Before the Gate.Before Kaelion.Before the hunt.
There was silence.
Wren stood at the edge of a spiraled marble dais in the Veiled Archive's heart, staring down at the fractured remains of a spirit mirror. Light refracted in sharp beams from the glass, streaking the walls like memory trying to escape.
A girl lay unconscious beside it.
Her name was Talia.
Wren had been sixteen.Talia, only fifteen.
They were both prodigies—chosen early for their clarity of spirit and attunement to forgotten things. Chosen by whispers, not titles. The Archive watched them with quiet reverence.
But Talia had been gentler.She smiled more.She traced birds in the margins of restricted scrolls.She hummed when she studied, walked barefoot in the memory gardens, and swore every dream she had meant something. Wren had always admired that—a softness that didn't make her weak, but luminous.
She was also the first among them to touch the Gate through a dream.
The first to be called carrier.
Wren remembered the day it happened. The way Talia's voice shook when she said she saw spirals in the clouds. How her eyes wouldn't quite focus afterward. How she had asked Wren, almost playfully, "Do you ever feel like something's watching you back?"
Wren had laughed at the time.She regretted that now.
The Archive Elders hadn't punished her.
They'd promoted her.
They told Wren it was a sign. That Talia had potential the others lacked. They gave her more scrolls, more silence, more solitude. They assigned her a private Keeper. One Wren had never seen speak aloud.
Talia had changed after that.
She stopped doodling.Stopped humming.Stopped meeting Wren's gaze in the halls.
Wren clenched her jaw as she picked her way across the shattered ritual ring. The glyphs carved into the marble were still warm. Fresh. The air reeked of incense, wet paper, and something sweet—like blood boiled too long.
They had made Talia try again.
And she hadn't said no.
She wanted to help.To understand.
The second dream hadn't ended.
By the time Wren had been called to the ritual chamber, the spirit mirror had already cracked, and the lights had all gone dark. Talia lay twitching on the stone, spiral marks crawling across her temple like ink spilled with purpose.
Wren dropped to her knees beside her and whispered her name.
"Talia. It's me. Wake up."
Talia didn't wake.
She was murmuring something—soft, rhythmic. A name, maybe. But the syllables didn't belong to any language Wren had ever heard. It wasn't prayer.
It was echo.
A cold voice behind her said, "We needed to know how deep it could go."
Wren turned. An Elder she didn't know by name stood in the shadows, robes heavy with charm tokens.
"You pushed her too far."
"She reached. We simply let her touch what was already reaching back."
"She was fifteen."
"She was chosen."
Wren remembered that moment more clearly than any ritual, any lesson, any archive hall. Not because of what the Elder said.
But because of what she didn't.
No remorse.No pause.No doubt.
Just calculation.
That was the last day Wren walked through the Archive gates.
Not because they exiled her.
Because she no longer believed the Archive was built to protect anything at all.
She hadn't meant to cry.
Not in front of them. Not in front of Talia.
But when she was finally alone—days later, far from the Archive—she wept until her lungs gave out.
No one came looking for her. No elder demanded answers. No friend slipped a note under her door.
Because there was no one left who understood what had been taken.
The Archive didn't deal in grief.
Only in knowledge.
She had walked their spiral halls since she was eight years old. She had memorized every binding seal, passed every trial, recited every ancient name.
But no one had taught her what to do when the people you trusted began to look like the ones you feared.
That night, she burned the outer page of her assignment scroll in the roots of the Silence Tree and whispered her last vow as a Keeper:
I will remember what you tried to erase.
That was the only promise she'd kept.
She stole one book before she left. One text sealed beneath ashglass. A ritual of grounding—not to suppress the Spiral, but to anchor it. She didn't even know if it worked.
But she kept it. Just in case.
Just in case she ever met someone like Talia again.
Now
Wren sat just outside the Worldpine, knees drawn up to her chest, watching Kaelion sleep for the first time in days.
His breath was steady.The Spiral was quiet.
But her hands still trembled.
Talia's face wouldn't leave her.Neither would the sound of the mirror breaking.
She reached inside her cloak and pulled out a folded piece of parchment—soft from wear, smudged in places from sweat and ash.
A bird, drawn in rough charcoal.The wings were crooked. The beak too small.
Talia had slipped it under Wren's door the night before her first trial.
Back when they still thought they were safe.
Wren stared at it for a long time.
Then folded it again.
She tucked it back into the lining of her sleeve and rose slowly. Sat beside Kaelion.
She watched the way his chest rose and fell. The way his fingers twitched slightly when he dreamed. The Spiral had receded—for now. But the second seal was gone.
The next one wouldn't wait.
Wren didn't realize her hand was still trembling until Nyro pressed his head into her palm.
The spirit-wolf had crept close sometime after nightfall, silent as the shadows themselves. She curled her fingers through his fur and breathed in the earthy scent of forest and ash and warmth.
"I'm not ready for this," she murmured.
Nyro didn't move.
"I thought I was. When I found him. When I felt the mark resonate. I thought maybe this time would be different."
Her voice broke.
"I can't lose another."
She reached out slowly and rested her fingers just above Kaelion's wrist, feeling for the pulse beneath the skin.
"I won't lose you too," she whispered.
Then she turned her gaze to the dark horizon.
And waited for morning.