The lightness evaporates completely.
“What was that place?” Gray asks quietly.
“Ancient,” a soft voice says from the window. “Sacred. And… waiting.”
We all turn. Everyone—Stellan, Thane, Rhett, Theo, even Mairen—looks surprised to see Bree standing there. Like we’d all somehow forgotten she was in the room.
She turns from the window to face us, and there’s something different in her expression. Older, maybe. More certain. Like the girl who spoke Riley’s name and meant it. The mist that usually curls around her seems darker too—silver shot through with larger threads of black. It moves differently, more restless, than I’ve seen before.
“You’ve all been talking around me,” she continues, her voice steady despite the way her hands shake slightly. “But I was there. I saw her. I know what that chamber is, even if I don’t understand it yet.”
The silence stretches, heavy with the weight of everything unsaid.
Stellan doesn’t answer immediately. He accepts a mug of coffee from Mairen with a nod of thanks, then leans against the counter in a way that makes every gesture look deliberate.
“She’s not wrong,” he says finally, his gray eyes fixing on Bree with something that might be approval. “Though ‘waiting’ is perhaps understating it.”
“That’s not really an answer,” Jace points out.
“Isn’t it?” Stellan’s mouth quirks. “Your pancakes are rituals, Jace. The chamber we found is just older. And more patient.”
Something cold settles in my stomach. “More patient how?”
“It wants something,” Stellan says simply. “Something it’s been waiting centuries to claim.”
“Bree,” Theo says. It’s not a question.
Stellan inclines his head. “The last of her line. The only one left who can give it what it needs.”
“Which is what?” Rhett demands.
But before Stellan can answer, another voice cuts through the kitchen.
“Completion.”
We all turn. Thane stands in the doorway, silver eyes unreadable and his usual composure frayed at the edges.
“The chamber is bound to an ancient rite,” he continues, moving into the room with that predatory grace of his. “One that was forbidden for good reason.”
Stellan’s expression sharpens with something that might be approval. Or warning.
“The Ashen Oath,” Thane says, and the words seem to hang in the air like a death sentence.
None of us speak. The name makes something cold coil in my stomach. Like hearing it changes something fundamental, makes whatever happened in that chamber more real.
“What’s the Ashen Oath?” I ask, though part of me doesn’t want to know.
Stellan and Thane exchange a look—brief, loaded with something the rest of us don’t get.
“Sit down,” Stellan says finally. “This will take a while.”
We arrange ourselves around the kitchen island, pancakes forgotten. Mairen continues cooking like she’s not listening, but I notice how still she’s gone. How her movements have become more careful, more quiet.
Even she knows we’re about to learn something that changes everything.
Stellan sets down his mug, and when he speaks, his voice carries the weight of centuries.
“The Ashen Oath is the last rite of the Ether Source line,” he begins. “A binding between the self and its reflection. Between what is and what could be.”
