The night hung heavy.
Kaelith stood alone at the edge of a mirror-lake, its surface undisturbed, reflecting a sky fractured by constellations she didn't recognize — or didn't remember. Her reflection stared back at her, but the eyes weren't hers.
Not fully.
Not anymore.
They shimmered with something else — like memory bleeding through a veil. She had been feeling it for days now. A pulse behind her ribs. A voice humming beneath silence. Familiar places now felt foreign. Familiar people looked… wrong in the corners of her vision.
And Ashardio. Every time he looked at her, she saw grief. Not present grief — but ancient. As though he mourned something lost long ago, something she still carried and could not name.
That frightened her more than anything.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus. Not on logic. Not on questions. But on sensation.
The way her skin reacted near the Loomfires. How the shadows in the Library whispered to her, beckoning when others could not hear them. The way certain sigils carved into the tactical chamber called to her like lullabies from a forgotten cradle.
And the dreams.
They were no longer dreams.
They were replays.
Echoes.
She was six — or someone was. A girl in silver robes was kneeling before a throne made of glass and thorns, her hands bleeding. The room around her burned in slow motion. Above her, a voice echoed, gentle and cruel.
"You are not meant to remember this life. Not until the thread tightens."
She was older — or younger — standing at the mouth of a stone gate, with twelve cloaked figures watching. Each bore a name she could almost remember. The Thirteenth was missing.
A woman turned toward her.
Her face was Kaelith's.
But her eyes were not.
"You're the lock," the woman whispered. "He is the key. And the gate… the gate is almost open."
Kaelith gasped, falling to her knees as the vision shattered into stars across her sight. Her fingers dug into the earth beside the lake.
The pain was not physical — it was metaphysical. A pull deep within the weave of her identity, like she was wearing skin not fully hers.
"Who am I?" she whispered.
The lake didn't answer.
But something moved beneath its surface.
Not a creature. Not a reflection.
A symbol.
A sun caught in eclipse, etched in silver light.
The same mark that had haunted Ashardio's eyes when she last looked at him. The same one she now remembered on her childhood pendant — the one her caretakers had said she lost before she could speak.
The eclipse.
The lock.
Her heartbeat slowed.
What if her memories weren't stolen?
What if they were sealed?
By her own will.
She stumbled back, breath sharp.
She wasn't just a girl trained to be a guardian. She was something made. Molded. Placed in the perfect spot.
To watch someone.
To guard something.
Or worse — to prevent something.
As her vision cleared, she saw a flicker between the trees — a silhouette in a feathered cloak. Watching.
Lyreth?
Or someone else?
Kaelith did not chase it.
Instead, she whispered into the night:
"If I'm the lock…"
"…then what happens when I remember the door?"
The wind didn't answer.
But the trees trembled.
And far, far away, the gate dreamed of opening.