The moonlight spilled through the dormitory window, pale and watchful. Amara couldn't sleep. Not after Elara's chilling visit. Not with her mother's journal heavy on her lap and the name Seer echoing in her skull like a ghost trying to claw its way out.
The book had fallen open to a page she hadn't noticed before—a torn edge, a hidden flap tucked beneath a sketch of the academy's eastern wing. When she peeled it back, her heart nearly stopped. There was a map, faintly inked, drawn over a page of poetry.
The poem read:
Beneath the eye where light won't glow,
A lock is hidden where rivers flow.
Find the book the stone will keep,
And wake the heart that never sleeps.
Amara traced the lines of the map. It led toward the library. Not the part students were allowed to use—but the sealed-off lower wing, rumored to have been closed after a fire decades ago.
The next morning, before dawn, Amara wrapped herself in a long coat and slipped from her dorm room. Selene still hadn't spoken to her. Elara hadn't reappeared. The world had gone quiet, as though holding its breath.
The halls were still as bone. Her footsteps echoed like whispers.
She reached the library and crept down the marble staircase to the roped-off hallway. The air turned colder with each step. The forbidden wing looked abandoned, the door sealed by old chains and a heavy iron lock.
But Amara knew spells now.
She whispered one her mother had written in the margins of the journal.
The lock groaned and split open with a dull snap.
Inside, dust danced in golden shafts of light, and old shelves sagged under forgotten tomes. Cobwebs covered the chandeliers, and parchment yellowed with age lined the tables.
She walked until she found a stone archway at the very back, carved with the same rune as the one on the journal's cover.
Beneath it was a single shelf.
One book.
When she reached for it, the air seemed to pulse.
Her hand trembled as she touched the spine.
The moment she opened it, voices rushed through her—memories not her own, pain stitched with names she didn't recognize, shadows slithering under skin.
And then—her mother's voice.
Clear. Familiar.
"If you've found this, Amara, then the seal is weakening."
She fell to her knees.
"You were born to stop what I couldn't. Born with a heart that can bind or break the forgotten god."
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"You must never let it feed. Never let it wear you."
A soft hand touched her shoulder.
She turned sharply.
It was Elara.
"I told you I came to stop the thing inside you," Elara said softly. "But I didn't tell you how."
"You're not here to kill me," Amara whispered.
Elara knelt. "I'm here to show you how to survive."
They sat in the dusty silence, surrounded by knowledge too ancient to speak aloud. Elara explained everything: the Seers were once guardians of the boundary between worlds. But most had been wiped out when the god first awoke—when Amara's mother made the deal that saved the world and cursed her child.
"That's why I can feel it," Amara murmured. "Why I dream of silver fire."
Elara nodded. "Because your blood remembers."
A loud creak echoed from the far end of the room.
Both girls froze.
Then—footsteps.
Someone else had followed her.
Professor Nyla stepped into the light.
Amara's heart stuttered.
"I was hoping you'd find the book," Nyla said. "But I didn't expect the Seer's daughter to arrive so soon."
Elara stood, tense. "Are you friend or foe?"
Nyla smiled. "Depends on which future you're trying to write."
She approached slowly, hands empty, expression calm.
"I protected your mother when she was here, Amara. I tried to stop her from making the deal."
"What deal?" Amara asked.
"To trade her future for yours. She offered her womb, her magic, her very soul—to contain the god's hunger. But it fed anyway. It grew inside you. Not to destroy you, but to wear you like a crown."
The room spun.
"You lied to me," Amara whispered.
"I didn't lie," Nyla said. "I waited. Until you were strong enough to hear the truth."
Elara's voice was tight. "We have to stop the god before the next moonrise. Or the gate won't close again."
Nyla nodded. "Then we need one more thing. The tether. The object that binds him to this world."
"And where is it?" Amara asked.
Nyla's smile faded.
"Buried beneath the chapel," she said. "With your mother's body."
Amara's breath caught.
Her heart whispered the truth: the god wasn't just inside her.
It had been growing beside her mother's bones.
Waiting.
And now, it was almost free.