The Ash Circle felt colder now. Not in temperature, but in weight. As if every stone remembered something Elira did not — and resented her for it.
The glyph on the stone key had started to show up elsewhere. Carved faintly into the corners of old tapestries, etched along books she'd passed dozens of times. As if it had always been there… waiting for her to notice.
She didn't sleep. Not after Tovin's voice changed. Not after the note in her own hand.
Something was slipping through.
Elira began marking each place the glyph appeared. And every time she did, a memory tried to surface — but scattered like ash in her grip.
Then, a moment.
In the lower garden, near the blackened tree her mother once used for scrying, she touched a root where the glyph was carved faintly. The world tilted.
A flash—
A man in red robes burning. Her own hands raised. A voice crying "Serelune, don't—!"
Then silence.
Elira gasped, stumbling back, vision blurred.
She wasn't alone.
Vireya stood watching her from across the garden wall. Silent. Still cloaked. Eyes unreadable.
Before Elira could speak, Vireya simply said, "He lied to protect you."
And vanished into the smoke that hadn't been there before.
Elsewhere…
Caelum reached the borders of Daggerdeep, the outer fortress guarding the vampire court. It hadn't changed. The walls still bled when it rained.
His aide, Orien, waited for him beneath the bone-arch gate.
"You're late," Orien said.
"I'm not."
"They know about the key."
Caelum said nothing.
"The Order of the Pale Flame has moved near the fifth seal's suspected boundary. They have glyph readers with them. One of them bears the mark."
Caelum's gaze sharpened. "Which mark?"
Orien looked at him. "The one only she used to draw."
Caelum closed his eyes. He remembered her sketching it in charcoal beside a fire. Serelune, not Elira. Laughing once, before the end.
"That seal was meant to remain hidden."
"It still is," Orien replied. "But she's waking it. Without knowing."
A pause.
"And the court expects answers," Orien added. "Especially from the one who swore to bind her fate."
Later That Night – Elira's Quarters
Elira sat at her mirror, tracing the glyph over and over. Her reflection shimmered.
Then changed.
Not completely — just subtly. Her face shifted into something more angular, more regal. Older, but not in age — in memory.
A voice whispered behind her — not in the room, but inside her:
"You gave it all away. But it will not stay buried forever."
She spun around.
No one.
But a book had fallen from her shelf. One that hadn't been opened in years. One her mother once said was *cursed by memory itself*.
Inside, pressed between pages, was a folded strip of red parchment.
No words.
Just a burned glyph.
And a scent that made her heart seize—
Ash and roses.
The scent from the night her family died.
And the same scent in her only true memory of Caelum — the one she could never place, but always dreamed.