The scroll arrived wrapped in midnight-blue silk, bound with a wax seal shaped like a wolf’s eye.
Aria frowned as she turned it over in her hands. It bore no name. No crest she recognized. But the magic humming beneath the surface was ancient—older than SilverCrest, older even than the council’s founding records.
It had been delivered by a silent courier just before dawn, left on her windowsill like an offering.
Zara stood nearby, arms crossed. “You think it’s another veiled threat?”
“No,” Aria said softly. “This feels like a test.”
She broke the seal and unrolled the parchment.
The writing was delicate, but sure. Every letter seemed etched into the paper, pulsing with low magical resonance. She read in silence as the words unveiled a truth that made her heart lurch.
She was not just of the Vale line.
Her blood came from something older.
Lunaris.
An extinct house. Wiped from the records after the War of Splinters. Said to be traitors—or saviors, depending on who told the story. Known for their unique tethering magic, for their ability to weave bonds and undo them.
“I don’t understand,” Aria whispered.
Zara moved to read over her shoulder, eyes scanning quickly. “They sealed this history. Buried your mother’s side.”
“My mother never spoke of her bloodline.”
“Maybe she couldn’t,” Zara said. “This kind of magic… it wasn’t just rare. It was feared.”
Aria’s fingertips tingled.
Lunaris.
The name echoed through her chest like a drumbeat in the bones. If this was true—if her lineage carried the old magic—it meant the council didn’t just sever her for scandal.
They feared her.
Because she could unmake their chains.
The moon was high when Aria stood before the mirror in her quarters, scroll still clutched to her chest.
She stared at her own reflection, trying to see it—the bloodline. The magic. The heritage they’d tried so hard to erase.
Her storm-gray eyes were alight with something new now. Not rage. Not sorrow.
Power.
“Are you okay?” Zara asked from the doorway.
“I’m not sure,” Aria said truthfully. “But I think I’m starting to understand why they feared me.”
She passed Zara the scroll again, pointing to the sigil at the bottom—a crescent moon wrapped in flame.
“I’ve seen this before,” Zara whispered. “Not in our libraries. In a ruin beyond Greenwood, in the old borderlands. It was scorched into stone. The elders called it cursed.”
“Cursed or sacred,” Aria said, “they erased it.”
Zara looked up. “Do you believe it? That your mother was Lunaris-born?”
“She never spoke of her family. Only that they were ‘gone.’ I thought she meant dead.” Aria exhaled slowly. “But maybe she meant hidden.”
Zara nodded. “Which means… you carry their legacy. Their magic.”
Aria moved to her shelf and pulled out an old ritual book—one of the few her mother had left her before passing. She flipped past the common enchantments, the bond rites, the runes of protection.
There, between two brittle pages, she found it.
An inked diagram of a tether circle—like the one the council used to sever her bond with Kael.
But different.
Subtle differences in the glyphs. Curved symbols where theirs were rigid. A reversal in the sigil of submission.
“This is a reclaiming circle,” Aria breathed.
“A what?”
“Instead of cutting a bond, it draws it inward—pulling power from severed links, making them yours again. It doesn’t just heal. It strengthens.”
Zara’s eyes widened. “That’s how you’ve stayed tethered. Even after the severing. Your blood didn’t let go.”
Aria nodded slowly. “And now I know why. They tried to break me using a ritual I was born to override.”
The implications burned in her veins.
If she could master this magic… she could challenge every decree the council had ever made.
Every exile.
Every lie.
Every severing.
“They can’t control me anymore,” she whispered.
Zara grinned. “Then what’s our next move?”
“We find the ruins,” Aria said. “We find what’s left of Lunaris. And we make sure no one forgets it again.”
Later that night, Aria sat before the fire, the scroll spread across her lap.
She let her fingers trace the sigil—slowly, deliberately—as the baby stirred within her. The magic thrummed in her blood like a song just beginning to rise.
Lunaris.
The lost line.
She whispered the name aloud, and the flames in the hearth shifted—blue at the edges for a flicker of a second.
Not just myth.
Not just memory.
She was heir to something buried—and now, it was waking.
Zara returned from the storeroom, arms full of travel packs. “We’ll need to leave before the next council summon. You know they’ll sense it.”
“Good,” Aria said, rising. “Let them.”
Zara paused, watching her.
“You look different.”
“I feel different.”
Aria fastened her cloak, slipping the scroll into a hidden pouch. Her eyes met Zara’s—clear, cold, and brimming with purpose.
“For so long I let them decide who I was,” she said. “Now I decide.”
They left the room together, footsteps echoing down the hall like a heartbeat.
Behind them, the fire flared one last time—bright blue, then gone.
