn't lit a fire. He hadn't eaten. He hadn't spoken.
But the house whispered all the same.
Floorboards creaked where no weight pressed. The windowpane breathed faintly, as if the glass remembered watching something it couldn't explain.
He stood, finally.
And the silence followed him.
It wasn't empty. It was pregnant—full of names unsaid, memories unlived. The kind of silence you get before a mirror cracks or a truth breathes for the first time in years.
He reached for the wand half.
Not the stone. Not yet.
He gripped the broken end of the wand and pressed it against the wall where the Warden had stood last night.
Nothing.
Then—
A whisper. Not sound. A friction in the air, like a match almost striking.
She knew more than she said.
He turned from the wall and picked up the cloak she'd barely left wet footprints over. The hem shimmered faintly—Runes. Embedded, sleeping, until worn by one recognized.
It didn't answer to him.
But it didn't reject him either.
Tethered.
The word clung to him.
It wasn't a curse. Not exactly.
It was a connection.
And something—someone—on the other end.
He wrapped the wand and the stone in a strip of cloth and tucked them into the satchel beneath the floorboard. Just beside the journal he hadn't dared open since waking with the false name: Vayne Orrell.
His fingers hovered over the journal's leather spine.
The mark throbbed harder.
Not a warning.
A pulse.
Open it.
He did.
Pages. Blank at first. He flipped through, faster, until—
A symbol. Burned into the center of a parchment leaf. Not inked—etched. Carved with something hotter than fire.
The Black Serpent.
A curse-brand of the underworld. A binding mark for those sold into servitude—blood-pacted, soul-shackled.
But something was different.
This serpent had eyes.
And they were looking at him.
He slammed the book shut.
His breath steamed in the cold.
Then—
Another knock.
This one wasn't at the door.
It came from inside the house.
Keiran froze.
The knock came again—from the trapdoor leading to the crawlspace beneath the hearth.
He hadn't opened that since he first rented the place. He hadn't needed to.
A third knock.
Then silence.
He moved toward it slowly, every muscle tight, the mark on his wrist humming now like it knew what lay beneath.
He lifted the hatch.
Nothing but dust.
And then—movement.
A shimmer in the dark.
Not a creature. Not a person.
A shadow. Standing.
No feet. No face. But arms. Shoulders. A head bent slightly, as if waiting.
Keiran didn't speak.
The shadow did.
A voice like rusted bells in wind:
"Return what was borrowed. Take what was left behind."
Then it stepped forward—straight through him.
He gasped. Cold rushed into his lungs.
And when he turned, the shadow was gone.
But the journal lay open on the floor.
A different page.
This one wasn't blank.
At the top: a name.
Not Vayne.
Not Keiran.
Not yet.
Just a mark, and beneath it, in words that shimmered faintly:
"The Solituded One."
His blood turned to ice.
That name—
He didn't know it.
But the mark on his wrist did.
It surged with heat.
And for the first time, it spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside.
"Welcome back."