The relics changed everything.
Even locked away, I could feel them-three quiet heartbeats under the floorboards, each one pulsing in rhythm with ours. It’s wasn’t noise, not exactly; more like a memory trying to breathe again.
Days passed. We said nothing to father or Mother. Lilly spent her time sketching the symbols we’d seen; James trained until exhaustion. I stayed close to the relics. The dagger’s presence pressed against my thoughts, sharp and insistent. Sometimes, in the half-light before dawn, I swore I heard it whisper my name.
The journal waited on my desk. Every night I told myself I wouldn’t open it again. Every night I did.
At first, it was just words-elegant script fading across the parchment. Then the letters began to shift, forming shapes: towers, wolves, stars. The s
