The Door to Eternity

The symbols made sense.

That was the first wrong thing.

Amriel stared at the scroll on the grey-stone pedestal, and the ancient Fhemor scripture stared back.

And she could read it.

What in the Daeude…

Every glyph, every jagged consonant cluster, sat in her mind like a word she’d always known and simply never had cause to say.

Her lips moved without her permission.

“When stars fall from the heavens, and shadows stretch beyond the breaking dawn—the wanderers arrive.”

Her voice came out steady. Certain. As if some part of her had been waiting centuries to speak the words aloud.

She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Swallowed against a throat gone tight and dry. A long lock of dark hair had slipped forward over her shoulder, and she hooked it back behind her ear with fingers that were not quite steady.

Amriel had walked past it a thousand times. The same parchment on the same grey-stone pedestal, catching the morning light through the high narrow windows like a relic no one had thought to bury. Meaningless. Forgotten.

Until today.

Walk away. Whatever this is, it can wait until you’ve had a cup of tea and a very long think about why you’re suddenly reading a dead language.

Walk.

Away.

But her gaze was already moving, dragged back to the parchment on the grey-stone pedestal as if by a hand at the base of her skull. Line after line, the symbols poured through her, sharp and relentless and impossibly clear. She blinked hard, cobalt eyes burning from the refusal to look away, and still she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t do anything but stand there, reading words that no living person should be able to read.

The next line left her lips almost against her will.

“When that which has been lost has returned to that which has waited—the forest child will awaken.”

Her fist closed around the iron ring at her throat, the braided leather pulling taut against the back of her neck.

Fragile dust motes drifted through the shafts of morning light around her, slow and indifferent, until they drifted too close to the parchment and snagged, caught in the invisible lattice of the preservation spells encasing it. Without those enchantments, the parchment would have crumbled to nothing ages ago.

Even now she could see the Power radiating off it, ancient and dense, the kind that lingered in sacred spaces long after the hands that shaped it had turned to dust.

“When the hymn of forgotten souls is swallowed by silence—immortality will become a prison.” She could no longer tell if she was choosing to read or being made to. “When the last of the Seven Draw Breath—the Door to Eternity shall open.”

The silence that followed felt enormous.

This is impossible.

The thought surfaced slowly, like something dredged from deep water.

Wasn’t it?

Her eyes dropped to the brass plaque mounted before the display.

THE SCROLL OF LYGENESS Dated to the Late Third Era. Origin Unknown. Property of the Illumination Tower Do Not Touch – This is a Protected Artifact

Late Third Era. Over fifteen hundred years ago, when House Drathex won the Centuries War and unearthed the parchment while excavating the foundations for this very tower. A millennium of the kingdom’s brightest minds attempting to decipher it. Not a single damn person had succeeded.

Until now.

Daeude be damned.

She swallowed the curse before it escaped. Whatever had kept these words locked away for centuries clearly hadn’t consulted her schedule, hadn’t asked whether she was the sort of person who wanted to be tangled up in ancient prophecies at all.

She was not, for the record.

Three nights without sleep.

Every one of them at her neighbour’s bedside, coaxing a child’s fever down by lamplight with cold compresses and shalroot tinctures. A healer running on fumes and herbal tea was not a reliable witness to anything, and the shadows under her eyes were there to prove it.

Exhaustion explained strange things. It had to.

Except something quiet, immovable, and utterly certain had taken root beneath her ribs. A shiver climbed her spine that had nothing to do with the cool spring morning, and the iron ring bit into her palm before she realised how hard she was gripping it.

No amount of sleep was going to make this go away.

She took a step back. Her heel caught on the uneven flagstone. She was falling, and then she wasn’t. Something solid and warm caught her, strong hands gripping her shoulders, firm but careful.

“Whoa there, Amriel.” The voice was warm with amusement, rich as honey, and entirely unwelcome. “Still getting lost in your daydreams and walking into people. Some things never change.”

Heat rushed to her face. She turned and found herself looking up into Nikola Helston’s dark brown eyes, crinkled at the corners the way they always did when he smiled. The way they used to across a pillow.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. Of all the archivists in the Tower of Illumination…

His hands lingered a moment too long on her shoulders. He smelled of ink and parchment. A year had passed, but it hadn’t completely dulled the sharp edge of those memories.

“Are you all right, Riel?” He asked as he peered down at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

There it was, that careful, rehearsed kindness. The same gentle tone he’d used right up until the day he told her they should walk separate paths.

He’d called her Riel. Her chest tightened despite herself.

“Nikola.” She kept her voice level. “What do you see when you look at this scroll?”

He paused, brow creasing, then leaned closer, the Archivist in him already engaged. The movement brought him near enough that she could feel the warmth of him, and for one unwanted breath she was back in her cottage on a winter night, his cloak around them both, ancient texts spread between their knees.

She watched his eyes move across the parchment where she had read Fhemor that spoke of prophecy.

“I see the same undecipherable symbols archivists have been staring at for over a millenia,” he replied with a half-shrug. “Why? Don’t tell me you’re developing an interest in linguistic mysteries now?”

“I’ve always been fascinated by ancient tongues,” Amriel shot back, then immediately cringed at her own words.

He had the grace to smother the half-smirk that had threatened to spread across his face. Still, heat rushed to her cheeks as embarrassment washed over her.

“You can’t read anything?” she pressed. “Nothing at all?”

Nikola’s expression shifted. She recognized the new configuration immediately, she’d had years of practice, the slight drop in the chin, the eyes going careful. The voice that followed was half a register lower than it needed to be, the kind reserved for someone believed to be unwell or mentally unstable.

“Amriel. No one can read this text. That’s not new.” He stepped closer, studying her face with the same focused attention he gave difficult manuscripts. “It’s the greatest unsolved mystery in Vraycia’s history. You know that. So what’s…”

“Nothing. I was just curious,” she interrupted, her voice steadier than she expected. “That’s all. Sleep deprivation makes for strange thoughts.”

She produced a smile. It didn’t reach anything.

He looked at her for a moment longer than was comfortable. “Still not putting your well-being first.”

She said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t open a door she had no intention of opening.

“Some things never change.” The second time he’d said it this morning. She wondered if he knew he was doing it, cataloguing her, comparing present-Amriel to the version he’d known, checking whether the gaps had widened. She knew he was kind enough that it was unconsciously done.

That didn’t make it less irritating.

He drew breath, and she could see the next question forming, and she was already deciding how to not answer it when the door came open and Niamh’s voice arrived ahead of the rest of her.

“Riel! There you are!”

Salvation had arrived in the form of Niamh Liandris and Maranda Hess, a whirlwind and a whisper entering in tandem.

Amriel had never been so relieved to hear her best friend’s boisterous voice echoing off the stone walls, though Maranda, Mara for short, visibly grimaced at the sound, no doubt mentally cataloguing which Tower rules about appropriate volume and decorum were being violated.

The arched doorway framed Niamh’s tall, curved figure, sunlight spilling behind her as if she’d orchestrated the entrance herself. The silver butterfly pin securing her dark red hair glinted in the morning light. Her pale green wool robe stretched slightly across her belly, six months swollen with her second pregnancy.

Behind Niamh followed Mara, her presence far more controlled. The blonde-haired Archivist acolyte carried herself with a maturity that belied her twenty-one years. Her fitted muddy brown robes matched Nikola’s, but she bore a silver circlet atop her head that marked her as top of her class.

Niamh’s sharp pale green eyes flicked between Amriel and Nikola, a knowing smirk curving her generous lips. “Morning, Nikola,” Niamh’s voice carried barely hidden amusement. “Am I interrupting something?” Her northern accent thickened with her mischief.

“Nothing that wouldn’t benefit from an interruption,” Mara said. “Your shoulders are up near your ears, Amriel, which indicates defensiveness. His pupils were dilated and he was leaning into your space, which indicates lingering attachment. The tension patterns are quite apparent.”

She paused. Looked at the grimace on Amriel’s face.

“That was too much detail.”

“Just a touch,” Niamh said, her smile fond enough to take any sting out of it.

Nikola straightened and stepped back, clearing his throat. “Good morning, ladies. I was just heading to meet Sarai to prepare for the royal festivities.” A flush crept up his neck as he flashed that familiar smile. “See you at the celebrations, perhaps.”

He fled from the chamber.

Damn him. Amriel exhaled slowly. And damn me.

“Fascinated by ancient tongues, hmm?” Niamh’s smirk deepened as she crossed her arms over her swollen belly.

“How long were you two hiding there?” Amriel asked with a sigh, ignoring Niamh’s cat-like grin.

“Long enough to hear that gem.” Niamh’s teeth flashed white.

“To be fair,” Mara offered, “most people lose access to their full vocabulary when confronted with former romantic partners. It’s a well-documented stress response.”

“I don’t need it documented, Mara, I lived it.” Amriel dropped her hand. Her face still felt too warm, and the prophecy’s words were still burning behind her eyes, which was not helping. “I’m fine.”

Niamh gave her the look. The one she’d been giving her since they were girls, quiet and searching, stripped of all the performance.

“Riel.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’re doing the thing with your ring.”

Amriel glanced down. Her hand still clutched at the iron ring that hung around her throat. She released it.

“You have the same expression you had when you first told us you could see Power,” Mara said, with the calm of someone issuing a factual report. “And when your father died.”

The words landed clean and honest, the way Mara’s always did. Amriel felt the ripple move through her chest but she didn’t flinch.

Niamh closed her eyes briefly. “Mara, love. Again.”

“It’s relevant,” Mara said, this time unbothered.

“She’s not wrong,” Amriel sighed. She tried to find the words then, she genuinely did. But her throat closed around them, as if the ancient script she’d read had sealed something shut inside her. How do I explain something I don’t yet understand myself?

“I want to tell you,” she said finally. “I just…not yet.” She met Niamh’s eyes, hoping she could see what she meant: I’m not shutting you out. Give me time.

Niamh looped her arm through Amriel’s, pulling her forward into the warm scent of goldthread and cinnamon. “You can tell us when you’re ready,” she said simply. No push. No performance. Just that.

Amriel let herself be steered toward the door.

Then, because Niamh was constitutionally incapable of letting a moment stay solemn for long: “In the meantime, I prescribe watching heavily armored men falling off horses.”

“The jousting tournament,” Mara said, “is a ceremonial event tied to Princess Saeris’s formal engagement to the Calavorn prince. It is not, technically, for our benefit.”

“And yet,” Niamh said serenely, “I will be benefiting enormously.”

Amriel laughed, short and real, catching her off guard. “You’re both impossible.”

“Impossibly charming,” Niamh corrected.

Amriel stepped through the threshold first, and for a moment she almost didn’t look back.

Almost.

Her eyes found the scroll of Lygeness where it lay open on its podium, bathed in the morning light. Those words had already made a home in her memory, patient, settled, as if they’d simply been waiting for her to arrive.

This time she could turn away. Could walk away.

That felt important, somehow. She just didn’t know why yet.