The candlelight danced in Caelum's eyes, fractured by the lines of old ink and torn vellum. In the silence of the archive vault, his world narrowed to the pulse of his breath, the heat of questions he couldn't ask aloud.
Serapha had not spoken again since she'd warned him.
She stood across from him now, half in shadow, gaze fixed on a book she didn't read.
He knew she wasn't really looking at the words.
"I thought you didn't like coming down here," he said quietly.
"I don't."
"Then why are you here?"
A beat passed.
"Because you are," she said.
That shouldn't have hit him so hard—but it did. It settled in his ribs like a stone.
Caelum closed the scroll. "Tell me the truth. About the Crown. About what I am."
Serapha's eyes met his. For the first time since they'd met, she looked unsure.
"You think I haven't earned it?" he asked. "After everything?"
"No," she said. "I think you've earned it more than anyone. That's why I'm afraid to tell you."
That silenced him.
She approached slowly, drawing down her hood.
"You remember when we first met?"
"In the tower ruins."
She shook her head. "Before that."
Caelum blinked. "We didn't—"
"You don't remember," she said. "Because the memory was buried. It had to be. You weren't supposed to survive the fracture."
Her voice dropped.
"But you did. And the Weave never forgot."
He stared at her, stunned.
"Thirteen years ago," she said, "you tore a hole in the leylines under Hollowtrace. No rituals. No glyphs. Just your name, screamed into the Weave. And it answered."
Caelum backed up a step.
"You're lying."
"I wish I were."
"That's not possible. I wasn't even—my mana didn't awaken until last year."
"No," she said. "Your mana conduit didn't. But something else did. Something the Choir couldn't control."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a strip of old fabric—gray, burnt at the edges, marked by a sigil half-erased by fire.
The same sigil Caelum had seen in a dream.
"Where did you get that?"
"I kept it," Serapha whispered. "All these years. You gave it to me before the Weave swallowed your memory."
Caelum's throat went dry.
"I saw you," she said. "Bleeding silver. Reaching for something not yet born. And when you whispered your name, it didn't sound like a boy's voice."
She paused.
"It sounded like a star dying."
The sky outside the archive was cloaked in stormlight. High-altitude pressure winds curled around Aetherveil's towers, brushing cold across the silverwind arches.
They didn't notice.
Inside the vault, the air seemed too still.
Too expectant.
Caelum sat again, elbows on his knees. "What does the Crown want with me?"
Serapha lowered herself beside him. Not touching, but closer than before.
"I don't know what it wants. I only know what it does."
"What?"
"It remembers people who shouldn't exist."
Caelum frowned. "You're not making any sense."
Serapha exhaled. "The Echo Crown is not a tool. It's a resonance. A memory cluster formed from failed Weave ascensions, bound to the first layer of the Boundless System. It doesn't think like we do—it echoes what's been lost. It calls to the ones who resonate with its absence."
"Like me."
"And me," she added quietly.
He turned to her.
"I died once," she said, "in the Choir's sanctum. Not metaphorically. My heart stopped. My soul burned. They called it a successful trial. I called it a warning."
She looked up.
"You and I aren't supposed to exist like this. But we do. And the Echo Crown knows."
Outside, a bell tolled from the east tower. Wind swept into the archive window, lifting scattered scrolls.
Caelum caught one before it fell.
It wasn't a scroll.
It was the blank parchment the boy had given him in the amphitheater.
And it was no longer blank.
Ink bled across the fibers like veins: spirals, glyphs, a single phrase in dead language.
Vaskari irel elathei.
Caelum didn't know what it meant.
But Serapha did.
Her face went pale.
"What does it say?" he asked.
She whispered: "The Nameless comes."
At the same time, across the sanctum grounds of Aetherveil, Rheia was dreaming.
But it wasn't her dream.
It was someone else's memory.
She stood in a garden of burning trees, their roots made of bones, their leaves ash.
Above her, a voice rang out—not in sound, but color. Each word was a flare in the air.
Do you remember the stars, Rheia of Thorne?
She clutched her chest. "No."
You will.
Then she saw Caelum—young, bleeding silver, kneeling in a ring of swords.
And Serapha, older than she looked, reaching toward him.
The moment she touched him, the sky shattered.
Rheia awoke screaming.
Later that evening, Caelum returned to the upper tower.
He didn't tell anyone what he'd seen.
Didn't speak of the parchment now smoldering in his pocket.
Didn't mention the way Serapha's hands had trembled when she told him the truth.
He just stood there, watching stormclouds sweep over the world.
Until a voice broke the silence.
"You're not running."
He turned.
Serapha stood behind him, eyes weary but sharp.
"Not yet," he said.
She stepped forward.
"Good," she said. "Because if we run, we won't stop."
Caelum looked at her.
"Why are you really helping me?"
She hesitated.
Then, softly: "Because I heard your name before I knew mine."