Far from Westwood, past the frayed edge of any mortal cartographer's ink and beyond even the memory of stars, floats a phantom island locked in a dusk that never ends.
The cliffs rise like fangs from an endless sea, sheathed in translucent wards that shimmer with colours no human eye can name or find…sigils woven into the very stone, older than written language, older than time. The air hums with restrained power, as if the island itself remembers every secret it has ever swallowed.
Above it, the sky is a perfect imitation of night…but wrong. The stars do not move. They do not pulse. They hang like eyes, unblinking and watchful, suspended over the tallest of towers, whose blade-like spire seems to pierce even the heavens. Here, darkness is not the absence of light, but the presence of something much older.
This is the Citadel of the Northern Vale, only visible to a few.
And at its heart, buried beneath veils of paradox spells and cloaked from all but the highest sight, lies the Circular Chamber…a room without beginning or end, corners or truth. It is a place where time coils back on itself and memory cannot be trusted.
Six robed figures stand in utter stillness, forming a perfect ring around a pool of liquid starlight that stirs even in silence. The surface does not reflect, but reveals. Always moving. Always watching.
Each figure wears a mask.
No two are the same. All terrible in their own way…crafted from metals forgotten, bone etched with unspeakable runes, and stone that breathes when no one is looking. Identity here is not worn, but buried.
The pool ripples.
Then flares…suddenly, violently…as a lance of silver fractures across its surface, spreading like lightning caught in crystal. The flare strikes a faint, faded glyph on the map of the world below. A warded place, long forgotten. A name half-swallowed by dust.
Westwood.
Another flare. Brighter. Louder. The pool trembles.
Every masked head turns.
"The Vault seal has been tampered with," says the figure at the head of the ring. Her mask is pure silver, shaped like twin crescent blades meeting at the crown. Her voice is precise and cold, honed like a ritual knife. "The Finch node has been activated."
A rustle of unease moves through the circle…not bodies shifting, but intention. Like a great bird drawing breath.
"I thought that site was inert," murmurs a figure in a dull bronze mask, pitted like it was dug from deep within the earth. His voice grinds like stone against stone. "The Vault was marked dormant. That node shouldn't have pulsed unless…"
"...unless someone with blood access entered," Silver Mask finishes, without inflection. But her silence afterward speaks volumes.
Another Councillor leans forward. His robe is ash-grey, and his mask is wrapped in spectral glyphs that shimmer between languages. "Thorne was sent to observe. Nothing more."
"He was instructed not to intervene," drawls a fourth figure, whose voice is smooth and amused, feminine but androgynous, dangerous in its pleasure. Their mask is carved from mirror-black obsidian…half comedy, half tragedy, a theatre mask split by a jagged line.
"And yet..." they add, as the pool flickers again.
The liquid light shifts…becoming an image. Three figures. One glowing faintly with inherited magic. One cloaked in a controlled firelight. And one padded with disdain and fur.
"They've entered the Vault," Grey Mask breathes. "She's gone below."
"She's not delaying," says another. "She's accelerating."
"She's walking Isadora's path," says a seventh voice. Dread, flat and factual.
"No," Silver Mask says quietly. "She's rewriting it."
A hush falls.
And then, carefully, from the Bronze Mask: "She wasn't supposed to reach the property yet. The bindings…"
"Failed," Silver says. "Or were dismantled. From within or without. Either way, someone wanted her to find it."
That lands like a curse. The others grow very still.
"Shall we retrieve them?" asks the one in the grey-wrapped mask.
A long pause follows…measured not in seconds, but in shifts of magic.
Silver Mask tilts her head.
"No," she says at last. "Let them go deeper."
Murmurs break like distant thunder.
"Let them open the doors they were never meant to. Let them believe they are uncovering lost truth. If they return with knowledge intact…"
She steps forward. Only one step. The circle does not move.
"—we will decide what is kept. What is destroyed. And what is taken from them."
Her voice softens to a whisper sharp enough to cut.
"And we will take it."
The pool dims.
The chamber quiets, but not peacefully. The stillness is too exact. Too heavy. It settles like dust on a tomb long sealed.
And somewhere, far below, a Vault breathes open.
Meanwhile, in the Vault beneath Westwood...
The doorway yawns into shadow, leading them down, and down, and down.
Elara moves with one hand on the damp wall, the other clutching the witch-forged key. It pulses faintly in her grip…not hot, not cold. Aware.
Each step feels older than the last. Etched glyphs glimmer faintly beneath dust and moss, humming an almost-melody she can't place but feels in her chest, like déjà vu from another life.
Moony pads behind her, fur bristling slightly. "I would like to officially register my disapproval of this excursion."
"You always disapprove," Elara murmurs.
"I disapprove when we follow cryptic staircases into potentially haunted basements beneath magical graveyards, yes. Very consistently."
Rowan says nothing.
The further they go, the narrower it gets.
"Are we sure this isn't just one giant metaphor for bad decisions?" Elara mutters.
Rowan glances over his shoulder. "Stay alert. These tunnels predate the settlement. Possibly the Founding."
Elara's brows lift. "And yet here we are, walking into them like tourists on a cursed ghost tour."
"Do you ever stop talking?" Rowan asks, a bit annoyed.
"Do you ever stop glowering?"
"Only when I'm unconscious."
"Tempting."
He lets out a sharp breath that might be a suppressed laugh.
Moony grumbles under his breath. "If you two could flirt slightly less during our impending doom, that would be much appreciated."
"Who's flirting?" Rowan says stiffly.
"I think I'm flirting," Elara admits. "You're just brooding rhythmically."
The tunnel finally levels out, and opens into a circular chamber, with another pedestal at its centre.
Vaulted ceiling, etched stone, broken chains.
The runes glow faintly with residual energy…spirals, keys, open eyes.
The magic here isn't gone.
It's waiting.
"What is this?" Elara breathes out in awe.
"A containment room," Rowan says.
He crouches beside one of the melted chains. "But not for long. These weren't broken…they were unravelled."
Moony sniffs the air. "Something left this place. Something old."
Before they can respond, a stone door behind them slams shut with a thunderous boom.
Elara jumps. "Was that you?!"
"I didn't touch anything!" Rowan barks. "The threshold must've auto-locked."
Elara glares at the room. "Of course it did. We're in a murder-vault with a flair for dramatic timing."
"Add in...literal chains," Moony notes.
They all freeze as a whisper stirs the air. Feminine. Familiar.
"...keeper..."
Elara's spine stiffens. "That's her voice. That's Aunt Isadora."
The pedestal glows brighter, reacting…no, recognizing.
"It's keyed to you," Rowan says, voice tight.
"Or to the key," Elara offers, holding it up.
He shakes his head. "No. This is blood magic. It's responding to you."
Her stomach knots. She swallows.
"Tell me why you're really here."
Rowan is quiet for a moment.
Then:
"The Council sent me. I was meant to observe you. Contain any...escalation."
She stares at him. "So I'm what…an asset? A threat?"
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to."
But instead of storming off…or worse, crying…she places her hand on the pedestal.
The Vault responds.
A pulse surges through the floor, lighting the spirals in a sequence like awakening circuitry.
Elara feels it…not just in her skin, but in her name. Something below the stone stirs. Not a sound, not a tremor…but a presence.
A second voice echoes, clear as a bell: "Daughter of Finch...Keeper of Key..."
Moony bolts to the far wall. "I really, really don't like this."
The pedestal sinks, revealing a circular lift bathed in violet light.
Rowan grabs Elara's arm. "We don't know what's down there."
"We didn't know what was up here either," she replies softly. "She trusted me to follow through."
His hand lingers on her sleeve. His eyes search hers. And…for a second…something else passes between them.
Then he lets her go.
They step onto the platform.
The descent is slow. Uneasy. The air thickens with layered spells and pressure, like being watched by something very old and very patient.
The space opens below…a vast antechamber of plinths and stone.
"This is a crypt," Rowan mutters.
"No...a memory," Elara corrects, drawn toward the mural on the wall. A woman in firelight, moths and stars circling her like guardians.
"Aunt Isadora?" she breathes.
Moony pads toward a plinth. "Look…these sigils match her gravestone."
Elara's fingers hover over the central painted moth. The moment she touches it, the room erupts in light. The Vault blooms awake. A hidden slot clicks open.
Inside: A book.
Bound in deep velvet black. Stamped with a spiral-moth emblem. The title glows softly:
The Archive of Keepers.
She opens it.
Blank.
Then, slowly, shimmering ink begins to scrawl across the page:
"The Vault knows who you are."
And beneath that:
Elara Finch.