A hiss escapes when I tighten the belt. The lattice tugs skin inward, as though the stone wishes to own the organ beating beneath it. I exhale until dizziness ebbs.
One item remains: a narrow wooden box bound in green ribbon. I carry it to the writing desk, set it beneath the lamplight, and unfasten the bow. Inside rests a single sheet of parchment,blank, and a quill cut from the feather of a dusk-heron. The note I never wrote.
Laurel deserves more than silence. She pledged herself to the sanctuary’s care, trusting the rumors of a stone-blooded recluse. How many nights has she sung outside the observatory, hoping the sound reached me? I owe her truth, or at least a direction.
I sit. The chair creaks, ancient wood protesting. Ink finds the nib. Words bleed onto paper:
Laurel,
The sky has spoken in screams.
I go to the shrine north of Frostglass Ridge. If I do not return, do not follow. Yet if you must, bring no mirrors, break no promises, and remember the first law: every prophecy changes when observed.
Guard the sanctuary’s hushed heart. May the stars roll kindly under your watch.
—C.G.
I sand the ink. The sheet folds once, twice, then sears closed with a thumb-print rune that only she can break. I slide it into a silver tube and set the tube in the chute that leads to the rookery.
“Deliver on first light,” I command. The chute swallows the cylinder with a clack.
A low thunder ripples overhead. I glance up. Hairline cracks spider the ceiling crystal. Frost dust drifts down. The sanctuary itself pushes me out the door.
Pack over shoulder, cloak clasped, I make for the ley gate on the far balcony. My stride lengthens despite pain. Floors pulse beneath boots: farewell heartbeats of a place that has been my cell and my cradle.
The balcony doors swing open before I touch them. Dawn still hides beyond the horizon, yet the sky glows faint rose. Snowfields sprawled below catch that blush and fling it back into my face.
At the parapet two stone gryphons flank the circular portal etched into the floor. I lay a hand on the left gryphon’s brow. The granite warmth surprises me; the creature remembers my kindnesses, the songs I sang while mending its weathered wing.
“Watch over Laurel,” I murmur. The statue’s eyes kindle amber. Promise accepted.
Wind shears across the balcony, tugging cloak and hair. Strands of silver whip into my eyes. My reflection in a shard of ice startles me—skin pale as snowfall, lashes rimmed by frost, pupils paling under the prophecy’s residue. And the lattice glittering at my throat, fine cracks branching like river deltas. I look both fragile and inevitable, a contradiction only oracles know.
The ley gate awaits. A ring of sigils etched in abyssal obsidian holds a shallow pool of starlight. I whisper the shrine’s coordinates, forming them backwards so the gate cannot betray me to any who spy. The starlight convulses, deepening from silver to blood-red, and the portal yawns open, revealing swirling mist that smells of cedar smoke and distant thunder.
I hesitate. Leaving means forfeiting the quiet mastery I built here. It means cold roads, questioning eyes, and worst of all, the company of those who might watch me die a little each day.
But staying would be a betrayal of every life glimpsed in the collapse—wolves, dragons, humans, fae—all screaming in a single chord. I cannot plug my ears.
I step onto the first rune. Energy surges from sole to spine. The crystal in my ribs hums an answering note, high and brittle, as though pieces of me already remember this path.
Wind catches the cloak’s edge, wrapping it around my hips like a lover afraid to let go. I unclasp it and throw it over the nearest gryphon’s back. The cold against new crystal will hurt, but departures should sting.
On the second rune the sanctuary quakes. Behind me, stained-glass windows burst, scattering shards that freeze mid-fall, suspended by a final vestige of ward magic. Each piece reflects a different history: my first vision, my last apprentice’s tears, the smile of the dragon seer who taught me the cost of foresight. I bow my head to them all.
Third rune. The ley pool rises, tendrils of light licking at my boots like living fire. The taste of iron floods my mouth; I realize I’m biting my own lip. Fear tastes old, familiar, almost comforting.
“Watch me, Laurel,” I whisper toward the chute hidden inside the tower stones. “Learn how ending begins.”
The portal flares. A heartbeat later cold blossoms around me, so swift it scours the breath from my lungs. The observatory vanishes, replaced by a tunnel of star-flecked dark. I am weightless, rippling across lines of power older than language.
Inside my chest, the crystal answers, soft pulses keeping time. One pulse for the life I leave, one for the path ahead, one for the heartbeat I felt in the vision—the silhouette kneeling at an altar, shoulders steeped in grief and resolve.
Kylan Grimvale. Alpha of the north.
I whisper his name into the dark corridor. The syllables flash along the ley line, seeking him, warning him, courting him—perhaps all three.
The air ahead brightens. A gate mouth yawns. I brace, feet braced apart, knees soft. Impact hits like plunging through iced water.
