Zero's eyes lingered on the words bleeding across the parchment. Each line shimmered faintly before drying into place, as though the book itself bled truth instead of ink. He clenched his jaw. It unsettled him, the idea that something unseen had the right to record them so mercilessly, stripped of intention or thought.
Lilith moved closer, her hands brushing trembling fingertips over the spines of the shelves as if searching by instinct. Her gaze darted, her lips parted, and for the first time since they left the prison she allowed a fragment of desperation to show.
"There has to be something," she whispered, more to herself than him. "Something about when they took me. About what I was before… before I became nothing more than their weapon."
Her hand halted over a thick, dark-bound tome. The cover shivered beneath her touch, the leather creaking as if resisting. Then, without warning, the book slid free of the shelf and opened mid-air. Pages fluttered violently before stilling on a passage inked in fresh crimson script.
Zero stepped closer, his expression tight, scanning the words. His eyes caught on the name—Aamon.
Lilith inhaled sharply. Her throat bobbed as she forced the word out. "…Him."
The Chronicle did not show them her past—not yet. Instead, the pages unfolded a moment neither of them had ever witnessed:
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The throne room lay cloaked in shadows, the walls reverberating with the echo of chains. Aamon sat upon the black throne, the faint gleam of his eyes cutting through the dark like blades. His expression bore the satisfaction of conquest, the hunger of one who had seized all he craved and still wanted more.
At the far end of the chamber, the massive doors groaned open. The guards stiffened, spears lowered, but they did not move against the figure who entered. For she was not one to be barred.
The woman walked with a gait that was neither hurried nor languid, her steps echoing like the tapping of brittle bones on stone. Her form was draped in layers of tattered robes, black as pitch yet embroidered with silver symbols that shifted restlessly as though alive. Her hair, tangled and long, hung like threads of night streaked with white. Around her thin, hunched shoulders rested a shawl of feathers that glimmered faintly with oil-slick colors.
Her face was half-hidden by a veil of gauze. What little could be seen was withered, a mouth drawn into a permanent knowing smile, lips cracked as though parched by centuries. Her eyes—what little the veil revealed—were clouded, milky-white, yet glowed faintly with something beyond sight. A stench of smoke and herbs clung to her, sharp enough to prickle the guards' nostrils even from a distance.
A crooked staff tapped against the ground with each step. From its top dangled bones—too small to belong to beasts, too delicate to be anything but human. They rattled softly, like chimes heralding doom. Official source is novel✦fire.net
The chamber seemed to recoil from her presence. Shadows stretched further, torches dimmed, and even the obsidian floor seemed colder beneath her tread.
Aamon's gaze narrowed, though he did not rise from his throne. His voice carried through the chamber like iron dragged across stone. "You dare enter unbidden?"
The woman's smile deepened, though her lips barely parted. Her voice rasped, dry and brittle as autumn leaves crushed beneath a heel. "I do not enter, Lord of Chains. I arrive. As was seen. As was promised."
The guards shifted uneasily, their grips tightening on their weapons, yet none dared to strike.
Aamon leaned forward on the armrest of his throne, his fingers curling like talons. "And who are you to promise?"
The woman halted at the center of the hall. She bowed once, shallow, mocking. "I am she who names what has not yet come. I am she who binds the unseen with words. They call me many things—witch, prophet, deceiver. But you may call me what you wish, for it changes nothing. My truth is not given; it is already written."
Her head tilted, and her gaze—or what should not have been sight—seemed to pierce through the veil, straight into Aamon himself. "And I see you, child of ambition. You sit the throne, but already you hunger for what lies beyond it."
Aamon's lips curled into a cruel smile, but his eyes glimmered with curiosity. "You speak of the future?"
Her bony fingers twitched around her staff, setting the bones to rattling softly. "I do not speak of it. I reveal it. For a price."
Silence stretched taut in the throne room. The guards' eyes flicked between their lord and the intruder, as if waiting for the command to slaughter her. But Aamon raised one hand, halting them.
"Show me, then," he said at last, his tone measured, dangerous. "If your riddles hold weight, let me see what fate dares to place before me."
The woman's dry chuckle rattled in her chest. "Very well."
She lowered herself to the ground with surprising grace for her crooked frame. With a flick of her staff, a small circle of bone fragments fell around her in a perfect ring. She spread her skeletal hands, her cracked nails scraping faintly against the stone floor. Then she reached into her robes and withdrew a pouch.
From it spilled powders—ash-gray, glimmering dust that hissed faintly upon contact with the floor, as if the stone itself resisted it. She drew careful patterns, spirals and symbols older than language, the air thickening with every line completed.
Finally, she touched her fingertip to her tongue, then pressed it to the center of the circle. The marks ignited with a faint glow. With one breath, she exhaled over the symbols, and a small flame flickered to life at their heart.
The fire was not ordinary. It burned cold, its light blue-white, casting no warmth, no comfort—only shadows that writhed unnaturally against the walls.
Her voice lowered to a whisper that carried unnaturally through the hall.
"Then watch, Lord of Chains. Watch as the unseen unveils its face…"
The flame crackled once, swelling brighter. The ritual had begun.