I sat up, disoriented, the dream-forest still clinging to my senses. Outside my window, dawn was just breaking. I'd only been asleep for a few hours, but it felt like moments.
"What's wrong?"
"Master Theron," Ellie's voice cracked. "He's dead. They're saying he was murdered."
The warmth from Thane's touch vanished, replaced by ice in my veins. Master Theron, who'd shown me the hidden truths. Who'd given me the fragments of real history.
Who'd known too much.
"How?" My voice came out steady despite the storm in my chest.
"Poison, they think. But Aria..." Ellie leaned closer, dropping her voice to barely a whisper. "He left something for you. Hidden in the place where dead flowers grow."
My hidden collection. He'd known about it too.
As I dressed hastily, pulling on the grey robes that felt more like chains with each passing day, I heard Kaelen's voice echo in my mind, not through the Gate but through the connection the dream had strengthened.
The pattern tightens. Your allies are being removed. You're running out of time to choose.
And beneath his words, Thane's quieter presence, steady as mountains:
Every choice is a chance to break the pattern. Make this one count.
I looked at Ellie, loyal, trusting Ellie, who had no idea what was really happening in her world. Then I made a choice that would have terrified me a week ago.
"Ellie, I need you to listen very carefully. Everything you think you know about the Keepers, about our purpose, about the Gate... it's all lies."
Her eyes widened, but I continued, the words flowing like water through a broken dam.
Because Thane was right. Every choice was a chance to break the pattern.
And I was done choosing silence.
FOURTEEN
Aria
I moved through the Citadel's halls with purpose, each footfall echoing against the ancient stone with a deliberate, measured cadence. The pall of Master Theron's death hung heavily over me like a burial shroud, its weight pressing down on my shoulders with every breath I took. It was a potent, visceral reminder of the stakes at play. A reminder written in an old man's blood and silence.
The high walls felt more oppressive today than they had in all my years of confinement here, their surfaces seeming to lean inward as if the very architecture sought to crush the truth. Shadows pooled in corners with unnatural darkness, and the air itself felt thick, almost syrupy, laden with secrets and betrayal that caught in my throat like incense smoke.
The whispers from my fellow Keepers were like ants crawling over my skin, small, persistent, and maddening. I caught fragments of their hushed conversations as I passed,touched by Olympus,marked,compromised. Each syllable was a reminder that any one of them could be wearing a mask of loyalty while hiding the dagger meant for my back, just as someone had done to Master Theron.
Ellie had said he left something for me where dead flowers grow. The phrase had seemed cryptic at first, but understanding had bloomed quickly. My collection, the one thing I had that connected me to something purely beautiful in this place of cold duty, had also been noticed by Master Theron. He had known about my secret, my small rebellion against the sterile world the Order demanded. The thought brought an unexpected tightness to my chest, a bittersweet ache. Even in death, the old scholar was looking out for me.
For the first time since the golden marks had begun spreading across my skin, people avoided me less out of fear of what I had become and more out of fear for my wrath, for what I might do. I could see it in the way they pressed themselves against the walls as I passed, in the quick averting of eyes, in the way conversations died the moment I entered a room.
Whatever Master Theron had left for me needed to be discovered, but I had to ensure it was done in absolute secrecy. Other Keepers still trusted me, still saw me as a paragon of virtue and discipline, the perfect product of Natalia's unrelenting tutelage. I had to make sure they continued to believe that lie, at least long enough to uncover what Theron had hidden.
Slipping into my quarters, I went straight to the eastern wall that housed my hidden collection, my sanctuary of forbidden beauty. I methodically removed the stone, my hands steady despite my racing heart that thundered so loudly I was certain someone in the corridor outside could hear it. The panel came free with a soft scrape of stone against stone, and there they were, the delicate blooms of dead flowers, each one preserved in their fragile states, petals pressed flat and colors faded to gentle ghosts of their former vibrancy. They were a stark contrast to the corridor of cold, unforgiving stone that lay just beyond my door, a small pocket of softness in a world that demanded only hardness.
Tucked beneath the first flower, between the delicate petals of a purple aster and a white windflower that I'd found growing in a crack in the courtyard two summers ago, was a parchment. It was old and cracked, the edges yellowed with age, but it had clearly been placed there recently, positioned with deliberate care for me to find.
I unfolded it carefully, my fingers trembling slightly now, wary of causing more damage to what might be Master Theron's final words to me. The handwriting was unmistakably his, those familiar, slightly shaky strokes that I remembered from years of lessons. The letters were sure but hurried, written with the desperate urgency of a man who knew his time was running out. His desperation bled through every word, through every ink-blot and hastily crossed t.
"Aria, if you find this, it means I couldn't tell you in person. I am sorry for that—there is much I wish I could have explained, much I should have told you years ago. Look in the lower archive, beneath the restricted texts, where the light does not reach and dust lies thick as snow. The volumes there speak of the Unbound Queen, mention prophecy hidden even from those who think they know the truth. The Council has buried it, but they cannot destroy what they do not fully understand."
"Use what you know as a key. Your bloodline, your gifts. They are not curses, child, no matter what Natalia has taught you. Do not trust her. She watches everything, knows more than she shows, and her righteousness has curdled into something far more dangerous than any god behind the Gate. Whatever you decide, act soon. The old walls are crumbling, and not just the Gate's. The entire foundation of this place is built on lies, and when truth finally breaks through, it will shatter everything."
