The road to Blackbriar wasn't marked by signs anymore.
Only the bones of old trees.
Once, they must have formed a lane—trimmed hedges and white stone archways leading to the estate grounds like the opening lines of a hymn. Now the trees bent inward, their trunks warped, limbs curled into knots that reached for us as we passed.
The fog thickened here, not with moisture—but with something older. It smelled like scorched parchment and lilies pressed too long between pages.
Dorian walked just ahead, blade at his hip, lantern in hand, its light barely denting the gloom. The pale glow flickered every time we stepped too close to a glyph—carved into trees, rocks, even the stones beneath our feet.
I paused near one.
It pulsed faintly in the dark—a design I knew too well.
It matched the one behind my left shoulder. Beneath the skin. Etched in childhood.
"Still following us," Dorian muttered. He glanced back. "You alright?"
"No."
He nodded once, like he understood that was the only truth I had left.
The estate revealed itself slowly—first through the silhouette of a gate swallowed in vines. Then the remains of the front pillars. One still stood, its marble cracked down the center. The other lay in pieces, covered in moss and roots.
Beyond, Blackbriar loomed.
A mansion carved from night and memory.
Its roof had long since collapsed, ivy pouring through shattered windows, doorways caved in by time. The great double doors that had once kept the world out were gone, leaving only scorched hinges and charred frame.
Still, I could see it as it had been. My memory painted over the ash:
The red carpet rolled from entrance to stairwell.
The gilded banisters Cassian used to slide down.
The painted ceiling my mother said was meant to reflect "the constellations of the soul."
Now, only the floor remained. And beneath it—
The chapel.
We found the trapdoor beneath the remains of the study.
Dorian helped clear the debris. His hands were scraped, knuckles bleeding by the time we lifted it free. The air that poured up was cold, dry, and full of breathless silence.
I went first.
The stone steps descended deeper than I remembered.
It smelled the same.
Ash. Lily. Wax.
But now it was cleaner. Lit.
Someone had been here recently.
The underground chapel bloomed with candlelight.
Hundreds of them—some burned down to stubs. Others fresh. Arranged in circles. Spirals. Paths leading toward the altar like a procession of fireflies.
The altar stone was polished. Clean. It pulsed with old magic—the kind that remembered being alive.
And the book was still there.
Not Cassian's velvet-wrapped volume from before.
A second one.
Bound in stitched white leather. Its pages fluttered slightly, though no wind passed.
I stepped toward it.
Dorian stopped me. "Wait."
He held out a hand.
This time, I didn't hesitate to take it.
Together, we stepped forward.
The glyphs on the wall began to flicker.
The book opened itself.
A voice, not written, but whispered from within, spoke directly to my memory:
"To bind a heart is to awaken it.
To awaken it is to destroy all that denied it.
And if two hearts remember what was severed,
Then nothing—not even death—can keep them apart."
The floor trembled.
The light dimmed.
And behind the altar—
—something moved.
Behind the Altar – Chapel of Blackbriar
The movement was faint—barely more than a whisper of motion, like fabric stirred by a forgotten breath. But I felt it.
Not on my skin.
Inside it.
Dorian stepped closer to me. He didn't ask if I was alright. The question would've felt too fragile in this place, like words might fracture the veil between memory and what waited beneath it.
We moved behind the altar.
The back wall was marked with glyphs—old, cracked ones that no longer shimmered like the others. Some had been struck through, others re-etched. The stone here was uneven, dustless, scrubbed clean by ritual hands.
And in the center—
—a narrow passage, just wide enough for a body.
Carved into the frame were the words:
What the world buried, the heart remembers.
Dorian raised the lantern. "You're not going to like this."
"I already don't."
Still, we stepped through.
The tunnel was low and curved. Carved into the bones of the estate, it spiraled downward like the path of a falling star. I traced the walls with my bare hand now. The stone was warm.
At the end of the passage, the chamber widened.
It was circular. A domed sanctum with walls inlaid with mirror-shards, all fogged with age. In the center, beneath a cracked skylight, lay a stone cradle—or perhaps a tomb.
At first, I thought it was empty.
But then I saw the cloak.
White. Threadbare. Folded neatly.
And on top of it—
—a mask.
Porcelain. Mouthless. Cracked across one eye.
The Mourner's mask.
I reached for it, and something surged up my spine.
Not pain.
Memory.
Flashback
We stood in this room.
Cassian and I.
I was twelve, maybe younger. He was older. Taller now. His hand clutched mine with desperate certainty.
"They want to bind you to the rite," he said. "But I won't let them take you."
He held the mask in his other hand.
"If I take the vow, it'll be me. Not you."
"No," I whispered. "They'll hurt you."
"They'll hurt you worse."
Then the Mourner entered—faceless and silent.
Cassian stepped forward.
"I'll take her place."
The Mourner hesitated.
Then bowed.
The circle was drawn. The lilies placed. And I screamed—
—because the blood was his.
Not mine.
I stumbled back into the present with a cry I barely managed to muffle.
Dorian caught me, one hand on my shoulder, the other braced at my back. "What did you see?"
"Cassian," I whispered. "He took the rite. He offered himself instead of me."
"But why—"
"Because they meant to use me as the vessel."
Dorian's eyes darkened. "And now they're trying again."
I nodded, shaking. "But this time, they want us both."
The stone beneath the cloak trembled.
We turned together.
A crack ran down the length of the tomb.
A single stem pushed through the stone.
A spider lily.
Blooming red.
Elsewhere – The Council of Stones
Deep beneath the Guild Tower of Vullum, where the council's hall curled like a fossil buried in marble, the air turned sharp.
It began with a breath.
Unnoticed at first. A ripple in the silence. The glyphs carved along the walls—so old most forgot they had purpose—shuddered in unison. The spider lily emblem etched in obsidian above the chamber door pulsed once with dull crimson.
High Arbiter Sorell stood frozen beside the scrying table, his hand hovering inches above the map of Vullum etched in silver ink.
The red lines that once marked failed leypaths now shifted, warping toward a single point.
Blackbriar.
A perfect spiral.
"No," he whispered, and the word burned in his mouth.
From the far side of the chamber, Matron Ilvanna rose from her seat like a ghost unwrapped from velvet. Her voice carried the weight of too many buried secrets.
"It's begun again."
"You swore it was sealed," snarled Councilor Brant, fists trembling against the arm of his chair.
"We sealed a grave," Ilvanna said softly. "But not the hunger inside it."
A younger Councilor, barely more than a clerk in gilded robes, scrambled toward the edge of the table, adjusting one of the crystals embedded in the scry-glass. "We're picking up resonance," he said. "The Heartbinder glyph. Active. Fresh. And not just Blackbriar—there are echoes across the city."
"What kind of echoes?" Sorell asked.
The young man hesitated. "Emotional ones."
The room chilled.
Ilvanna's face turned paler than moonlight.
"That's not supposed to be possible unless—"
Sorell cut in, voice hoarse: "—unless someone completed the initiation."
Brant spat. "Then which fool did it?"
The glyph above the door pulsed again.
A second later, one of the shadow-walkers burst into the chamber, cloak soaked in rain, breath ragged from haste.
"My lords," she gasped, "it's Lenora. And Vale. They've entered the tomb."
Silence fell like a blade.
Sorell slammed his hand onto the table. "You told me she was watched."
"She slipped the mark. Just hours ago."
"They're inside the sanctum?" Ilvanna asked quietly.
The shadow-walker nodded. "And the altar bloomed."
The council chamber erupted into arguments—some shouting for intervention, others demanding containment spells be triggered before the rite's resurgence shattered the veil between death and memory.
But none of them saw what Ilvanna did in that moment:
A second glyph lighting up beneath the city's foundation.
One not tied to Lenora.
Or to Dorian.
But to someone else.
A third.
Old.
Forgotten.
And no longer sleeping.
Somewhere Beneath Vullum
Where the Spiral Ends
The third glyph bloomed without ceremony.
No chants. No blood offering. No ritual fire or knife.
Only silence—and then a shiver through the city's bones.
It pulsed in a place forgotten even by the Council. A stone chamber buried so deeply that roots had never reached it, and even memory recoiled from the threshold.
The glyph carved into the center floor—one unlike the others—did not flicker red.
It burned white.
A searing, unnatural white. Cold and absolute, like winter given purpose.
And beside it, a figure stirred in the dark.
He had no scent. No warmth. No breath.
But his shape was familiar. Almost boyish.
The remnants of a velvet coat hung from narrow shoulders. The color long faded, the hem soaked in mildew. His hair—longer now, matted—hung over a face too beautiful for the dead.
But his eyes...
They opened.
And they were not Cassian's.
They were something older wearing Cassian's shape.
He looked at the glyph beneath his feet. Tilted his head.
A smile cracked across his face—slow and joyless.
"You came back," he said to the silence. "Just like I knew you would."
He stepped forward.
The glyph followed him—stretching, replicating across the ground in a spidering pattern of light, echoing Lenora's name in a language no living tongue could utter.
Sanctum Steps, Blackbriar Estate – Just Before Dawn
We emerged from the tunnel as the last of the candles guttered behind us, smoke curling toward the broken ribs of the chapel roof. My legs shook, not from fear but from the weight of remembering.
The truth didn't come all at once. It was still bleeding in slowly, like dusk staining frost.
Cassian had taken the vow.
But that didn't mean he was the one they'd bound.
Not entirely.
I held Dorian's arm tighter than I meant to. He didn't pull away. His coat was damp from dust and time. Beneath it, I could feel the tremble of restraint in him—the way he wanted to ask questions but knew better.
Instead, he whispered, "We need to get out of here."
I nodded. The morning was near, but no light had broken the sky.
Only mist.
The path out of Blackbriar twisted through overgrown hedges and statues eroded to eyeless watchers. The iron gate groaned as we passed it. I looked back once—and swore I saw the silhouette of the Mourner behind the chapel window.
Watching.
Waiting.
We didn't speak again until we were on the main road. The fog was heavier now, tinged with rust at the edges, like blood in water. The glyphs along the cobblestones—once dead—had begun to pulse faintly beneath our steps.
Something was spreading.
"I don't like this," Dorian muttered. "Whatever that book was, whatever Cassian wrote—it wasn't a memory. It was a plan."
I hesitated, fingers grazing the side of my glove.
"Dorian."
He stopped. Turned. His face, usually guarded, was open for a breath.
"I felt something down there," I said softly. "When I remembered the ritual. When I touched the tomb. It wasn't just memory. It… it looked back."
He frowned. "You think Cassian's still alive?"
"I don't know. I don't think that was him anymore."
A pause. Then, bitterly: "Wonderful. Ghosts, glyphs, and a possessed ex-boyfriend. I knew getting out of bed was a mistake."
Despite everything, I smiled. Just a little.
But it faded fast.
Because the wind changed then.
And from the direction of Vullum—
A bell began to toll.
But not from a church.
From beneath.