Chapter 123
*Nathaniel*
I didn’t trust the silence this deep into the woods.
It wasn’t the usual stillness–the kind that came with distance from camp, or with dusk setting in. This was heavier. Thicker. Like the air itself was waiting for something. Holding its breath.
Maximus walked a few paces ahead, boots crunching against old frost–laced moss. He hadn’t spoken much since we left the ridge that morning. Not about Jiselle. Not about what she’d done. Not about what might still be inside her.
We both felt it–that shift. The one after the rogue scout’s death. The way the fire pulsed wrong in the air afterward, like it wasn’t entirely hers. I didn’t ask if he blamed her.
I didn’t need to.
Because I blamed myself.
She should’ve never had to carry that much alone.
The leyline trail we were following had been faint–just a flicker of magic that bled through the stone like a vein under cracked skin. But it called to both of us. And whether we admitted it or not, it smelled familiar. Old. Veilborn.
Max slowed suddenly, his head tilting. “We’re close.”
I stepped up beside him. The forest had thinned. We stood at the edge of a sunken clearing, half–swallowed by rock and vine. Broken stone arches rose crookedly from the center, half–collapsed and etched in faint, weatherworn markings.
A ruin.
Veilborn–made.
My skin prickled.
“Did you know about this place?” I asked quietly.
Max shook his head. “Not exactly. Kael used to talk in riddles. Said we had ‘roots‘ in the valley. I never knew he meant this literally.”
We descended slowly. The earth felt brittle here. The air colder.
Inside the structure–what was left of it–moss grew thick between crumbling flagstones. A half–buried doorway yawned open at the far wall, leading into what must‘ ve once been a subterranean vau! Successfully unlocked!
We hesitated before entering.
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Then the magic pulsed again.
Soft.
Measured.
Deliberate.
“Someone was here recently,” Max muttered.
We pushed inside.
The stairwell led down into shadow, curving once, then opening into a wide chamber. Stone walls, ceiling intact. Shelves carved from the walls–long since emptied. It looked like it had been looted decades ago.
But the marks remained.
Veilborn script lined the far wall–symbols carved with careful precision. Not slashed like Kael’s field runes. These were intentional. Ancient.
A cold wind ran across the back of my neck, and I turned instinctively. That’s when I saw the mural.
It took up the full back wall.
A woman.
Or what used to be a woman.
Her body wreathed in fire, arms spread, a crown hovering just above her head–but not touching. Her hair flowed upward like smoke, her eyes entirely white. And carved around her in blood–rusted paint were lines of text I couldn’t read–but one word stood
out.
Eira.
I took a step forward. My heart dropped.
The face-
It was hers.
Jiselle.
Not an approximation. Not a generic match. Her.
Her cheekbones. Her mouth. The tilt of her chin when she was determined not to cry.
“She’s been here before,” I said.
“No,” Max murmured. “She’s never been here.”
“But someone knew she would be.”
We stood in silence, the weight of it pressing into our lungs.
I walked closer. There were small marks below the mural–etched in the base stone.
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Names.
Some faded.
Some crossed out.
Some still legible.
I read slowly, eyes tracking one line at a time.
Then I froze.
Nathaniel Morningstar.
Scratched into the wall with surgical precision.
And slashed clean through with a single diagonal mark.
My breath caught.
“What is it?” Max asked, but his voice sounded far away.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t speak.
Because there, next to my name, was a second one.
Jiselle Johal.
Not crossed out.
Underlined.
The line glowed faintly.
Still active.
I took a step back.
The mural. The names. The surge we’d followed here–it wasn’t random. It wasn’t residual.
It was a record.
A prophecy.
Or worse.
A plan.
“She’s not the first,” Max said under his breath.
“No,” I whispered. “But she might be the last.”
We both stared at the names.
Then Max did something that made the hairs on my neck stand.
He turned away.
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Not like someone caught off–guard.
Like someone who already knew.
“You knew about this,” I said.
“I didn’t know it would be this literal.”
I moved in front of him, blocking his path. “How long have you known someone’s been watching her?”
“Longer than I’ll ever admit.”
“Try.”
He exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “I overheard Kael years ago. Before the Trials. He said she was marked–before she was even born. That someone had seen her likeness in an outpost in the South. I didn’t believe him.”
“Until now.”
He didn’t answer.
I stepped back, fury creeping up my throat. “So while she was tearing herself apart, wondering if she was cursed-”
“I tried to protect her,” Max said, voice sharp. “Even when I didn’t know what I was protecting her from.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her?”
“Because I thought I could fix it before it mattered.”
“And now?”
He looked at the mural.
“She matters too much.”
His voice barely broke above a whisper, but it echoed through the chamber like it had weight–like it wasn’t just words, but a confession. One he’d been carrying long before the rest of us ever knew what she was becoming. He didn’t meet my eyes, and I didn’t force it.
We didn’t speak after that.
There wasn’t anything left to say that wouldn’t either bleed or bruise.
The silence that followed wasn’t like before. It didn’t feel like stillness. It felt like pressure. Like the chamber had narrowed around us, like the stone itself was breathing again, absorbing everything we’d said. The walls hummed, faint and rhythmic, not with energy, but with… awareness.
As if something in the ruin had finally heard what it had been waiting for.
She matters too much.
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And now it knew.
A chill crept beneath my collar despite the heat pulsing faintly through the mural. I looked at Maximus again, but he hadn’t moved. He stood rigid, unreadable, staring just past the woman’s burning hands, like he didn’t dare meet her gaze.
I turned back toward her.
The flame carved around her fingers looked slightly different now–curved, mid–motion As though it hadn’t been painted, but paused.
Then I saw her eyes.
And I swear-
They weren’t the same as before.
The once–still white orbs had shifted. A single speck of black now rested in the left one–just enough to mimic a pupil.
I blinked, stepped closer.
The flames flickered again, catching the edges of the script carved beneath her name. The light rippled across the wall like breath passing over water.
And then-
The left eye twitched.
Not a trick of shadow.
Not a trick of flame.
The mural’s eyes blinked.
And in that split second, I knew:
This place wasn’t forgotten.
It had been waiting.
And now it knew we were here.
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