They reached the glade at dawn.
The mist still clung low to the forest floor, curling around their boots like ghostly hands. Elara walked ahead, silent and tense, her cloak snagging against thorny underbrush. Kael followed close behind, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other brushing away the cold breath of the morning.
"This place feels… wrong," Kael muttered.
"It is," Elara replied. "It was the last place I trusted her."
He didn't ask who "her" was. He already knew. The sorceress—her sister, her shadow, her curse.
In the center of the clearing, a circle of stones lay half-buried in the earth, etched with ancient runes that shimmered faintly beneath the dew. Elara dropped to her knees beside them and reached into the pouch at her hip.
She withdrew the seed.
It didn't look like much—small, round, the color of bone, with a single crimson vein running along its surface like a crack. But Kael had seen what it could do. It pulsed faintly in her hand, like it had a heartbeat of its own.
"This is where she made the first cut," Elara said quietly. "Where she took the first piece of me."
Kael frowned. "You mean your blood?"
"No." Elara looked up at him. "My memory."
She pressed the seed into the soil at the center of the rune circle. The earth trembled.
For a long breath, nothing happened.
Then the ground split.
A narrow crack spread beneath the seed, glowing from within. Roots pushed through, black and twisted, coiling around one another like serpents. A tree erupted from the soil, growing at unnatural speed—its bark ashen, its leaves silver and sharp. At its base, a hollow opened, revealing a narrow spiral staircase descending into darkness.
Kael stepped forward, tension in his jaw. "That's not just magic. That's old magic."
Elara stood slowly. "It's memory magic. She used it to hide what she didn't want me to remember. But it's still mine."
Kael hesitated. "If you go down there—"
"Then I go," she said, cutting him off. "You don't have to come."
He looked at her, hard. "I never said I wouldn't."
She gave him the ghost of a smile, then stepped into the hollow.
---
The stairway twisted like a serpent's spine, carved from black stone that pulsed with a dim, cold light. They descended for what felt like hours, the air growing heavier with each step, until finally the path opened into a chamber deep beneath the forest.
It was perfectly round. Six standing mirrors formed a ring in the center, each framed in dark wood and carved with symbols Elara could only half-recognize. Between them, the floor was inlaid with veins of silver and crystal, forming a six-pointed star.
Kael looked around warily. "What is this place?"
"It's called a Memory Ring," Elara said. "She and I used to come here when we were children. Before the curse. Before the crown."
She stepped into the center of the circle and drew a thin dagger from her belt. Without flinching, she sliced her palm and let the blood drip onto the floor.
The silver veins glowed red.
The mirrors began to shimmer.
Kael tensed. "You sure this is smart?"
"No," she said. "But it's necessary."
Each mirror flickered—images forming like mist.
One showed two young girls chasing each other through a meadow, laughter in their eyes.
Another showed the older girl—now a young woman—standing above Elara with a blade, her expression unreadable, her hands shaking.
Another flashed with fire—Elara screaming, bound by chains made of light.
Kael stepped closer. "She tried to kill you."
"No," Elara said. "She tried to unmake me."
The mirror behind her shimmered again—this time revealing the sorceress, cloaked in red, whispering to a shadow with no face.
And then the chamber spoke.
Not in words, but in a voice Elara knew too well. Smooth. Cold. Familiar.
"Do you remember what you gave up to forget me?"
The mirrors cracked.
All six at once.
A wind howled through the chamber. The ground shook. Kael grabbed Elara's arm and pulled her out of the ring as the silver veins sparked with blinding light.
From the center of the circle, something began to rise—a figure made of smoke and bone, her hair like coiled flame.
The sorceress. Not truly here, but close enough.
"You should have stayed a swan," she whispered. "Now you'll drown in what you buried."
The vision vanished. The chamber went still.
The mirrors shattered entirely, leaving only fragments, scattered like broken thoughts.
Kael stepped beside Elara, his voice hoarse. "She's still linked to this place."
"She is this place," Elara said quietly. "And I just pulled her eyes back toward us."
She picked up a mirror shard. In its surface, she didn't see herself.
She saw what she'd once been.
And what she might have to become again.