The letter was waiting beneath her pillow.
Seraphine stirred from a dream of fire and mirrors, her breath hitching as a sharp scent struck her ash and rosewater, smoke tangled with memory. The sun had not yet risen over Velmoria, but the pale, blood-tinged light of the eternal moon washed through the chamber window, casting ghost-shadows across the velvet floor. Her fingers moved hesitantly, brushing against something crisp and fragile tucked beneath the silken pillowcase.
It was a letter.
The parchment was scorched at the edges, as if it had barely survived a fire long forgotten. A wax seal, black as dried blood and imprinted with the emblem of a thorn-crowned flame, held it shut. She hesitated, heart pounding, then broke it open.
The ink inside was deep crimson. Not ink, she realized blood.
To the bride who forgets and remembers,
You once swore to burn before you betrayed me. And yet, here you are again untouched, unknowing, unloved.
But the flame does not forget.
When you touched the mirror, you began the awakening. The Cycle turns. I will find you again, my Serastra.
Until your heart remembers mine.
V.
The parchment trembled in her grip.
The name signed at the bottom a single, looping V bled into the page as if weeping through time. Her throat tightened. A pulse of heat throbbed at her palm, as though the letter had left a brand not on the skin but on something deeper. A memory stirred, but remained half-formed like a shadow behind smoke.
A knock came at her door. Sharp. Controlled.
Lucien.
She rose, still holding the letter, and opened it. He was already inside before she could speak, his cloak trailing frost and night.
"You felt it again, didn't you?" he asked, eyes not meeting hers.
Wordlessly, she handed him the letter.
He read it once, lips pressing into a thin line.
"Gods of the blood," he muttered. "It's begun."
"What is it? What does it mean? Who is V? Who is Serastra?" Her voice cracked. "Who am I?"
Lucien looked at her then, fully, and the pain in his gaze startled her more than the letter had.
"You are the soul that was burned, Seraphine. The bride who once defied the vow."
She stepped back. "No. You're not making sense."
He exhaled. "Then let me show you."
---
He led her through the corridors of the western wing, a place she had never been permitted to enter. Vines of silver-thorn covered the archway, pulsing faintly in the moonlight.
Lucien drew a dagger from his sleeve its blade glowed with a pale light and slashed through them. They withered instantly.
"This is the Hall of Brides," he said, pushing open the ancient door.
The air inside was colder than death. The chamber was endless. Its walls were lined with portraits, hundreds of them each depicting a different woman, each in varying dress, posture, and time.
But they all shared one face.
Hers.
Seraphine gasped. She stepped forward, drawn toward a painting of a woman in a crimson veil, a crown of bone resting on her brow.
"They're all... me."
"You," Lucien said softly, "and not you. Each one is a reawakening. A rebinded flame."
She turned to him, voice shaking. "How many times have I lived?"
"Five," he said. "This is your sixth."
---
At the end of the hall, they entered a smaller chamber. The walls were lined with glass coffins each containing a sleeping figure.
Each figure... her.
And the coffins whispered.
"Why did you leave me..."
"You burned me first..."
"The vow was never broken..."
Seraphine dropped to her knees, the sound unbearable. Her hands clutched at her ears, but the whispers came from within.
Lucien knelt beside her, his hand on her shoulder. "You are not the first," he said. "But you may be the last."
She turned to him, her voice barely breath. "I didn't ask to come back."
"No one ever does. But the vow does not die. Not until it is fulfilled."
---
That night, as the moon grew red and vast above Velmoria, the bells tolled in threes.
From the blackened forest came a carriage with no horses, drawn instead by shadows and memories. The wheels left no sound, and the wind stilled as it passed.
The gates opened without command.
And a man stepped out.
Tall, cloaked in crimson velvet, hair like spilled ink, eyes like obsidian grief.
Vaelric Dravenn.
The Thorn Crowned.
The vowmaker.
He walked through the halls of the palace as if no time had passed, as if his footsteps had never ceased. Servants bowed without understanding why. Mirrors cracked. Candles flared. And in her chamber, Seraphine felt a pressure behind her eyes—a burning.
She stepped to the balcony.
Far below, he looked up.
Their eyes met.
And something inside her heart caught fire.