The storm had started sometime after midnight.
Rain threaded down the windows in silver strands, whispering against the glass like secrets that preferred the dark. Vale House took the weather into itself and made it heavier; beams groaned, carpet swallowed footsteps whole, and the sconces held their breath as if light could attract trouble.
Elma paced the length of her chamber with the fragment in her palm. Warmth bled steady through her skin. The longer she held it, the more its rhythm synced with hers until the difference blurred. The shard hummed—cold and bright—like lightning drawn into her veins.
Calista sat by the window, robe fallen in elegant folds, hair unpinned and careless in a way the house didn't deserve. She watched Elma's orbit without pretending not to.
"Put it down," she murmured.
"It doesn't love being ignored," Elma said.
"It's not alive."
Elma's mouth tilted. "It disagrees."
The fragment answered with a low thrum that Elma felt in her bones, a predatory curiosity tasting her pulse. Calista rose, crossed the room, and reached for Elma's hand. Before her fingers found skin, the shard pulsed hard. Cold spiked up Elma's arm; she hissed, nearly dropping it.
Light tore across the walls.
Not flame. Not lantern. Sigils bloomed in pale gold, arranged in spirals and lines buried beneath paint and polish. The floor answered, etched patterns waking under their feet for the length of a heartbeat. The air thickened, heavy with an old intelligence that didn't care for permission.
Then it was gone.
Dark returned with the storm's breath. Elma's chest worked too fast. Calista's hand hovered an inch from Elma's wrist, steady except for the smallest tremor before she mastered it.
"Elma," she whispered. "What did it show us?"
"What it wanted to," Elma said. "Or what it wanted to see."
"And if it wasn't showing us," Calista said, gaze skimming the corners, "but showing someone else through us?"
"Then we're already late."
Silence pressed close. The house listened like a patient animal.
Calista stepped in anyway, cupping Elma's wrist. "You're shaking."
"Guess I'm human after all."
Calista's eyes dropped to Elma's palm. A faint sigil had branded there, ember-soft under the skin. Anger and fear flickered in her face, quick as lightning behind cloud. Her thumb brushed the mark; the sting eased. The shard snapped back with a jealous pulse.
"You're going to get yourself killed," she said.
"Not before I kill him first."
The queen-mask slipped into place again, but it didn't erase the heat in her eyes. "You think this thing is a key."
"I think it is a key," Elma said, setting the shard on the table. Its glow spilled thin gold across wood. "And it hates being left alone."
The shard obliged with another hum. Wind pressed a palm to the windows. The flame in the wall sconce guttered, almost as if a breath leaned in and stole half of it.
The pulse climbed Elma's spine. Sharp. Intimate. The kind of cold that felt like bright metal. She staggered; Calista caught her by the arm.
The room flashed again.
This time the symbols weren't scattered signs. Lines connected, edges aligned. What rose and fell in the gold was a shape you didn't have to name to understand: a map. Incomplete. Borders dissolved into shadow where the light refused to hold.
"Do you see it?" Elma asked.
"I see something that wants us to go where it points," Calista said, fingers tightening. "And I hate that I'm listening."
The light bled out. The image burned anyway, afterimage ghosting the inside of their eyelids.
"We move," Calista said. "Before the house starts asking the wrong questions."
Elma scooped the fragment. It settled against her skin like a second heart.
They slipped into the corridor. Storm-murk filled the mullions; rugs drowned their steps. The house's stillness trailed them like a predator that appreciated good form.
Halfway to the stair, the shard stung again. Not bright—sharp.
Elma stopped. "Someone's here."
Calista drew the dagger she wore because she'd finally stopped pretending she didn't need one.
They listened. The storm swelled and fell. The corridor held its breath.
The shard's voice pressed against Elma's skull in a thread of cold:
Blood will light the path.
Elma exhaled slow. "It's talking again."
"Only to you," Calista said.
"No," Elma whispered. "To us."
A shadow shifted at the far turn, there and gone. Calista's grip tightened. Elma let her grin show teeth anyway. "We were never safe."
—
Back in the chamber, the shard refused to dim. Its glow painted the walls in roving script, the kind that made you feel read.
Calista sat opposite Elma, hands folded on the table like a queen at war talks. "It's a map."
"It's missing pieces," Elma said.
"What fills them?"
Elma looked at the shard. The answer arrived like frost.
"Blood."
The whisper stitched itself again through Elma's nerves, clearer this time:
Blood will light the path.
Elma and Calista stared at one another. Neither tried to speak first. The unspoken thing between them had learned patience.
[Quest Updated: Crest of the Forgotten]
Clue: Incomplete map requires sacrifice.
Risk: Escalating.
Elma stood, restless. "We can't keep it in here. Kade walks like a man who already knows where you've been."
"He does know," Calista said. "He just likes to test how long we'll pretend he doesn't."
"You trust him?"
"I trust that he wants a future," Calista said. "We have to convince him there's one on our side."
Elma smiled without humor. "I'll add win over the blade with eyes to the list."
The shard warmed, pleased with itself. Lightning purred dull in Elma's veins.
"You heard what it said last," Calista murmured. "You can't free yourself. Not alone."
"I heard."
"Then don't try." Calista's gaze didn't move from hers. "Not without me."
"El—" The leash bit for the thought of a name. Elma swallowed it. "Fine."
The storm didn't answer. It had learned discretion. Somewhere in the old bones of the house, something settled like a decision.
"Sleep," Calista said. "If you can."
"I can't."
"Then pretend." Her mouth softened without permission. "Pick the memory you won't let it eat."
Elma glanced at the faint brand on her palm. "I already did."
"What did you choose?"
"The one where I first decided I belonged to myself," Elma said. "I'm not giving that to anyone."
Calista's breath caught, small and unwilling. "Good."
She rose, paused at the door, and did the smallest dangerous thing: rested her fingertips on the table between them. Not a touch. An outline where one should be. "When it asks for blood," she said quietly, "I'll go first."
Elma's voice came out rougher than she meant. "You won't."
"I will," Calista said, and left before the house could memorize the vow.
The room exhaled around Elma. Nobody moved.
The shard's hum settled into the low range that made thought feel like it had edges. Elma wrapped it in linen, more ritual than protection, and slid it into the hollow she'd taught the floor to keep. When the board sighed shut, the brand on her palm cooled a shade.
Sleep didn't happen. She lay in the dark and counted the space between thunder. Every three beats, the shard's pulse threaded one of her own. Not possession. Partnership. The unnerving kind.
She didn't get to decide which counted as progress.
—
In another wing of the manor, Kade paused mid-step. The lantern in his hand flickered once, then twice, before dimming entirely. He glanced toward the storm-lashed windows, but the sensation that crawled over his skin wasn't weather.
"It's awake," he murmured, almost to himself.
Far above, in the master's study, Nitron's eyes snapped open.