Beneath it all, that same word repeated over and over.
Stormfire.
It wasn’t just his power. It was a name. A history. A warning.
Seraphine was tired of dancing in the dark.
So on the fourth morning without a word from him, after a night where the dream-Cassian looked at her like he didn’t knowwho she was, she lit the summoning flame and sent word to House Umbraclaw.
Because if anyone still kept record of the Hollow’s first breath—of buried bloodlines and erased names—it would be the shadowseers of Aethermoor.
Maybe, just maybe, she could find out if the man she trusted with her life…
…was the very weapon her bloodline had sworn to destroy.
They welcomedher like they would a storm.
Silently. Cautiously.
She descended into their territory beneath an overcast sky, the sun hiding behind thick gray clouds as if it, too, feared what might be waiting in the dark below.
She had told the others to wait on the outskirts for her to return. They hadn’t liked it, but she didn’t need them knowing whatever it was that she found out. Or why she was really detouring them in the first place.
The obsidian towers of Aethermoor pierced the Veil like daggers, shadow-wrapped and echoing with old, dead things. No banners flew. No light flickered in the windows. Only the constant whisper of shadows shifting where they shouldn’t.
It wasn’t just a stronghold. It was a tomb of truths waiting to be dug up.
Seraphine had come with a spade made of fire.
Lucien Umbraclaw stood at the steps when she arrived.
Tall. Unmoving. Dressed in layers of black that shimmered like silk spun from midnight.
“Dragonborn,” he said, silver eyes narrowing.
“Shadowmancer,” she replied evenly.
They didn’t shake hands.
Evryn appeared behind him, stepping from a fold of shadows like she’d walked straight out of a forgotten fairytale. Barefoot. Fierce. Her violet eyes gleamed silver as they locked on Seraphine.
“You’ve seen him,” Evryn said.
Seraphine blinked. “Cassian?”
“No.” She shook her head, curls bouncing. “The Hollow.It clings to you.”
Lucien’s expression didn’t change, but the shadows around his feet coiled tighter.
“You came for answers,” he said.
“I came fortruth.”
“Then follow me.”
The chamberof memory was buried beneath three stories of catacombs and two rituals Evryn muttered in a language older than the empire.
Seraphine stood in the center of a circle etched in bloodglass.
