ONE
Aria
The blade bit deep into my palm, a familiar kiss of steel that had marked every dawn for the past five years. Blood welled along the cut, each drop heavy with purpose, with power, with the weight of a legacy I'd never asked for but couldn't escape.
The Sanctorum swallowed the sound of my breathing. Even after all this time, the sheer vastness of the chamber made me feel like a child playing at being important. Above, the domed ceiling vanished into shadow so complete it might have been the void itself. The air hung thick and still, pregnant with contained power that pressed against my skin like fog in the air.
I held my bleeding hand over the carved channel in the floor, watching crimson droplets follow the ancient grooves toward the Gate. Each one pulled at something deep in my chest, a tether I'd been born with but only truly felt since my twentieth year, when Mother had finally?—
The Gate pulsed.
Light fractured across its surface like breaking glass, casting my shadow in a dozen different directions. The sensation hit me immediately—that familiar drain, the price of keeping godschained. My blood touched the base of the Gate, and it drank deep, greedy as a starved beast.
"Mor'thak nei valos," I began, the old tongue rolling off my lips with practised ease. "Sanguine tor'ack, catenas hold."
The words tasted of ash and iron. Each syllable pulled more from me than just breath. The Gate's light steadied with each phrase, its chaotic fractures smoothing into something almost like calm. Almost.
"Pandora's will, Pandora's weight. Lock the divine, seal their fate."
My mother's voice echoed in my memory, overlaying my own. She'd stood in this exact spot every dawn for thirty-seven years. Bled for it. Died for it, in the end.
Question nothing, feel nothing, or it will consume you.
Her final words. Not "I love you." Not "Be strong." Just a warning, delivered through lips already growing cold. I'd been fifteen, too young to understand what she meant. Now, at twenty-five, I understood too well. The Gate didn't just feed on blood. It fed on everything we might have been if we hadn't been born to be its keepers.
The ritual words continued, each one precisely measured, perfectly emotionless. That was the key. No feeling. No doubt. Just duty, pure and simple.
"By blood freely given, by will freely bound. What Pandora locked, let none unwound."
The final phrase left my lips, and the Gate's pull released me. I swayed slightly, then steadied myself against years of practice. My hand throbbed, the cut already trying to close, another gift of our bloodline, this unnatural healing that ensured we could bleed again tomorrow.
I pulled the clean linen from my belt, wrapping my palm with movements so routine they required no thought. Press here to staunch the flow. Wrap twice for stability. Tuck the end tosecure. By tomorrow's dawn, only a thin pink line would remain, ready to be opened again.
The Gate should have been settling now, its light dimming to the steady, pearl-like glow that meant all was well. Instead, it flickered.
I froze, bandage half-tied.
The light stuttered again, stronger this time. Not the steady pulse of a heart at rest, but something erratic. Struggling. Like a dying heartbeat, like Mother's chest rising and falling in those final moments when her body fought what her spirit had already accepted.
"No." The word escaped before I could stop it, and the Gate reacted immediately to the emotion behind it, a violent flash that sent shadows dancing across the walls.
I forced myself to embody the stillness that my mother had when I watched her do this as a child, then I called on that empty calm that had been beaten into me since I was small. The Gate needed nothing from me but blood and words. Not fear. Never fear.
But the light continued its erratic dance, and deep in my chest, something cold and certain whispered that everything was about to change.
I finished tying the bandage with steady hands that betrayed nothing of the ice spreading through my veins. The Gate's light threw my reflection across the polished stone floor, a pale girl with dark hair and amethyst eyes that held too many secrets.
No. Not a girl. The last Keeper of Pandora's line. The only thing standing between the mortal world and four princes who'd once nearly destroyed it. Not to mention everything on the other side of the barrier.
The Gate flickered again, and this time, I could have sworn I heard something else. Not quite a voice, not quite a sound, butsomething that pressed against the edges of my consciousness like fingers testing the strength of a lock.
I backed away from the Gate, maintaining the measured pace that protocol demanded. Never run in the Sanctorum. Never show weakness before the prison of gods.
My footsteps echoed in the vast chamber, each one counting down the distance to the entrance. Twenty steps. Fifteen. Ten.
The Gate's light died completely.
For one impossible moment, the Sanctorum plunged into absolute darkness. The kind of black that existed before creation, before light was even a concept. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I knew with horrible certainty that the Gate could feel it.
