The name didn't come to Aelindra as a thought. It came as a physical invasion. It felt like a shard of ice sliding under her skin, traveling up her arm and settling at the root of her tongue. It was heavy, ancient, and tasted of iron, a flavor that coated her mouth and made her throat constrict. This wasn't a piece of her own mind returning; it was a foreign entity, a secret that had been buried so deep in the foundations of the kingdom that the air itself seemed to resist its utterance.
She looked at Severin. He was already doubled over, his fingers clawing at the frost-covered stone of the monastery floor. The Crownfire was reacting to the mental intrusion before the word even left her lips. The amber glow beneath his skin flickered erratically, turning into jagged lines of white-hot lightning that pulsed in time with his frantic heartbeat.
"Don't," he choked out, his voice a raw, sandpaper rasp. He reached out a hand, his fingers twitching as if trying to catch the air. "Aelindra... whatever it is... let it stay in the dark. Don't let it out."
But the bargain was already in motion, fueled by the predatory hunger of the Keeper. The old man was leaning forward, his sightless eyes wide and milky, his scarred throat working with a rhythmic, gulping motion as if he were trying to swallow the very concept of the air between them. The glass shard in Aelindra's hand pulsed with a warm, golden light, the resonance of her father's voice, trapped in that mineral cage, waiting for the price to be paid.
The temptation was a living, breathing thing. It whispered in the back of her mind, a faint, trilling whistle. It was a simple melody, one her father used to play on the wind when the spring crops were high, and the world felt like it had no edges. It was the only thing that made her feel whole, the only piece of her identity that hadn't been scorched by the fire or hollowed out by her magic.
She looked at the Keeper, whose parchment skin seemed to tighten over his bones in anticipation, and then at the Prince, who looked like he was being unmade on the floor.
"Valerius," she whispered.
The name hit the silence of the hall like a sledgehammer hitting a frozen lake.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent. Severin let out a raw, guttural scream that tore through the stagnant air of the monastery. His back arched, his spine snapping taut as a shockwave of amber energy erupted from his chest. It wasn't the controlled fire of a soldier; it was a primal scream of the soul. The force of it threw Aelindra backward, her boots leaves the floor as she was tossed like a ragdoll. The glass shard flew from her hand, spinning through the dim light like a dying star.
Around them, the stone basins shattered into a thousand pieces, the dark, frozen oil splashing across the floor in patterns that looked like Rorschach blots of ink.
Aelindra hit the base of a massive stone pillar, the air driven from her lungs in a painful rush. Her vision blurred, swimming with spots of gold and gray. Through the haze of dust and the static of the magical discharge, she saw Severin collapsed in the center of the hall. He wasn't moving. The vibrant, dangerous fire beneath his skin had gone dark, replaced by a terrifying, hollow grayness that made him look like one of the stone creatures from the Bone Garden.
The Keeper, however, looked transformed. He stood tall, the hunched curve of his spine straightening as the parchment-thin skin of his face flushed with a sudden, unnatural life. He breathed in deeply, his scarred throat expanding, his chest filling with the stolen weight of the name.
"Valerius," the old man repeated, the name sounding like rich, dark music in his dry mouth. "The first-born. The sun that rose before the dawn. The one who was too bright for the crown, and too soft for the shadow. The one they had to cut from the tapestry of Solis to keep the threads from burning."
Aelindra scrambled to her feet, her chest heaving, her hands glowing with a frantic, desperate gold. She rushed to Severin's side, ignoring the way her own head spun. "Severin! Severin, look at me!"
She reached for him, but the moment her fingers touched the skin of his neck, she recoiled. He didn't just feel cold; he felt empty. It was the cold of a void, the temperature of a star that had gone out a thousand years ago. There was no resonance, no heat, no "him" left in the contact.
She turned her gaze to the Keeper, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp anger that burned hotter than the golden light in her palms. "Give it back! You're killing him! Give him back the name!"
The Keeper laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over a fresh grave. He gestured with a bony finger to the floor where the glass shard lay. It was no longer glowing. It was dark, the reflection of her father replaced by a swirling, black mist that seemed to drink the light around it.
"The bargain is struck, little Anchor," the Keeper rasped, his voice now vibrant and terrifyingly clear. "You gave a name to the Prince. But you forgot that in the House of the Hollowed, names are not just words. They are anchors. You have anchored him to a ghost, and the ghost is pulling him down into the deep."
Aelindra looked back at Severin. His eyes were open now, but they weren't the amber she knew. They were a dull, flat black, the pupils blown wide as if he were staring into the heart of a sunless world.
"Severin?" she whispered, her voice trembling. She reached out again, more gently this time, cupping his jaw.
He didn't answer. He looked through her, his gaze fixed on the shadowed rafters of the ceiling.
"I remember the nursery," he said. His voice was a monotonous, horrifying drone, devoid of the cadence of the man she had climbed the mountain with. "I remember a shadow by the window. He was older. He was... he was the one who was supposed to take the fire. He was the one my mother loved more."
He sat up slowly, his movements robotic and jarring. He looked at his hands, his soot-stained fingers trembling with a fine, rhythmic palsy. "Why did I forget him, Aelindra? Why is there a hole in my heart where my brother should be? I can feel the space where he was cut out. It's bleeding. My blood is crying out for someone who doesn't exist."
The Keeper stepped closer, his cataracts milk-white in the dim light, a predator sensing a kill. "Because the Veiled Eye does not just kill, Prince. They erase. They take the threads of a life and they unweave them until there is nothing left but a silence in the history books. They made you forget so you would be easier to mold. They made the kingdom forget so there would be no civil war between the two suns. They buried the first-born in the dark so the second could be their puppet."
Aelindra felt a cold dread settle in her stomach, heavy as lead. She looked at the jars on the shelves, thousands of them, stretching into the gloom. How many other brothers were in there? How many mothers and fathers had been "unwoven" to keep the peace of a kingdom ruled by masks? How much of the "natural order" of Solis was just a tapestry of lies?
She reached for the glass shard on the floor, her fingers brushing the dark surface. This time, there was no whistle. Instead, she felt a cold, oily sensation slide into her mind, a memory that wasn't hers, a leak from the Keeper's hoard.
She saw a young boy, perhaps ten years old, with Severin's eyes and a smile that felt like the morning. He was standing on a balcony of the royal palace, a crown of iron and glass resting on his brow. Beside him stood a man in a silver mask, a member of the Veiled Eye.
"The fire is too much for him," the masked man whispered in the vision, his voice like a snake in dry grass. "He will burn the city before he can rule it. He is a flaw in the design. We must take the thread and weave a new one."
The vision snapped, the force of it sending a spike of pain through Aelindra's temples. She gasped, falling back against the stone.
"He's alive," she whispered, looking up at Severin. "The brother. Valerius. They didn't kill him, Severin. You can't erase a soul, only the memory of it. They just... took him. They hid him in the place where the silence comes from."
Severin looked at her, and for a second, the color flickered back into his eyes, a tiny, guttering flame in a vast, dark cathedral. The heat returned to his skin in a sudden, painful surge, and he let out a sharp hiss of breath.
"Where?" he asked. The word was a low, dangerous rasp, the sound of a blade being drawn across a stone.
The Keeper pointed his bony finger toward the far end of the High Pass, toward the jagged, needle-like peaks that marked the absolute border of the kingdom, where the sky met the void. "The Shadow-Hold. The place where the broken threads are kept. If you want your father's voice, little Anchor, and if you want your brother's soul, Prince... you must go where the Eye is always watching. You must go to the place where they keep the things they couldn't burn."
Severin stood up, the movement fluid and predatory. The hollow grayness was still there, lurking at the edges of his vision, but the fire was returning, fueled now by a cold, sharp-edged rage that felt more dangerous than his earlier outbursts. This wasn't a flare; it was a furnace.
He looked at Aelindra, and for the first time, there was a distance in his gaze that chilled her more than the snow. He didn't reach for her hand. He didn't offer her the protection of his shadow. He looked at her as if she were a stranger who had just handed him a poisoned cup.
"You should have let the name stay buried," he said, his voice flat and devoid of the heat they had shared in the cave. "You traded my peace for your past, Aelindra. Was the whistle worth the hole in my head?"
He turned without waiting for an answer and walked toward the arched opening of the monastery, his boots crunching loudly in the silver dust.
Aelindra stood in the center of the silent hall, the dark glass shard heavy in her hand. She had gotten the name, but the cost was staggering. She had lost the man who had looked at her with such intensity in the cave, and in his place was a vengeful ghost with a crown of fire. And the whistle, the sound of her father's voice, still felt like a lie. It was a hollow sound; an echo of a life that had been destroyed by the very secret she now held.
She looked back at the Keeper, who was already retreating into the shadows of the inner sanctum, his work done.
"Wait!" she called out, her voice cracking. "What about the bargain? I gave the name! Give me the memory! I want the sound of his voice!"
The Keeper stopped, his sightless face turning back to her one last time. He looked almost pitying.
"The memory is in the glass, little Anchor," he whispered. "But as long as the brother lives in the Shadow-Hold, the whistle will always sound like a scream. You did not just get your father back. You got the reason he died. He died keeping that name from the fire, Aelindra. He died so the Prince wouldn't have to feel what he is feeling now."
The door creaked shut, leaving Aelindra alone in the white stillness.
She lifted the glass to her ear, and for a second, she heard it, a faint, beautiful, trilling whistle. But as the melody reached its peak, it twisted, turning into the sound of a boy's voice calling out for a brother who had already forgotten him. It was a sound of absolute abandonment.
Aelindra tucked the shard into her tunic, her jaw tightening. She didn't have time to mourn the girl she used to be. She had a Prince to chase, a brother to find, and a kingdom of masks to tear down.
As she stepped out into the blinding white light of the High Pass, she saw Severin's silhouette in the distance, a dark scar against the endless white. He wasn't waiting for her. He was moving toward the Shadow-Hold with a singular, terrifying purpose.
But she was an Anchor. And she knew that some things, once tied, could never truly be broken, not even by the Veiled Eye. She began to run, her boots sinking deep into the snow, following the trail of the man who was now haunted by a name.