CHAPTER 179: IT’S A DEATH MARK.

The chamber darkened as if the glow from the dagger had pulled the light into itself. Liora didn’t move. Neither did Lucien.

The dagger shimmered, a faint gold at first, then a rush of crimson light that pulsed once, twice, and then burst outward like a breath being released after centuries of silence.

And then...

Liora wasn’t in the room anymore.

She stood in the middle of a scorched field, fire curling around the tips of ruined trees. The sky was blood orange. The wind howled like it mourned something long lost. And there, in the center, a woman stood tall amidst the flames.

She wore a gown the color of old parchment, her back rigid, her hair braided with pieces of golden thread. Her face... was Liora’s. And yet not.

Her mouth moved, whispering something Liora couldn’t hear at first, until the name rang clearly through the crackling flames:

"Kael."

Liora’s heart skipped.

The woman turned, and this time, their eyes met. Not like a dream, not like a vision. It was like looking through a mirror into another life.

The woman spoke again, louder this time. "Tell him... tell him I forgive him."

"Who are you?" Liora asked, her voice rasping in her throat.

But the woman only raised a hand and on her palm, carved into the skin, was a sigil. A rose woven into a sword.

The same emblem that once marked the old royal banners. The lost house. The one wiped out in the Rebellion. A name whispered only in hidden books.

House Aerenya.

The woman began to dissolve, like ash in the wind.

Liora screamed, reaching for her.

"Wait...wait...please...!"

She awoke with a gasp, back in her chamber, with Lucien kneeling beside her, shaking her gently.

"Liora!"

She clutched his sleeve, her body slick with sweat. "She said his name."

Lucien’s eyes narrowed. "Whose?"

She looked at him. "Kael. She... she knew him."

He sat back, stunned.

"That’s impossible," he murmured.

But they both knew nothing was impossible anymore.

Liora touched her palm. There was nothing there.

Yet she could still feel the brand, the memory of a name that had been stolen from the world.

Lucien looked at the dagger, now quiet again, resting in its sheath.

"She was you," he said softly. "Wasn’t she?"

Liora nodded.

"I think I was her once."

Outside, a thunderclap split the sky. And far away, in the shadows of the court, the Queen Dowager looked into her mirror... and whispered,

"She awakens."

The next morning brought no comfort.

The storm had passed, but a strange hush hung over the manor. Even the servants moved like shadows, whispering too quietly and glancing too often. Word of the light that pulsed from Lucien’s chamber had already started to twist into stories. Magic. Curse. A forbidden ritual.

Lucien didn’t care.

He had locked himself in the manor’s private library, one of the few places Queen Dowager Lilian hadn’t managed to desecrate. The walls were lined with books from before the war. Scrolls. Banned journals. Hidden records. And now, at the center, lay three weathered tomes.

He flipped through the oldest. Its leather cover cracked beneath his fingers.

"The Lost Houses of Eldryn."

Page after page listed noble bloodlines that had either fallen in battle or been erased through scandal. His eyes darted across the names until he reached one etched in faded red ink.

House Aerenya Burned from memory, erased by decree.

Lucien paused.

There was a sketch beside the name of a seal: a rose entwined around a sword, identical to the vision Liora had described. It had been the mark of loyalty to the Old Crown.

And then came the footnote:

"The last heir is rumored to have vanished after the Siege of Andrellor. Unconfirmed reports claimed she survived. Name unknown. The house was officially purged under King Alric’s command. All trace forbidden."

Lucien sat back, breath shallow. "The name... was Aerenya," he whispered.

But that wasn’t a name. It was a house.

Liora wasn’t simply a pawn in this twisted court.

She was a descendant of a bloodline that had once stood in the way of everything the Dowager had built. A house long believed to be ashes in the wind.

And now... the rose had bloomed again.

Meanwhile, in the palace, Queen Dowager Lilian’s fingers drummed the armrest of her throne.

She had summoned no one. No guards. No courtiers.

Just one man stood before her cloaked, his face hidden beneath a hood.

"She remembers," Lilian said, voice cold. "Soon, he will too."

The man didn’t speak.

"She must not awaken fully. Not before the final move."

Still silence.

The dowager’s gaze darkened. "You have your orders."

He bowed without a word and vanished into the shadows.

Back in Lucien’s study, Liora stood in the doorway, pale and silent.

"I saw her again," she said.

Lucien looked up sharply.

Liora stepped inside, holding a folded cloth. "And I found this beneath the floorboard in the dressing chamber."

She opened it slowly.

Inside was a ribbon. Faded red. Stained with something long dried.

Embroidered on the corner nearly invisible was the rose and the sword.

Liora met his eyes.

"I think my mother was the last Aerenya."

Lucien stood slowly.

"Then this changes everything."

The palace corridors never truly slept. Even at the hour before dawn, when frost clung to every window and the braziers burned low, there were footsteps soft as breath, quick as a heartbeat.

The hooded man the Queen Dowager had dispatched passed through three guarded halls without challenge. He knew every hidden passage, every blind corner. This was not his first hunt.

He paused outside a narrow door near the west wing, where the scribes once catalogued the royal decrees. From within, a single candle glowed.

He pressed a gloved hand against the wood.

A rune flared beneath his palm, an old mark of loyalty to the Dowager’s secret order. It shimmered faintly, then went dark.

She is awake.

The thought crackled through his mind, accompanied by the image of a girl with too-bright eyes and a dagger older than any crown. A memory that should have been ash.

She must not reach the eclipse.

With one silent motion, he withdrew a slip of parchment and laid it upon the threshold. A sigil glimmered: the crescent and the sword crossed out by a single black slash.

A death mark.

Elsewhere the Blackthorne Manor

Liora sat beside the hearth, the ribbon in her lap, the scent of old linen and charred silk curling around her like ghosts.

Lucien hadn’t spoken for some time. He stood by the window, arms folded tight across his chest, his face caught between calculation and something closer to dread.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. "If you truly are the last Aerenya, every faction in Valemire will hunt you. The Queen Dowager can’t allow you to survive much less remember."

Liora swallowed. "Then why didn’t she kill me outright?"

Lucien met her gaze. "Because dead martyrs inspire rebellions. But broken pawns are easier to bury."

The words settled between them like a verdict.

Rowan entered without knocking, his hair damp from the rain, cloak dripping onto the polished floor. He looked from Lucien to Liora and back again.

"You need to see this."

Lucien’s eyes narrowed. "What?"

Rowan held up a folded slip of parchment. "One of my men found it on the main gates this morning."

Liora’s chest went tight.

Lucien unfolded the note.

The mark was unmistakable: the crescent and the sword, crossed out in black.

He looked up at Rowan, voice low. "It’s a death mark."

"For her?" Rowan asked.

"For any who shelter her," Lucien said.

Liora pressed her hand to the ribbon in her lap. "Then you should send me away."

Lucien crossed the room in three strides and dropped to one knee before her, eyes locked on hers. "You are not leaving. If they want you, they’ll have to come through me."

"You can’t protect me from all of them," she whispered.

"No," he said. His thumb brushed her cheek, just for an instant. "But I can make sure you see the truth before they find you."

And in that moment, she didn’t see the killer everyone whispered about. She saw the man who had already lost everything and would burn the whole realm before losing again.

The study was dimly lit, the scent of old parchment and ink clinging to the air. Maps were sprawled across the long oak table, overlapping with letters bearing broken wax seals each one a warning, a plea, or a betrayal.

Lucien stood at the head of the table, one hand braced on its edge, the other tracing the inked outline of Valemire’s northern border. His jaw was set. Every second they waited was a second the Dowager’s hunter drew closer.

Rowan paced nearby, tossing a dagger from one hand to the other. "There are three routes to the Oracle’s sanctuary. All dangerous. Two suicidal."

Liora didn’t flinch. She stood between them, her eyes sharp, her fingers laced tightly before her. "Then we take the one where they least expect us."

Rowan paused. "You don’t even know where we’re going."