Page 7 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Roran glanced toward the temple before answering, and that told her he was saving the worst part for last. “Twenty-two Coalition soldiers. Four scouts. Two engineers. A priest from the neighboring valley. No Council envoys, naturally. Too wet for them.”

“Naturally.”

Roran rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. “The temple is where we found the markings.”

Seren looked toward the center of the village. She remembered the building from her previous visits. A small stone temple at the edge of the square, older than most of the cottages, once dedicated to the Elven River Mother before the revolution repurposed half the continent’s holy sites and neglected the rest. It sat with its doors open now, rain and sleet tapping against the threshold. Blue Coalition lanterns glowed inside, stark against the amber village light. Even from a distance, Seren could see soldiers standing motionless within. She did not like how still they were.

Roran followed her gaze. “I don’t think this is like anything we’ve encountered before.”

Seren’s fingers rose without permission to the scar at her throat. Silver-pale and thin, it cut across the skin just beneath her jaw, a souvenir from a battle no one wrote songs about because the victory had been too small and the losses too ugly. It tingled beneath her touch, though whether from cold or memory, she could not say. That wound was old and honest in the way scars usually were. The one beneath her ribs was not. It tightened now beneath her coat, a thin, sudden ache that had no business answering a dead temple, a vanished village, or symbols carved in a language she did not remember learning. She had lied to herself with better evidence. If she acknowledged the fear coiling in her chest, it would spread. Fear was a contagious killer. It moved through soldiers faster than sickness if given room.

She smoothed her palm over the scar once, lowered her hand, and turned toward the temple. “Then let us find out what we are dealing with.”

“I had hoped for a more encouraging speech,” Roran muttered.

Seren looked over her shoulder at Roran. “I’m saving those for people who deserve hope.”

He scoffed. “And what do I deserve?”

“A better report.” One corner of her mouth lifted.

“Cruel woman.”

The men inside the temple parted when Seren entered. Outside, the village was cold with rain and absence. Inside, the temple felt colder still. The chill here had weight. It clung to stone walls and sank through leather boots, gathering around ankles like water in a crypt. Lanternlight revealed the stone floor. The markings covered nearly every visible inch of stone. Thousands of marks spread outward from the center of the temple in layered spirals, lines, curves, and branching patterns that seemed at first chaotic and then, horribly, purposeful. They climbed the base of pillars, crossed thresholds, and wrapped around old prayer basins. A few had been carved so deeply the stone had fractured around them.

A young soldier near the entrance spoke with a voice stained with inexperience. “The writings of a madman.”

Seren crouched beside the nearest line. “This is not madness.” She ran her fingers lightly over the carving. The stone should not have been warm. The grooves were fresh in some places, older in others, though that should have been impossible. Some lines looked newly cut, edges sharp and clean. Others had been worn smooth, almost polished, as if someone had traced them over and over for years. Someone had wanted the markings to be remembered by touch alone. The architecture of it felt wrong in a way she could not immediately name. The curves bent at angles that violated the natural flow of written language, yet there was logic here. The symbols nested inside one another, repeated, branched, returned altered, then disappeared into larger patterns. At first glance, they looked like they were writing. The markings spread across the temple floor like roots.

Roran crouched beside her. “You recognize them?”

“No.” It was not entirely true. She recognized the shape of almost-recognition. The maddening sense of seeing something once in another life and failing to remember until it already mattered. Years ago, in the fallen imperial archives, before half the old records burned and the other half vanished into Council vaults, she had seen fragments of languages no scholar after the revolution could fully translate. Elven root-script, Earthspeaker marks, and forbidden texts guarded by Ashwood’s royal line.

Seren’s mouth pressed thin.

‘Possible magical involvement.’

Ten years ago, the palaces had burned. Its rulers were executed, its armies shattered, and its libraries torn apart in the name of peace, progress, revolution, justice. She had walked through those burning halls herself, past shelves collapsing into flame, past centuries of imperial knowledge turning black at the edges. At the time, she had thought only of prisons being opened. She had thought of taxes ended. She had thought of the dead who would finally be avenged. Seren had not thought long enough about what else might be lost when an empire’s archives burned. Regret tried to rise, so she shoved it back down where it belonged.

“General,” one of the engineers called.

Seren followed him across the floor, careful not to step on the deeper carvings, though she could not have explained why that mattered. The markings thickened near the center, converging around one line etched more deeply than all the rest. Unlike the surrounding symbols, this one was written in a language she could read—Old Imperial Common Language. Formal and deliberate. The letters had been carved so violently that cracks spread from their edges like thin black veins.

Seren read the sentence once—then again because she was certain she had misunderstood it the first time. The temple seemed to tilt beneath her as she read the forbidden language etched into stone.

The Heir must return.

Roran read the impossible script from over her shoulder. His breath hitched before he spoke. "Ashwood?"

Seren could not answer him right away, because it simply could not mean Ashwood. Its royal bloodline had been extinguished before cheering crowds and grim-faced soldiers and everyone who believed the world might finally become clean if the right people died publicly enough. Seren had been there. She remembered the square outside the palace; the smoke, the shouts, the smell of wet ash. The emperor dragged before the people. The queen standing straight until the end. The prince, the generals, the old loyalists. She remembered the crowd demanding names, blood, proof that the age of crowns had ended. She remembered being young enough to believe endings could be so simple.

There was no heir—there could not be.

Far beneath the stone floor, something struck, once. The vibration traveled through Seren’s boots into her bones. Several soldiers flinched; one swore. A lantern swung though no wind moved through the temple. The markings on the floor seemed to darken, as if shadow had filled them from below.

Seren rose slowly. “What is beneath this temple?”

The engineer swallowed. “We haven’t fully opened it. There may be older chambers. The foundation extends deeper than expected.”