The storm that had raged over Elriath was gone, but its echoes still whispered through the shattered temple stones. Sera stood at the altar's edge, her hands trembling as she held the ancient veil they had recovered—the one said to belong to the First Seer of the Loom.
"It's just cloth," Riven said softly behind her. "Why does it scare you?"
Sera turned, her voice tight. "Because it's not just cloth. It remembers."
When she pressed her fingers against the center, images flashed in her mind—visions of a girl who looked like her, running from flames… a hand reaching through golden light… a name spoken by lips she didn't recognize.
"Seraphina."
The name echoed, not just in her mind but in her bones.
"That's not my name," she whispered.
Riven stepped forward. "Is it your true name?"
She couldn't answer.
Her memories had always been fragments—glimpses of something ancient, something powerful. But this was different. The veil wasn't showing her the past. It was returning it.
"Someone hid me," she murmured. "Not just from the world, but from myself."
Riven's brow furrowed. "Then this… Seraphina… who was she?"
"Me," Sera said slowly. "But not this version of me. The girl in the vision—she burned kingdoms. She… she didn't just protect the Loom. She bled it."
Silence stretched between them.
Riven took the veil gently from her hands. "Whatever you were before… it doesn't change who you are now. You're not alone in this."
She met his gaze, grateful and afraid. "But what if the real me is dangerous?"
Riven gave a small, crooked smile. "Then I guess I'll just have to be dangerous enough to keep up."
A distant rumble cracked the sky—magic, not thunder.
Sera turned toward the horizon. "Something's coming."
"No," Riven said, his voice steady. "Someone's awakening."
Far away, in the blackened halls of the Obsidian Spire, a figure cloaked in moonlight opened her eyes for the first time in centuries.
And she whispered one name.
"Seraphina."
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