The chamber's stillness lingered like the breath of something ancient, watching.
Selene stood unmoving above the opened crest, the pendant still warm in her palm. The echoes of her mother's voice lingered inside her bones, threaded with a grief too old to belong only to her.
She closed her hand around the pendant. It pulsed once—like a heart, or a warning.
Behind her, the Guardian Spirit had dimmed into a quieter flame, crouched in the far arch like a sentinel carved from heat and time.
But Selene didn't speak. Not yet.
Instead, she stepped slowly across the chamber floor—past the scorched shelf where old scrolls had once burned in silence. Past the dust where Arathe's memory had been sealed, where the floor still remembered his waiting. Past the faded sigil of the eye and flame.
The Guardian watched her.
"You carry both their fire," it said at last. "Not just the bloodline—but the break it suffered."
Selene exhaled slowly.
"My mother walked out of here in chains. My father died waiting."
She looked at the flame. "So what does that make me?"
The Guardian's flicker curled like smoke in thought. "The one who can walk out freely."
Her throat tightened.
She was no longer the girl who trembled at visions she didn't understand. She wasn't even the girl who'd stood in this chamber earlier, trying to hide the letter's truth from Gwen. That girl had clung to the idea of destiny as something to outrun.
This Selene knew now—there was no outrunning it.
Only choosing how to meet it.
She turned toward the tapestry wall—the same one that had revealed Lucien's crest woven into something older, deeper. She touched it again. The threads hummed faintly beneath her fingers.
"You said Gwen doesn't know the truth," Selene said, still facing the fabric.
The Guardian's voice remained low. "She knows pieces. But not what shaped her."
Selene turned. "Then she's not just dangerous. She's lost."
"Yes," the Guardian said. "And lost things often cling the hardest."
Selene closed her eyes.
She remembered Gwen's face when she first arrived—sharp with purpose, eyes too clear to be entirely mortal. She remembered how Gwen had watched her, waited for her to open the seals with something like hunger. But also something else.
Longing.
Not for power.
But for belonging.
"She believes she's a seeker of truth," Selene murmured. "But she's the Tower's own secret."
"Crafted in their shadow. A vessel for a legacy they could never fully control."
The pendant in her hand pulsed again.
Her mother had left her the truth. Not only about the Tower. Not only about magic.
But about people.
About how they break. And how they keep going anyway.
Selene opened her eyes.
She didn't feel powerful. She felt ancient. Hollowed and reforged.
And yet—
She felt steady.
"What now?" the Guardian asked gently.
Selene turned away from the sigils, from the tombstone of her father's waiting.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "But I'll start by stepping out of this place as myself."
She looked once more toward the sealed door Gwen had once opened.
"She led me here," Selene murmured. "But she didn't understand why."
"No," said the Guardian. "But fate did."
Selene walked toward the archway—where once the seals had flared at her blood, and now stood quiet, waiting.
The moment she stepped past the threshold, the chamber dimmed behind her.
No magic pulled at her heels.
No voice followed.
Only the warmth of the pendant against her chest, and the memory of her mother's whisper still clinging to her ears.
You are brighter than I hoped.
Selene exhaled—and didn't look back.
She climbed the path alone.
But not empty.