*Jiselle*
It was supposed to be simple. Ink. Parchment. Memory.
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I knelt on the floor of the council chamber with a fresh scroll laid flat across the stone, my fingers smeared with charcoal, breath steady as I began the first stroke. My rune. The one that had branded itself across my skin weeks ago, burning violet in my sleep, pulsing whenever the leyline stirred.
The second followed. Nate’s. I didn’t need to look to remember it. I’d traced it in my mind a thousand times. It was the
anchor. The protector. Flame and vow.
And then the third.
I hesitated. My fingers trembled slightly as I lifted the charcoal. I wasn’t sure if I was drawing Ethan’s or something older. But I saw it clearly in my head–the shape that had burned onto his shoulder, glowing in gold and shadow.
I pressed the tip to the page.
The moment the third curve was complete, the parchment ignited. Not with flame–not exactly. It withered.
The runes bled. Ink turned to ash. The charcoal cracked. A hiss sliced through the air like steam escaping the center of the world, and my breath caught as the scroll crumbled to dust in my lap.
“Shit,” I whispered, jerking back.
Across the room, Bastain lifted his head from a cluster of scrolls. “You tried to fuse them.”
I wiped my fingers on my thigh. “Not fuse. Just… study them together.”
He rose slowly, crossing the room with a heaviness in his gait. “Some things don’t want to be read side by side. Especially not marks born of separate sources.”
“They’re part of the same thing,” I said. “The Triad. We already know that.”
“Part of the same outcome,” he corrected. “Not the same source. Flame. Veil. Blood. They were never meant to converge- not unless the Gate was falling. Not unless the Hollow Born had risen.”
I stared at the ash on the floor. My fingers still tingled.
Behind me, I heard footsteps. Ethan entered, eyes sunken like he hadn’t slept. His voice came ragged and too quiet. “Has anyone else been hearing… them?”
Bastain looked up. “Them?”
Ethan rubbed his temple. “Whispers. They come when I’m alone. I thought they were dreams at first, but… last night, they said my name. I was awake.”
I stood, worry cracking through the pit of my chest. “Whispers from where?”
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“The walls. The leyline. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like magic. It feels like something beneath it.”
Bastain said nothing.
That was worse.
I excused myself shortly after, my mind buzzing too loud to stay in the room. The corridor spun beneath my feet as I climbed the western stairwell, hand grazing the wall, hoping that the quiet would follow me up. It didn’t.
That night, I sat with a fresh scroll again. I tried not to think about the way the last had turned to ash. I wasn’t drawing runes. I was just… documenting.
But even then, the strokes moved on their own.
One curve. Then another. My fingers brushed the parchment and before I realized what I was doing, the third rune had formed again–this time fainter, incomplete.
I stared at it for what felt like hours. Nothing burned. Nothing screamed.
Still, something felt wrong. Too still.
I crawled into bed sometime after midnight. Nate hadn’t returned. I didn’t blame him. We were both balancing on too
much.
When i woke, the walls were glowing.
Not with flame. With green.
I sat up, throat dry. The floor was warm. The sheets damp. My fingers clutched the mattress as I looked around the room and realized the light wasn’t coming from candles or magic.
It was coming from the far corner.
A sound–barely a whisper–like something breathing through stone.
Where a tree had grown.
I stood, body leaden with the weight of sleep I hadn’t meant to take. Sweat cooled down my spine, sticking the fabric of my shift to my skin. My fingers trembled as I wiped my palms on my thighs. I didn’t remember falling asleep. Didn’t remember dreams, either, Just heat—waves of it pulsing through me until everything blurred.
And now this.
The roots had split the stone floor apart in jagged seams, shoving slabs out of place like a fist through glass. From that crack, a tree had risen–small, thin, bark the color of soot and bone, leaves trembling despite the air being still.
bark
It stood in the corner like it had always been there.
But it hadn’t.
I knew every mark of this room. Every corner. Every scar in the wall and soot stain on the ceiling. I’d memorized it all after
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the Gate fell, after we returned to dust and memory and tried to build something again. This wasn’t here before. I
would’ve known. I would’ve felt it.
And yet…
It didn’t feel foreign.
It felt inevitable.
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I moved toward it, legs stiff, every step louder than it should’ve been. I didn’t speak. Didn’t dare break whatever fragile stillness had settled between the walls. My hand hovered near the bark, not touching, but close enough to feel the
warmth.
Because it was warm.
Alive.
Breathing.
Not like something planted.
Like something born.
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The leaves shimmered at the edges–not green, but gold. Not a metallic shine, either. Just… light. Soft. Flickering like flame but not burning. They shook again, a twitch of motion I didn’t understand, and I followed the curve of the trunk with my eyes until I reached it.
The mark.
Not just one.
A full line of runes, glowing low and slow like coals under ash. Etched into the trunk just above eye level. As if someone
had burned them there with care, precision–almost reverence.
My breath caught.
I knew the shape.
The curves.
The power humming beneath the strokes.
It wasn’t random.
It was a name.
Aedric.
The moment I read it, it pulsed–once, steady and deep.
Then again.
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Like a second heartbeat layered under my own.
I took a step back, my heels catching on uneven stone. The room seemed to tilt. The walls bowed inward, shadows crawling toward the tree like they recognized it. Like they belonged to it.
And then everything stopped.
The pulse ceased.
The leaves went still.
Silence settled like a weight over my shoulders, crushing and total.
I turned, throat tight, and stumbled away, barely making it to the center of the room before my legs gave. My knees hit the stone hard, and I didn’t care. I looked around frantically, expecting to see someone, anyone.
But the bed was untouched.
No door had opened. No scent lingered. No footsteps echoed.
No one had entered.
This had happened while I slept.
While I dreamt of flame and names and thrones I didn’t want.
1 stared at the tree, at the runes still faintly pulsing, and something inside me split.
It wasn’t just a tree.
It was a message.
A warning.
Planted not in the earth, but in me.
Because this wasn’t just magic reacting to the leyline. It wasn’t residual energy from the Triad or the lingering echoes of Serina’s gifts.
This… this was personal.
It had grown from something inside me.
Something listening.
Watching.
Choosing.
And I knew, deep in the pit of my chest where fear had stopped being sharp and started feeling familiar, that this hadn’t been summoned by the veil.
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It hadn’t even been summoned by me.
It had either come from the child…
Or through the child.
Because when I looked at those runes–at the name carved like a promise–I didn’t feel like one of the edges of the Triad anymore. Not like a bearer or a vessel or a piece in something larger.
I felt like the center.
And the target.
Because the name wasn’t just burned into bark.
It was mine.
Not written to me.
Written from me.
Etched with my flame.
Or the flame of whatever still stirred beneath my skin, curled in the shadow of my ribs, waiting.
Waiting for a door.
Waiting for its name to be spoken aloud.
And now that it had… something had answered.
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
