Chapter 8
1508 Words
Lyra’s POV
By the time the cab screeched to a stop in front of Eldergate, my nerves were in open revolt.
The district sat perched between old stone buildings and sleek glass towers, like the city itself couldn’t decide whether it believed in magic or capitalism more. Eldergate had a reputation—quiet, expensive, discreet. People didn’t wander here by accident.
I paid the driver and bolted.
Lisa was already pacing near the entrance, arms folded, foot tapping sharply against the pavement. The moment she spotted me, her face lit up—not with relief, but with barely contained urgency.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I know,” I panted. “Traffic was…”
“Ten minutes,” she cut in. “But forget that. Come on now.”
I blinked, wrong-footed. “Wait…aren’t you going to yell at me?”
She grabbed my wrist and hauled me toward the building. “I was going to. I had a whole speech prepared. Very passionate. But then the Oracle’s assistant came out and said”—she lowered her voice dramatically—“no one would be attended to until Lyra Blackwood arrived. Oracle’s orders.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
Lisa shot me a look. “Yeah. So whatever you think is happening in there? It’s worse. Now move.”
The glass doors slid open as we rushed inside.
“Lisa…” I started.
She gave me a shove toward the hallway. “Go. I’ll be right here.”
I took three steps before her voice followed me, loud and entirely unashamed.
“And when you’re done, I’ll be waiting to give you a very hard spanking for being late!”
“LISA!” I hissed, mortified, but she was already grinning like a menace.
An assistant appeared at the far end of the corridor, dressed in neutral gray, her expression unreadable. She said my name once, confirmed my identity, then gestured silently for me to follow.
The walk felt longer than it was. Every step carried the sense of crossing a threshold I wouldn’t be able to uncross.
Candles, smoke, hooded figures, ancient symbols etched into stone. That was what my mind supplied—what everyone’s mind supplied when they thought Oracle.
Instead, I stepped into a modern office.
Sleek and minimalist. Glass walls edged with dark metal. A polished desk. Soft recessed lighting that didn’t flicker ominously even once.
I slowed to a stop, thrown off balance by the normalcy of it.
The air felt charged, yes—but not chaotic. Every object had been placed with intention.
Bookshelves lined one wall, old leather-bound tomes arranged with obsessive precision beside tablets and slim digital screens. Crystals sat on a shelf, each discreetly labeled. Tarot decks were stacked neatly. A brass astrolabe rested beside what looked suspiciously like a high-end espresso machine.
This wasn’t a space for theatrics. It was a space for control.
A woman stood near the window with her back to me.
She wore tailored black trousers and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her dark hair was pulled into a low, severe knot. No robes. No dramatic jewelry.
When she turned, her gaze landed on me with unsettling accuracy—like she had been waiting for the exact second I arrived.
“You’re late,” she said.
The words cut cleanly through my thoughts. Words I had heard for the third time today.
“I’m sorry,” I started. “I…”
“You were married this morning.”
The statement hit with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
I stared at her, my mind scrambling for a denial that refused to form. “How do you…”
“That doesn’t matter.” She crossed the room and moved behind her desk, already dismissing the question. “Sit.”
I obeyed. Not because I wanted to, but because my body seemed to recognize authority before my mind caught up.
She studied me in silence, her gaze moving over my face with quiet scrutiny, as if comparing me to something only she could see.
“You look worse this time,” she said.
A ripple of unease worked its way through me. “This time?”
She tapped once on the screen in front of her before folding her hands. “Let’s not pretend you’re here out of curiosity, shall we? You’re here because you dream of your own death.”
The word death settled into the room, heavy and immovable.
My voice sounded distant even to me. “So it’s real.”
“Yes.”
“When?” I asked.
“Sufficiently close to inspire fear,” she replied. “Sufficiently distant to make you believe you still have choices.”
The logic of it twisted uncomfortably in my mind. “Can I stop it?”
She leaned back slightly.
“You are not the first version of yourself to ask that.”
The phrase version of yourself echoed long after she finished speaking. “What do you mean… version?”
Her attention sharpened fully now. “What you saw was not a warning of death,” she said. “It was a reminder of return.”
She paused—not for drama, but precision.
“To the same conclusion,” she continued. “Rewritten through the same lives. Just… different names, different faces.”
Understanding didn’t arrive all at once. It fractured, splintering into pieces that refused to settle neatly.
“So this isn’t random,” I said slowly. “I’m…cursed?”
The Oracle rose from her chair.
As she moved, the room responded unmistakably. The light dimmed a fraction. The air thickened, humming faintly beneath my skin.
She stopped before a framed image on the far wall.
A woman stared back from the canvas—beautiful in a way that felt dangerous, her expression caught between mercy and cruelty. Power radiated from her likeness, not as spectacle but as certainty.
“Vespera,” the Oracle said.
The name settled into the air with quiet finality.
“A long time ago,” she continued, “mortals asked a goddess for intervention where none was owed. They were not punished for their love. They were corrected for their defiance.”
She clasped her hands behind her back, gaze fixed on the painting.
“Vespera preserves patterns. When an ending is resisted, she does not erase it—she repeats it.”
My thoughts spiraled, grasping for something solid.
“The curse binds bloodlines,” the Oracle went on. “Each generation is given the illusion of choice, just enough hope to believe this time will be different.”
My stomach tightened deeply, like something settling where it didn’t belong.
“You began seeing your death because your body remembers what your mind does not,” she said. “The fading. The timing.”
My mother’s face surfaced unbidden. Pale, still, and untouchable.
“Your mother sat in that chair,” the Oracle said. “Long before you.”
The words struck harder than anything else she had said and my head snapped up. Here?
My thoughts scrambled, colliding with memories that suddenly felt incomplete. My mother had been private, guarded—her illness explained away in fragments and silence.
My fingers curled slowly into my palms.
“She failed,” the Oracle said, without cruelty. “to disrupt the pattern.”
My chest felt too full, like grief had been waiting for permission to surface.
“Seraphina,” she added suddenly, turning to face me. “You haven’t spoken her name in a long time.”
The room seemed to narrow, pressing inward. The sound of it was unfamiliar and devastating all at once.
Seraphina Blackwood.
The name echoed through me, carrying weight I hadn’t known I was missing. I realized, with a quiet shock, that I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said it aloud. She had always just been my mother. Illness had erased the rest.
“She loved you,” the Oracle said, softer now. “Enough to hope you might do what she could not.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Your death mirrors hers because it is hers—rewritten. And yet,” she continued, returning to her desk, “you broke from it.”
My thoughts reeled, rearranging every memory, every unanswered question.
She looked at me with renewed interest.
“You refused the marriage chosen for you. That was… interesting.”
Something in her tone made my pulse spike. “Is that bad?”
“It’s disruptive, and fate despises disruption,” she said. “Your future fractured the moment you chose differently. That’s why your visions have gone quiet.”
The question left my mouth before I could stop it. “They have?”
“You haven’t seen your death since the bridge. Have you?”
She was right.
The realization crashed into me like a wave.
“So I’m safe?”
“No,” she replied without hesitation. The word carried no comfort.
- Writer
