The silence cracked first, then the smell of ash and ink.

Corven’s voice and the red-gold flash of the token were the last things she remembered. The glow still lingered, dust catching its faint shimmer. When she moved, her limbs ached as though they belonged to someone else.

On the desk waited an open book, its writing still bleeding fresh across the page.

She steadied her hands. The cover bore no title, only the pressed spiral seal of the royal archive. Its clasp was broken. Someone or something had already opened it.

The first page carried her own handwriting. Precise, looping, unmistakable. Myrren Vale: Formulae and Failures. Beneath it, a list of poisons unfurled in neat columns: Warplague Draught, Ashen Fire, Silent Ash Tonic. Names she had never written, compounds she had never created. Yet each one smelled exactly as she would have designed it: bitter resin, frost-mint mask and iron dust.

Her pulse stumbled into a faster rhythm. When her finger brushed the page, ink seeped upward, warm as blood, as if the parchment recognized its maker. The token at her breast answered in time, each beat echoing the next.

A tremor passed through the room; dust rose like breath. The scent of cypress threaded the air,  Corven’s, impossible and unmistakable. A whisper followed, cold and bodiless: Record resumes.

Her stomach turned. This was not a book. It was a vessel of memory. She could smell the binding agent,  myrrh mixed with nerve poison, the same compound the Silent Veil used in their memory rituals. Whoever had written these pages had written with a body as well as with ink.

She flipped another page. A notation read: Subject: Myrren Vale, iteration 12.

The room spun. She gripped the desk edge to stay upright. Iteration. As if her life were a series of experiments.

Footsteps echoed distantly down the hall, guards, or ghosts of them. She caught the scent of scorched wool, of authority moving closer. She forced herself to turn one more page.

At the bottom, a line in a different hand, rougher, almost frantic:
If she finds this, the spiral has broken too soon.

A shadow moved along the far wall — a fleeting outline of a woman with loose hair and ink-darkened hands, gone the instant the candlelight flared.

Myrren’s throat tightened. She had seen that shape before, caught once in the curve of a glass vial, again in the haze of a dream half-remembered.

Cordelia.

The name surfaced unbidden, carrying the taste of smoke and crushed violets.

Beyond the windows, the Queen’s death bell tolled through Eirden, but within the archive something older stirred awake.

She laid her palm to the page. For a heartbeat, the ink glowed gold, then cooled back into black.

She turned each page cautiously, afraid the wet ink might seep into her fingertips and claim her. The parchment breathed out scents of copper, foxglove, scorched myrrh carrying the memory of every workroom she had known.

The passages read like recipes for a crime awaiting its hour: measurements, royal crests, the sharp signatures of Kael Droveth and the Queen. In the margin, a line of pale script shimmered: Approved for controlled release by order of the High Whisperer.

Her stomach lurched. The High Whisperer was only a story, the unseen ruler of the Veil. What was his mark doing in a royal record?

She bent closer. Beneath the ink, faintly carved into the parchment, her nose caught a living trace: frost-mint, her own masking scent. No one else used that blend.The smell dragged a memory to life: torchlight glinting on vials, her own voice reciting formulas into darkness. The book wasn’t written by another hand. It had used hers.

A tremor rippled through the stones. The candles wavered. The token at her breast gave a single pulse, spilling a thread of crimson light over the script. The letters bled, rearranging themselves: You were meant to forget.

She staggered back, heart thudding. “No. No, I—”

Out of the silence a memory spoke of  Thane’s voice, warm and merciful: Forget, and be safe. He had used lightbinding to seal wounds before,  not by mending but by erasing, sealing pain through absence. Had he used that same fire on her mind?

Her hands trembled as she followed the next line. It began in her own script but ended in Kael’s angular hand: Subject displays exceptional scent recall. Recommend continued sedation to prevent loop interference.

Loop. The word burned on her tongue, sharp as iron.

Across the chamber, a cold draft stirred, carrying a different scent,  cypress and smoke. Corven. His shadow wasn’t visible, yet the air thickened as if he stood just behind her. The tether hummed low in her pulse.

“Show me,” she breathed, not sure to whom she spoke.

The ink stirred to life, obeying her. Lines crept across the parchment, fresh and glistening.formulas dissolving into words:

Iteration 13 begins beneath the broken crown. Subject partially aware. Corven interference confirmed.

Her legs nearly gave way. Corven had been part of this from the beginning. Footsteps echoed again, the steady rhythm of a guard. She snapped the book shut, clutching it to her chest.Still, the air around her breathed cypress, his scent refusing to fade.

“You were never a subject,” she whispered to herself, though the words rang hollow. “You were the weapon.”

The token answered, pulsing hot through the fabric until she hissed in pain. She tore it free. Across its surface, faint lettering glimmered for the first time,  a curved line of words encircling the spiral: Bind what breaks.

The phrase rippled through the air, mirrored on the journal’s inner cover as the ink flared bright again the same command, written by the same hand.

Her eyes stung. “Who taught me that?” she whispered.

The pages stirred, a dry rustle that sounded almost like laughter, then fell silent.

A key turned in the lock beyond the door.

Myrren went still. The scent that seeped in wasn’t the guard’s it was rose oil and cold steel. Seliora.

“Saints preserve us,” Seliora breathed, stepping into the light. Her gaze caught the open book, shock tightening her face. “Do you even know what you’ve opened?”

Myrren laid her palm over the cover. “I think it’s me.”

Seliora stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked once,  sharp and final.
“You have no right to be here,” she whispered. “That journal belongs to the Queen’s alchemists. They called it The Archive of Names.”
“I know.” Myrren’s reply was hushed, almost worshipful. “It recognizes me.”
Seliora’s eyes hardened. “Then you don’t understand what you’re touching. That book holds every version the Veil ever created. Cordelia Vale was the first.”
The name hit like shattering glass. “Cordelia… Vale?”
“Your bloodline,” Seliora said quietly. “Or maybe your origin. The Veil doesn’t destroy its miracles, it rewrites them.” Her composure wavered, hands trembling. “Close it, Myrren, before it rewrites you.”

But the journal moved before she could. Its pages turned of their own accord, ink rising from the fibers like mist gathering on glass. The air thickened with violets — the same fragrance that haunted her dreams, the ones that never felt like her own.

Words began to form, deliberate and slow:

Do not fear the spiral, child. It is only memory looping through flesh.

Beneath it, older ink bled upward, darker, trembling:

You die every time, Myrren. I tried to stop it.

She froze. The handwriting was both hers and not hers,  sure, elegant and curved with Cordelia’s familiar grace.

“Cordelia,” she whispered, tracing the line with shaking fingers. “You knew.”

The token in her palm beat once, then again, falling into rhythm with her voice. Shadows gathered at her feet, coiling upward until they took shape, the outline of a man drawn from smoke. Corven stepped out of the dark as if pulled by gravity itself, his face bloodless, his eyes lit with shadow.

“You shouldn’t have spoken to it,” he said quietly. “Each time you read those words, the spiral tightens its hold.”

“You knew,” she said, her voice trembling. “All of it,  the experiments, the loops, what I am.”

His jaw tensed. “I knew enough. I tried to free you.”

“And failed?”

He moved closer, shadows shifting with him. “Every version of me does.”

She swallowed hard. “And if I remember everything?”

“Then the world starts over,” he said. “You begin again, convinced love will change the ending.”

Seliora staggered back, horror widening her eyes. “Both of you stop! If the tether seals while the Veil’s record is active, it’ll rewrite everything, every memory, every name in the court.”

Her warning came too late. The token blazed between Myrren’s hands, casting a thin spiral of gold above the journal. Within its light, faces flickered: Thane’s, the Queen’s, her own blurring together until none were distinct. The spiral spun faster, pulling the air, the dust, even sound toward its center.

Corven caught her by the shoulders, trying to drag her away, but the tether snapped taut, dragging him forward instead. His shadows whipped outward, weaving into inky chains that coiled around both their wrists, binding them over the open page. Beneath their joined hands, the letters twisted, reshaping into a single phrase: One shall bind.

Myrren met his gaze through the storm of light and shadow, tears bright with fury. “If you’re the one who binds,” she breathed, “then who breaks?”

His expression softened, almost tender. “You.”

The chamber tremble to pieces. Shelves splintered, scrolls crashed to the floor. Through the narrow window, the night burned red with torches,  riots spilling through the streets, the city aflame for a crown already lost.

Seliora’s voice cut through the noise.. “They’ll hang you both for this! The nobles saw the light, they believe the Veil has taken the throne!”

But Myrren barely heard her. The journal’s pages were blank now except for a single fresh line still forming beneath her hand, the ink bright as blood:
Remember this time. Break the spiral.

The light swelled. Corven’s grip tightened until the shadow-chains seared her skin.
“Myrren..”
She turned toward him, the tether blazing between them.
“If I must break it,” she said, voice steady through the roar, “then it ends with us.”

The spiral burst outward, scattering pages like ash.

The blast extinguished every candle. For a heartbeat, there was nothing but heat and the dry whisper of falling ash. The journal lay torn open on the floor, its pages charred at the edges, faintly glowing as though an ember still smoldered inside the ink.

Myrren’s hands trembled. The shadow-chains were gone, replaced by scorched spirals seared into her wrists. Across from her, Corven gasped for air, golden light tracing his veins,  the tether’s reversal consuming him from within.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “It’s still feeding.”

“I won’t let you vanish.”

“You won’t,” he managed, a flicker of something like a smile crossing his face. “You’ll remember.”

Boots pounded through the corridor. Voices clashed, the envoy’s command, Holt’s shout, others crying of witchcraft and treason. Light burst through the doorway, catching on drawn blades that cut through drifting ash. Seliora moved first, stepping between them and the ruin.

“She’s under protection,” she snapped. “The Prince’s orders still hold.”

A guard spat on the floor. “The Prince is dead! The crown will be taken tonight!”

Myrren went still. “Dead?”

Their answer was lost beneath another sound,  the deep tolling of mourning bells, slower now, heavier.

The journal twitched on the tiles, scattering blackened fragments. A single page fell upright at her feet, its ink bleeding outward until it spiraled into two words: Crown of ash.

Holt’s sword caught the light of it. “Saints preserve us,” he whispered. “The prophecy lives”

Panic ran through the guards. Metal scraped on stone as someone barked an order to seize her.

Corven was the first to move, hauling himself up though the glow burned across his skin. His shadows flared outward, smothering the room in smoke. “Run,” he said.

 She would not move. The tether tightened between them, a thread of light locking their wrists together. “If I go, you will die,” she said.

He gave a breathy laugh. “Then make it count.”

The door took the blows. Splinters showered the floor. Outside, the bells mixed with screams as the city erupted in riot, firelight turning every window to red..

Myrren lunged forward, seizing the last unburned page. The ink still moved, alive, rewriting itself beneath her gaze. For a heartbeat she saw Corven’s name forming, then her own, then both twining into a word she couldn’t read before it went black.

She looked up at him. “If the spiral feeds on memory,” she said, voice steady, “then let it choke.”

Corven’s jaw set. “Break it.”

She slammed her palm down on the page. Gold fire exploded through the ink, racing up her arm, into the tether, into him. The door crashed open,  guards spilling into the light but it devoured them all.

Amid the roar, she heard a voice, soft and familiar: Remember this time, and wear the crown that burns.

The world inverted on itself, vanishing into silence, leaving only the scent of ash.