The lanterns flared back to life.
But by then, the whisper was gone.
Liara, Cassian, and Aeron stood frozen in the corridor. Only the rain tapping the stained-glass windows reminded them that time was still moving.
Cassian broke the silence. "That voice—was it in your heads too?"
Aeron nodded once. "Ancient magic. Old as the Vault."
Liara's skin prickled. "What did it mean? Who's the third?"
Neither answered.
That evening, Liara sat alone in the library, sifting through forbidden texts in the back row where the light barely reached. Tamsin had gone to a divination class, and she hadn't seen either Cassian or Aeron since the corridor incident.
She flipped a page—and froze.
There, in a brittle, hand-inked codex of Founder lore, was a sketch of the Vault: a massive stone chamber encircled by three sigils—light, shadow, and flame. The crescent-and-ivy symbol was labeled "The First Path: Illumina."
And beneath it: "Three keys. Three fates. One of them will fall."
Liara's heart thudded.
Fall?
She shoved the book away.
Something moved behind the shelf.
She stood, pulse racing. "Cassian?"
No answer.
She crept around the edge.
Nothing.
Then—a parchment bird flapped down from the top shelf, landing in her palm.
No writing. Just a symbol pressed in wax.
A phoenix in shadow.
And a line appeared on the parchment, ink writing itself in graceful strokes:
"I see you, Illumina. We all do."
The paper burst into black flame and vanished.
That night, as she lay in bed, the sigil on her chest pulsed again—stronger now, responding to something unseen.
She dreamed of firelight dancing across marble floors, of voices chanting in an ancient tongue, and a figure with silver hair and burning gold eyes standing in a circle of flame.
Then, a whisper in her mind:
"One will guard you.
One will betray you.
One will die."
Liara woke with a gasp.
The crescent mark burned on her skin—hot, and no longer hidden.
And outside her window, in the shadows of the courtyard, someone was watching.