Mira
Mira didn’t hesitate as she stepped into the chamber.
The air had thickened—not with smoke or incense, but with memory. It clung to her skin like breath held too long.
Caela’s final glyph pulsed beneath the altar, luminous and trembling. Not drawn in ink. Woven in blood. Etched into root systems that should have died with her—and didn’t.
Mira touched the glyph.
It pulsed once.
Then the floor cracked open, revealing not stone—but remembrance.
Glyphs stretched across the walls like veins.
Lucien entered, silent, bleeding from a mark on his wrist. The glyph shimmered as he crossed into the ritual circle, half-erased, half-unwilling. Mira saw it flicker—childhood vow, reclaimed in grief.
She held out her hand.
He didn’t take it.
Instead, he knelt beside her, and together they
