The entrance to the final gate was unlike anything Elowen had seen. A monolithic temple built from black stone and midnight—its walls carved with stars that glowed faintly in the dark. Vines clung to every surface, blooming with flowers that shimmered silver like moonlight caught in dew.
Ashen stood beside her, staring at the doorway. "This place feels… ancient."
Elowen nodded. "Older than even Aeron, maybe. Or maybe it's where he was born."
They stepped forward. The doors opened without a sound.
Inside, the air was thick with power. Not heavy like in the Mirror Grove, or suffocating like the Thorn-Faced Gate. This magic pulsed like a heartbeat. A rhythm Elowen felt in her veins.
They passed through a corridor lit by floating lights. Mosaics lined the walls—images of a celestial tree, a woman giving birth beneath a bleeding moon, a god weeping into fire.
One mosaic stopped Elowen in her tracks.
It showed her.
Or someone who looked like her.
A girl with silver hair, arms outstretched, her chest pierced by a star.
Ashen noticed it too. "That's you."
"No," she whispered. "That's the first."
As they walked deeper, the air grew colder. Symbols glowed under their feet. The deeper they ventured, the more time seemed to unravel. Ashen looked around, disoriented. "Do you hear that?"
Elowen paused. "Hear what?"
He tilted his head. "Laughter. Children. Crying. But it's distant—like echoes through time."
She closed her eyes, listening. The sounds were there—lives layered over one another, trapped in this place.
"Aeron built this gate not just to seal power," she murmured. "But to imprison memory itself."
At the end of the corridor was a hall filled with silence. In its center, a pool of still water, and above it, a tree without roots, suspended in the air.
The Tree of Echoes.
Elowen stepped to the pool's edge. Her reflection looked back—except it wasn't quite her.
It blinked before she did. Moved differently. And then it spoke.
"Do you wish to know the truth?"
Elowen nodded.
The reflection dissolved.
And the visions came.
She saw the first bloodline—formed in the womb of a star, shaped by sorrow and sacrifice. The Stillwoods were once a cradle of light, where the first daughters walked with gods, bearing wounds that sang.
She saw Aeron, once a healer of stars, watching his wife die over and over in time loops he could not stop. In desperation, he sought forbidden paths, and made a pact with the void. It gave him eternity—but stripped him of empathy. He became more than man, and less than god.
She saw her mother—kneeling before the tree, giving Elowen her essence, carving her soul into the child's bones.
And she saw a prophecy.
"When the stillborn star awakens and bleeds, the god shall fall. But so too, shall the world."
Elowen gasped and stepped back from the pool. Her knees trembled, heart crashing against her ribs.
Ashen caught her. "What did you see?"
She looked at him, eyes wide with pain and understanding. "I am the key. And the weapon."
He held her tighter. "We'll find another way."
But she shook her head. "There isn't one."
Suddenly, the water in the pool rose, forming into the shape of a woman with no face, made entirely of silver mist.
"Elowen, daughter of the Stillwoods. Do you accept the burden of the bloodline?"
Elowen hesitated—not from fear, but from knowing what it meant. The end of who she was. The beginning of something else.
"I do."
The figure touched her chest, and the final seal broke.
A blaze of starlight erupted around her. Her veins glowed silver. Her voice echoed with a thousand ancestors.
She felt their sorrows, their strength, their songs.
The temple trembled.
Ashen stared at her, not with fear—but awe.
"You're becoming what you were born to be."
And Elowen, heart heavy but steady, whispered:
"Yes. A storm in the shape of a girl."
Outside, in the skies above the Stillwoods, the stars flickered—some dimming, some burning brighter.
Far across the world, in his throne of flame, Aeron felt it.
He stood slowly, his hands crackling with black fire.
"The girl is ready."
And he smiled.
"Then let the world burn."