The key was heavier than it looked.
Obsidian and carved bone, it pulsed faintly in her palm as if alive. It hummed with heat—not from the forge, but from something older. Something remembering her.
Seraphina stood alone in the hallway outside the sealed door.
It lay beneath the chapel, past a wall most people didn't know could be opened. She had found the mechanism only once—when she was a child, before anyone told her magic was supposed to be dead.
Now, in this life, she was unlocking it again.
The key slid in without resistance.
The door opened with a soft, click.
No grand groan. No dramatic burst of light.
Just silence.
And memory.
The chamber was circular and domed, carved from volcanic stone, its walls etched with hundreds of overlapping symbols—so old they pulsed in red when she passed them. Like blood vessels, like roots.
At the center stood a small altar.
A broken chain lay across it.
And above, suspended in the air, a single glowing shard of red crystal hovered in place, spinning slowly.
Seraphina stepped closer.
The crystal pulsed when she neared—once, twice—and then it whispered.
"Do you remember now?"
She gasped.
The voice was hers.
But younger.
More certain.
She reached for the shard, but it recoiled, sending a gust of wind through the chamber that nearly knocked her over.
Another whisper followed:
"The vow must be broken where it began."
She stumbled to her knees, breath shallow.
And then—a memory returned.
It wasn't fire that killed her in her first life.
It was betrayal.
She saw it clearly now—someone else in the chamber, hidden in shadow, standing where Lucien had once stood.
But it wasn't Lucien.
It was another.
Someone wearing the robes of the Imperial Church.
A priestess.
She spoke in a voice soft as velvet:
"We can't let her undo what we built."
Then pain.
Fire.
Collapse.
Seraphina screamed—not in the past, but in the present—as the memory tore through her like lightning.
The red shard stopped spinning.
It hovered still, waiting.
Seraphina rose slowly.
Shaking.
Breathless.
But no longer afraid.
"They killed me," she said aloud. "Because I was ending the curse."
Her voice echoed.
The chamber pulsed in response.
"They feared what I would free."
She emerged from the sealed room at dawn.
Lucien was waiting, as if he'd known where she would go.
"You saw it," he said.
She nodded.
"They didn't just let me burn," she said quietly. "They made sure I did. It wasn't the curse that killed me."
"It was the Empire," he said.
"The Church," she corrected.
Lucien looked down at her hands—still trembling, still faintly glowing.
"They're going to try again."
"I know."
"But this time," he said, "you'll be ready."
In the throne room of Nightspire, Calis sat alone.
Her skin was still healing. Her eyes were red from sleepless nights. But her mind raced with fury.
She had passed the fire.
Why had it chosen Seraphina?
She opened the letter delivered to her in secret just hours before.
From the Imperial Church.
A single line was written in holy ink:
"If the heir does not fall, we will help you bury her."
Calis smiled bitterly.
So they hadn't truly chosen her for purity.
Only utility.
Still…
It was a start.
Back in her chamber, Seraphina stood before the mirror again.
This time, her reflection wasn't weeping.
It looked back at her with fire in its eyes.
Strong.
Resolute.
She touched the glass and whispered:
"I remember everything now."
The mirror pulsed.
And behind her, the ruby at her neck began to glow.
The vow was no longer sleeping.
And neither was she.
..............................
Her first death had been betrayal.But this life?This life would be vengeance.