⋱⌘⋰ Lore Scrap ⋱⌘⋰
"To guard is to grieve eternally."
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Cael hadn't meant to remember her. The first girl. Not Eira — though the lines between them were beginning to blur. The Library remembered before he did. That was how it always began. A whisper echoing in the wrong room. A lantern flaring where none were lit. A name breathed by ink. He sat alone in the Observatory, candlelight licking the floor in long gold tongues. Books shifted in their sleep. Outside, the wards trembled. Eira had touched something she wasn't meant to. Again. He closed his eyes. And saw another girl. Pale. Barefoot. Blonde hair catching candlelight like gold netting.—before the ink ever touched her.
She had signed the contract without flinching. He remembered the ink — the way it had bloomed from her palm like it had always been waiting. The air had smelled of scorched parchment. Like a name half-burned before it could be spoken.
He remembered her voice. "You're lonelier than the ghosts here," she'd told him. He remembered her name, too— No. He didn't. He *couldn't*. The Library had erased it. Scrubbed it clean. All that remained was the hollow place her presence used to fill. She had never left. Not really. He felt her sometimes in the shifting of the walls. The way the ink turned cold.
When he opened his eyes again, Eira was still there.
Different. And not.
He looked away before the resemblance could settle into something unforgivable.
"Do you believe in prophecy?" Eira had asked him once. He hadn't answered. He hadn't known how. He rose now, slowly, and crossed the floor. The mirror-plate on the wall shimmered as he passed. His reflection did not blink. He stared at it anyway. Her pendant — the key Eira wore — had the same crest. The same symbol carved into the threshold of the Forbidden Wing. The girl before had worn it too. She had followed the same dream. But only one of them had woken the Vault. "You're drawn to her," Vessa had said. "Like a story repeating itself." "I'm trying to stop it," he'd replied. "Then why haven't you?" Because she was different. Because she was the same. Because he didn't want to lose her the way he had lost— The mirror cracked. Cael inhaled sharply. The Library was shifting again. And he was too late.
⋯⋱⧉⋰⋯ To be continued… ⸻ ❖ Archive Fragment ❖ ⸻
History doesn't repeat. It remembers.
⋱◈⋰ End Chapter ⋱◈⋰