With a quiet creak, the cabinet door swung open, and he pulled out a thick stack of scrolls and loose parchment, all tied together with a fraying piece of string. Dust motes danced in the low light as he held the bundle, hesitating for just a moment, his eyes flicking to hers.
“You want answers?” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “It starts with the shade. The one who named youTuatha.”
Elara’s fingers curled into the fabric of her dress.Tuatha. The word slithered through her mind, dragging up the memory. She hadn’t realized the shade had called her anything. In that moment, she’d been too focused on its fangs to notice much else. ButCaelion… he had called Reynnar the same thing.
“What does it mean?”
He shook his head, eyes hard with frustration. “I don't know. I've been searching for answers. But you have to understand—shades are mindless. Spirits of death. No thought, no will. They’re perfect weapons. They don’t tire, they don’t bleed, and they obey Osin without question.” His face hardened. “But that one… it spoke. A fragment of its soul clawed its way to the surface, just enough to break through. Enough to speak to you.”
She shivered, pulling her arms tighter around herself. “What are they?” She pressed her lips together, thinking. “I spent nearly my entire childhood reading about the spirits, but I’ve never come across any mention of shades.” Her brow furrowed. “It doesn’t make sense. There should be something—a record, atrace of their existence. Spirits like that don’t just appear out of nowhere. Not without someone knowing.”
“You wouldn’t have heard of them. They’re something new. A species Osin created… twisted through his experiments.”
Elara's heart plummeted, the world tilting as a cold, hollow ache settled in her chest. The answer she didn’t want but had feared all along.The extraction. The trials.Bile surged up, burning the back of her throat as she fought to steady her breath. Her voice cracked. “He’s turning the Sidhe into those…things. Why?"
“Vredia,” he said simply. “It’s the last stronghold Osin hasn’t claimed. He’s been trying to break through the Northern Ridge for years. But the ridge is enchanted—oldDraothfrom the Mothers, from Epona herself. Her love for the Sidhe... it’s woven into those mountains, blocking his armies at every turn. His men get lost—or never return. So, he sends the Sidhe, mutated into those things, hoping they’ll succeed where his soldiers can’t.”
Elara pressed her trembling hand to her mouth. “How is Osin stealing the Sidhe in the first place? I’ve been trying to figure it out. Is it the Aelfhenge?”
He dipped his chin. “Yes. But it’s not as simple as that. After the shade spoke… after theDraoth Cararevealed itself, I began hunting them down. Capturing them. Tried to force answers from them.” He let out a harsh breath. “It was a fool’s errand. But every time, they reacted to one word—Tuatha. So, I dug deeper. Pored over old records, traveled to places that kept their histories hidden before the war burned it all away.”
“Bravell.”
He gave a low hum of agreement. “The kingdom’s little more than a graveyard now. When that led nowhere, I shifted my focus to the source of the destruction. To Osin.” He lifted the bundle of scrolls. “This… this is what I found. Hidden, warded under curses so thick it took me days to unravel. Andeven then…” He cleared his throat, his voice dropping, almost hesitant. “It belonged to you.”
Elara's brow furrowed, and she moved toward him, feeling as if her body was wading through water, slow and disconnected. The rough texture of the parchment barely registered under her fingertips as she took the stack and moved to the desk. With a tug, the fraying string snapped, and the scrolls spilled across the surface, scattering in every direction.
Drawings. Detailed sketches. Diagrams layered with strange, looping symbols. Notes scribbled in the margins with a frenzied hand. At the bottom of the pile, half-hidden between loose sketches, lay a journal. The leather cover was cracked, weathered. Her fingers hovered over the cover, an instinctive hesitation pulling her back. The energy around it felt… wrong.
“What is all of this?”
The Hunter moved beside her, his gaze flicking over the chaotic mess of papers. He picked up a drawing—a series of overlapping circles, strange symbols lining the edges. “Your research on the Void.”
“Myresearch?”
He nodded. “Yours and Thanes.”
She blinked, once, twice, as if the world around her had just shifted and left her stranded.
They had been researching the Void?She swallowed hard, her gaze flicking over the scattered documents—rituals, symbols drawn in blood. But this wasn’t just abstract theory. Her eyes caught on a sketch—a map, twisted and spiraling, trying to chart the layers of the Void. Each line pulled inward, toward a central point, like a gravitational well of shifting currents. Notes beside it theorized about the Void’s power to consume energy, bend time, and manipulate space. Arrows circled pathways that led to nowhere, hypotheses scribbled in frantic handwriting. This wasn’t research—it wasobsession.
Elara flipped open the journal, the old leather creaking, and froze. A name—hername—written in her own handwriting. She stared, fingers gripping the edges of the paper. The letters, the curve of each stroke—undeniably hers. But the memory… it wasn’t there. No flicker of recognition, no trace tugging at her thoughts. Just… nothing.
Her fingers trembled as they traced the ink, the sensation unsettling, like staring at a ghost of herself. She flipped through the pages, revealing diagrams layered with complex equations and symbols spiraling into vortexes, all centered on how the Void served as a bridge between realms. The notes weren’t just about the Void—they focused on the spaces between, places never meant to be reached. They had been testing it—how to control the flow, manipulate the pull between worlds, even disrupt the fabric of reality itself. It required more than just ether; it demanded an understanding of how to bend one world’s pull into another without collapsing them both.
She had even outlined theories on using the Aelfhenge as a focal point. Equations charted the flux, calculating the exact moment to force a tear, positioning the rift directly at the heart of the stones.
It was methodical. Exacting. Terrifying in its brilliance.
And yet, she didn’t remember writing any of it.
A cold dread crept up her spine as she found a detailed list filled with dates, notes on strange experiments—testing the Void’s impact on memory.Her memory.
Elara's pulse quickened, the ink blurring as her heart raced.
They hadn’t just been studying the Void. They had been testing their theories on her. Trying to break through it, to cross the boundaries between dimensions, to use the Void as a doorway. And she had been their key.
The keystone.
