Then the light returned, but wrong. Instead of pearl-white, it burned gold. Instead of steady, it pulsed with a rhythm that wasn't quite regular, wasn't quite random. Like laughter. Like breathing.
Like something waking up.
I stood at the threshold of the Sanctorum, torn between my duty to stay and every instinct screaming at me to run. The golden light washed over me, warm where it should have been cold, almost gentle where it should have been indifferent.
Mother had been wrong about one thing. The Gate wouldn't consume me for feeling.
It already had.
The golden light painted the walls in colours I'd never seen before, turning the cold stone into something that looked almost alive. My shadow stretched behind me, but it was wrong too. It was too long, too dark, and was it my imagination or did it have too many edges?
"Status report." My voice rang clear and emotionless in the vast chamber, the formal words a shield against whatever was happening. "Gate manifestation anomaly detected at dawnritual, First Day of the Frost Moon. Keeper Aria Pandoros reporting."
The protocol phrases felt hollow, speaking to no one. The recording crystals embedded in the walls would capture my words, but who would ever listen to them? Who would know what to do if?—
The Gate pulsed, and suddenly the golden light contracted, pulling inward like a breath being drawn. The temperature plummeted. My next exhale came out as mist, and frost began forming on the metal fixtures along the walls.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped.
The Gate returned to its normal pearl-white glow. Steady. Calm. As if the last few moments had been nothing but my imagination.
But the frost remained on the walls. And in the perfect silence of the Sanctorum, I could hear something new. A sound so faint I might have missed it if I hadn't been holding my breath.
Chains. Somewhere far below, in depths that shouldn't exist, ancient chains were shifting.
I forced myself to turn away, to walk through the Sanctorum's entrance with the same measured dignity expected of a Keeper. The heavy doors groaned shut behind me, sealing with a sound that had once meant safety.
Now it sounded like a countdown.
The corridor beyond the Sanctorum was a different world, narrow where the chamber was vast, warm where it had been cold. Sunrise hadn't yet reached this deep into the Citadel, and the only light came from the ever-burning sconces that lined the walls. Their flames never flickered, never died, sustained by magic so old that even we had forgotten who first cast it.
I allowed myself three breaths to compose myself. Three breaths to push down the ice in my veins, the questions clawingat my throat. Three breaths to become what I needed to be, not Aria who had just witnessed the impossible, but Keeper Pandoros.
The walk back to my quarters took exactly three hundred and seventeen steps. I'd counted them so many times they'd become meditation, each footfall a tiny ritual of normalcy. This morning I needed that normalcy more than ever.
Step forty-three led me past the memorial wall where previous Keepers stared down from portraits painted in oils that never faded. My mother's was the newest, her painted eyes holding that same warning they'd held in life.
Step one hundred and five and I was through the intersection where the servants' passages met the main corridor. At this hour, I should have encountered at least one person, maybe a cook heading to the kitchens, or a guard changing shift. The emptiness felt deliberate, orchestrated.
Step two hundred and one had me going past the archive doors, where Master Theron would already be hunched over his texts, preparing for the day's lessons. A thin line of candlelight showed beneath the door. Normal. Safe. Except the light flickered once, twice, then went out entirely.
Step two hundred and seventy and I was going around the final turn toward the Keepers' quarters. Here, at least, I found signs of life. Two guards flanked the entrance, their faces hidden behind ceremonial helms that turned them from people into symbols.
"Keeper Pandoros." They spoke in unison, voices deliberately pitched to sameness. No individuality allowed when serving at the threshold of sacred spaces.
I nodded in acknowledgment but didn't speak. Words had power here, especially mine, especially now with the memory of golden light still burning behind my eyes.
Step three hundred and seventeen and I was finally at my door.
The wood was plain, unadorned except for the single symbol carved at eye level, a closed fist holding a key. Every Keeper's door bore the same mark, a reminder that we were tools, not people. We existed to lock, to hold, to contain.
Inside, my quarters were as sparse as the door promised. I had a narrow bed with white linens, next to which was a desk holding exactly three books, the Keeper's Codex, the Ritual Observances, and the Chronicle of the First Betrayal. Then there was a wardrobe containing seven identical sets of robes, one for each day of the week. A washing basin that filled itself with cold water at dawn and dusk.
And hidden behind a loose stone that no one else knew about, my only rebellion, was a small wooden box.
I knelt beside the wall, fingers finding the tiny gap that let me pry the stone free. The box within was no bigger than my palm, its wood worn smooth by years of secret handling. Inside, pressed between sheets of thin glass, lay my collection.
Wildflowers. Each one stolen from the Citadel's courtyard during those rare moments when duty took me past its walls. A purple aster from three summers ago. A tiny white windflower from last spring. A golden chrysanthemum from the day before my mother died.
