My mother used to tell me we were,
Majestic.
Royal.
Glorious.
But they called us traitors.
I was eight the first time I heard it whispered through a closed door — my name told in disgust, my mother's in fear. After that, no one said it to my face. They just stopped looking at me altogether. I didn't know if that was for good or quite worse.
We lived in a worn out manor east of the Ashfen River, where the fog never lifted and the wolves howled louder in winter. We had no servants. No guests. Just old stone, thick silence, and my mother's locked study, where I heard the pages turn even after she vanished.
They never found her body. Only the remains of her satchel and her worn out coat in the woods. They say blood remembers. If that's true, mine remembers fire.
Maybe she was burnt, or worse tortured.
I spent most days in the library— half-rotted books, dry inkpots, my mother's notes and the scribbled sketches of glyphs I wasn't meant to see. I read them anyway. I didn't have a choice.
There was something in the ink.
Something that breathed and roared with life.
At first it was just a feeling — a slight tremor in the air when I ran my fingers too close to the symbols, a feeling that the pages were watching me, waiting for something. Some glyphs hummed softly beneath my touch. Others pulsed like a heartbeat. A few left the tips of my fingers numb.
I told myself it was madness. Or grief. Or some strange feel of the mother I barely remembered. But the house grew stranger the more I read. The fire would light spontaneously when I whispered certain names.
And the dreams began.
Always the same: a long corridor of black stone, lit by runes that glowed like embers. A door at the end, carved with the shape of a quill, bleeding ink. And a wolf, silver-eyed and still, watching me from the shadows.
I never reached the door.
I don't usually talk to people, not that my mother allowed me, But I still remember the last time Dalen Grey spoke to me.
It was the middle of winter, and the hearth had gone cold again. I hadn't meant to stay in the library so long, but time moved strangely inside those walls. The windows were fogged with frost, and my breath came out in ghosted puffs as I carried an armful of mugs through the old kitchen.
That was when I heard the knock.
It was soft. Three times. Almost hesitant.
Most knocks came from creditors or priests — neither of whom I cared to see. But when I opened the door, it was Dalen. He was red-cheeked from the cold, a satchel slung across his shoulder and a loaf of spiced bread wrapped in linen in his hands.
"I thought you might want this," he said, holding it out awkwardly. "Fresh from my father's ovens. He doesn't know I brought it."
I blinked at him. "You walked three miles through the snow to bring me bread?"
He gave a crooked smile. "Well, and also—" He unbuckled the satchel. "A book. It's not magic, I don't think. But it's got old stories. Maps. Wolves in it, too, you would've probably got tired by the books in your library."
My chest hurt, just a little. Dalen had always been kind in ways that felt dangerous.
I took the bread and the book. "Thank you." He didn't leave right away. Just stood there, shifting from foot to foot.
"I heard them talking," he said finally. "The town magistrate. The priest. They're saying your mother—what she did, it wasn't just political. They're saying she practiced... things."
"She didn't," I said sharply, but my voice didn't sound like mine. Dalen didn't argue. He just nodded once, eyes hidden underneath his ash-brown hair. Then he looked behind me, into the manor, at the flickering candlelight and the long shadows that stretched across the walls.
"Maybe you should come to town more often," he said, quieter now. "Let people see you. It might help."
"They don't want to see me," I said. He didn't disagree.
And that was the last time.
Two nights later, someone shattered his father's bakery window and smeared "traitor's whore'' across their wall in soot.
Dalen never came again.
I turned 19 that night, the night I found it.
This book wasn't in the library. It wasn't anywhere, and then suddenly it was — waiting for me on the windowsill, bound in cracked leather and sealed with a glyph I'd never seen. One that burned faintly in the dark.
I should have been afraid. But I wasn't. That's what 7 years of being alone teaches you. I ran my fingers through the outline of the book.
When I touched the glyph, the world vanished.
I wasn't in the manor anymore. I was standing on a mountain path under a dark-clouded sky. Mist curled around my body blurring my vision, and when I fought the irritation in my eyes I saw the black iron gates loomed ahead, veined with frost and ink, their bars were carved in such an exquisite design. I heard a whisper in my ear — not quite a voice, more like breath.
Come.
The vision broke.
I was on the floor, cold and trembling, my hands covered in blue ink that didn't come from any bottle I owned because my mother never allowed me to use blue ones. The book was gone.
But something was lying on the floor in front of me.
A folded sheet of parchment. Unmarked except for a single word written in my mother's handwriting, small and careful in the corner:
Lore.
That was all it said. But I knew.
She wasn't burnt, She had gone there. To Lore. And now… maybe I was meant to follow. She always spoke about it and when I asked further she would always say "You'll know when the time comes"
Lore. And maybe now is the time.
I knew the stories, of course. The Citadel that sat buried in the mountain, where ink and silence ruled.
Where scribes didn't just write history — they carved it. I'd always thought the tales were exaggerated. Romanticized.
But the glyphs in my mother's journals had come from somewhere. The truth was, I'd been waiting for something like this — but now that it had arrived, I didn't know what to do with it.
My heart wanted to run.
My mind wanted to stay.
My fear wanted me to forget it all.
What if it's a trap?What if I'm not meant to follow it?What if I am?
I sat curled beneath the old library window, listening to the wind brush the trees like fingers in dry hair. I held the parchment in my hands until dawn.
And for the first time in years I went to the Country market. My feet dragged across the thick layer of snow covering the road. The place has changed so much since I last visited. I came into a stop when I spotted Walter Grey's bakery. I was still too early for the shops to open so I probably have almost an hour before the chaos start.
I tiptoed to the backyard which led to Dalen's bedroom and knocked on it quietly.The knock was softer, careful against the frost-bitten wood.
There was a shift behind the thin curtain. The faint creak of floorboards. The window opened just a fraction, enough for a pair of wary eyes to peer through. They widened.
"…You?" Dalen's voice came out half-breath, half-disbelief. He pushed the window open further, cold air rushing between you both as he leaned out, staring as if you might vanish if he blinked.
"I thought—you don't come here anymore."
"I don't," I said. My voice felt strange after so long. "Not usually."
He glanced past me, toward the empty street, toward the manor road, like he was making sure no one had followed.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, quieter now. I held out the book.
"I came to return this." For a second, he didn't take it. His gaze flickered from the book to my face, searching, like he was trying to read something I wasn't saying.
"You could've kept it," he said. "It wasn't—"
"I'm leaving." That stopped him. The words seemed to settle between us, heavier than the snow.
"Leaving?" he repeated. "Leaving where?"
"The Citadel."
Silence.
Not the quiet we were used to—but something sharper. Something that pressed in. Dalen let out a short, disbelieving breath, shaking his head once like he'd misheard.
"That place isn't real," he said, though there was no certainty in it. "It's just stories. Old ones."
"It's real."
"How do you know?" I hesitated. Not because I didn't have an answer—but because I didn't know how much of it belonged in the open air between us.
"I just do." He studied me for a long moment, eyes narrowing slightly, not in suspicion—but in worry.
"This is about your mother, she was saying he same thing, now you're turning crazy too" he said.
I didn't answer. That was answer enough. Dalen ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly, the cold turning his breath into pale mist.
"You can't just disappear into the mountains chasing… whatever this is," he said. "People don't come back from there. If they even make it that far."
"They didn't come back from here either," I said quietly.
That hit harder than I meant it to. His expression faltered.
"I mean—" I started, but the words didn't fix anything.
He looked down at the book still in my hands, then finally reached out and took it, his fingers brushing mine for the briefest second—warm, steady, real.
"You should stay," he said, softer now. "At least for a few days. Let things settle. Think this out, We can—"
"No," I said. Too quickly. Because if I stayed, I wouldn't leave. And I knew it.
"I leave today," I added, quieter. Dalen's grip tightened slightly on the edge of the window.
"Then why come here at all?" he asked. The question lingered longer than it should have.
I didn't have a clean answer for it. Not one I could say without unraveling something I wasn't ready to name.
"I didn't want to leave without giving it back," I said. It wasn't a lie. Just not the whole truth. He watched me like he knew that. "Right," he said after a moment.
Another silence. The kind that used to be easy between us. Now it wasn't.
"…When do you go?" he asked. "Soon. After the sunrise probably" He nodded once, slow. Then, almost as an afterthought—too casual to be careless—
"I could walk with you. At least part of the way." I looked at him. Really looked. At the boy who had walked three miles in the snow just to bring me bread. At the only person who had ever knocked on that door without wanting something in return.
And for a moment— I almost said yes.
"No," I said. The word came out softer than I expected.
Dalen blinked, like he hadn't quite heard it right. "It's not safe to go alone."
"I know."
"Then—" "No," I repeated, a little firmer this time. Something in his expression shifted. Not anger. Not even surprise. Just… disappointment.
He leaned back slightly, resting his arm against the window frame, like he needed something to steady himself. "You don't have to do everything alone," he said.
"I do." The answer came too quickly. Too easily. Because it was the only way this worked.
If I let him come, even for a little while—if I let him step into whatever this was— I wouldn't be the only one who might not come back.
"I'm not asking you to stay," he said. "Just—let me walk you out of town. That's all."
I shook my head. "If you come with me," I said, "people will see." That wasn't the real reason. But it was enough. Dalen huffed out a quiet breath, glancing toward the street like he knew exactly what I wasn't saying.
"They already talk," he muttered. "I know." Another silence. I stepped back from the window. "I should go before the market opens," I said. He straightened a little. "Wait—"
But I didn't. Not really. I just hesitated. "Take care of yourself," he said, quieter now. I nodded once and walked back without looking back.
By morning, I had decided not to back down. Not because I believed it would lead to answers. Or safety. Or anything good. But because I could no longer breathe inside a house full of emptiness. Because if the world had abandoned me, I would abandon it right back. Because the fire that took my mother hadn't died — it had simply changed shape.
I packed at first light.
There wasn't much to take. My satchel was worn thin, the leather cracked at the edges. I lined the bottom with a spare cloak and three wax candles, then added my journal, two blank sheets of decent parchment, and the flint striker I'd stolen from the village smith years ago.
I debated taking a knife but chose the dagger instead — it had belonged to my mother, and the handle bore the faint outline of a glyph too faded to read. I packed a few set of clothes in a duffel bag.
Books were harder to leave behind.
I ran my hands along the shelves like they were sleeping animals. Some had been with me longer than memory. Others had appeared over the years without explanation, as if the manor itself had decided I needed them. I chose one — a thin volume of Eastern glyph-branches annotated in three different hands. One of the notes was mine. The others, I suspected, were hers.
In the end, I left everything else.
I paused only once before the doors — not because I doubted the choice, but because the manor had grown too quiet. The silence had weight to it. Like it disapproved.
The house had been dying for years.
But this morning, it felt like it was watching me leave.
Outside, the fog was thin and glass-colored. My boots cracked through the icy pathway as I crossed the garden, the iron gate freezing under my hand as I swung it open.
At the edge of the woods, I paused.
A wolf stood between the trees.
Not moving. Not growling. Just… watching.
It was dark gray, nearly black, and its eyes shimmered like silver coin in water. I didn't breathe. It tilted its head slightly, as if listening. As if it knew. Then it turned and disappeared into the mist.