Sleep did not offer an escape. It offered a memory.
Sera dreamt in a language her modern soul did not know but her heart remembered. She dreamt of cool stone corridors and the scent of night-blooming jasmine. She dreamt of the heavy, unfamiliar weight of a silver crown on her head and the soft, sad melody of a lute played in a distant courtyard. It was the world of Eldoria, the beautiful, tragic kingdom from The Ashen Crown, but it was not a story she was reading. It was a life she was living.
She woke with a gasp, the ghost of the phantom melody still echoing in her ears. The first thing she did, the first thing she had done a hundred times since the previous evening, was look at her wrist.
The mark was still there.
A perfect, silvery crescent moon, etched into her skin as if it had been drawn with liquid starlight. It didn't hurt. It wasn't raised. It was just… there. A calm, beautiful, and utterly impossible fact.
She had spent hours on the internet, a frantic, logical search for a rational explanation. A rare skin condition. A chemical reaction to a new soap. A bizarre form of contact dermatitis. But her heart, the illogical, traitorous part of her that believed in magic and happy endings, knew the truth.
It was the Ashen Curse. The first mark of Princess Seraphina's tragic fate.
"You're losing your mind, Reed," she whispered to her reflection, her voice a shaky attempt at her usual practicality. But the woman staring back, with her wide, haunted eyes and the impossible silver mark on her wrist, did not look convinced.
She covered it with a wide, leather-banded watch and walked out the door, determined to force reality to behave, to bend the world back into the logical, predictable shape it was supposed to have.
***
The archive was her sanctuary, her fortress of solitude. The smell of old paper and history was usually a comfort, but today it felt different. It felt… thin. Like a veil between two worlds that was beginning to tear.
She tried to lose herself in her work, to focus on the tedious, soul-crushing inventory list that her new, soulless boss had assigned her. But her mind kept drifting. She found herself researching ancient lunar symbology, looking for any historical precedent for the mark on her wrist, a desperate attempt to find a logical explanation for a magical problem.
"Finding anything interesting?"
The voice was warm, amused, and belonged to someone standing far too close to her personal space. Sera jumped, her heart leaping into her throat.
A man stood beside her desk, leaning against a bookshelf with an easy, casual grace. He was handsome, but in a way that was the complete antithesis of Caspian Thorne's cold, severe perfection. His smile was genuine, crinkling the corners of his warm, intelligent eyes. He had an air of relaxed confidence, a man who was comfortable in his own skin and in the world.
"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," he said, his smile widening. He held out a hand. "Detective Leo Kim. I have an appointment with the university archivist, but it seems she's out sick. They told me you were the next best thing."
"I'm the only other thing," Sera replied, her professional guard snapping back into place, though she couldn't help but be a little disarmed by his charm. She shook his hand. It was warm and firm.
"I'm investigating a series of… unusual occurrences in this district," he explained, pulling up a chair and sitting down as if they were old friends. "Reports of strange shadows in alleys, symbols appearing on old buildings overnight and then vanishing by dawn. It's all probably just elaborate student pranks, but my captain wants me to be thorough." He leaned forward, his gaze direct and curious. "I heard you were the resident expert on local folklore and obscure symbology."
Sera's blood ran cold. Strange shadows. Strange symbols.
She hesitated, her first instinct to retreat, to hide the impossible truth of her own experience. But there was something in his eyes, a genuine, open-minded curiosity, that made her reconsider.
"I may have some knowledge," she said carefully. She sketched the crescent moon symbol on a piece of scrap paper. "Have you seen anything like this?"
Leo's eyes widened in recognition. "That's the one," he said, pulling out his own notebook. He had half a dozen sketches of the same symbol, found on old stone walls and forgotten archways around the campus. "The folklore archives call it the 'Ashen Mark,' but the texts are all fragmented. They say it's a sign of a story… bleeding through."
He said the words so calmly, so matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather. He wasn't mocking her. He was collaborating. For the first time since the mark had appeared, she didn't feel like she was losing her mind. She felt like she was a detective in her own mystery.
She found herself opening up, her passion for stories and history bubbling to the surface. She told him about the legends, the folklore, the forgotten tales of magic that were woven into the very fabric of the old university. He listened, not with the condescending amusement of Caspian Thorne, but with the rapt attention of a true believer.
He was the first person to see her world and not call it a fantasy.
Their animated discussion was cut short by a familiar, chillingly calm voice.
"Ms. Reed. Are you on your break?"
Caspian Thorne stood at the end of the aisle, his arms crossed, his expression a mask of cold, severe disapproval. He looked from Sera, to the handsome, smiling detective, to the scattered books and notes on her desk, and his eyes, for a fraction of a second, seemed to grow even colder.
"This is Detective Kim," Sera said, her own tone turning defensive, a student caught passing notes in class. "He's here on university business."
Caspian's gaze swept over Leo, a brief, dismissive assessment. "I see," he said, his voice dripping with ice. "While your… consultation… is no doubt fascinating, the medieval codices will not inventory themselves. You have a deadline, Ms. Reed. I suggest you remember that."
He turned and walked away, leaving a trail of arctic chill in his wake.
Leo let out a low whistle. "And I thought my boss was a jerk," he said with a sympathetic grin. "He seems… pleasant."
"He's a soulless automaton who feeds on the misery of others," Sera replied, the words a bitter hiss.
Leo chuckled. He stood, pulling a card from his pocket. "Well, if you find anything else… interesting… or if your boss spontaneously combusts from a lack of a soul, give me a call." He winked. "I'd love to continue this conversation."
He left, leaving Sera with a strange, unfamiliar warmth in her chest and a business card in her hand.
***
The rest of the day was a tedious, frustrating blur of cataloging ancient books under the weight of Caspian's silent, oppressive supervision. He didn't speak to her, but she could feel his eyes on her, a constant, analytical pressure.
She was working on a particularly heavy, leather-bound tome from the 14th century, a book of forgotten astronomical charts, when a small, flat object slipped from between its pages and fluttered to the floor.
She knelt to pick it up. It was a pressed flower. An old, faded, and impossibly delicate thing.
And the moment she touched it, a wave of sensory information, a memory that was not her own, washed over her. The scent of a castle garden in the rain. The feeling of a heavy velvet cloak. The sound of a distant, sad melody played on a lute.
Princess Seraphina's memories.
The scent of the flower was overwhelming, instantly recognizable. It was a Lunar Seraph, a flower from the world of Eldoria. A flower that, in her world, had been extinct for centuries.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. The line between her world and the story was not just blurring anymore. It was shattering.
She looked up, her eyes wide with a wild, terrified panic.
And she saw him.
Caspian Thorne was standing at the far end of the archive, watching her. His usual mask of cold, bored indifference was gone. His face was pale, his eyes wide with a look of profound, haunted, and utterly impossible recognition.
He wasn't looking at her.
He was looking at the flower in her hand.
The chapter ends there. On their locked gaze across the silent, dusty archive. A shared, impossible secret now hanging in the air between them. He, the author, seeing a piece of his own forgotten, magical world made real. And she, the heroine, seeing the first, terrifying, beautiful proof that she was not, in fact, going mad at all. And neither of them had any idea why the other understood.
***