EMPIRE HIGH: SCHOOL OF SHADOWS

There were two truths Seraphina Cole couldn't ignore anymore.

One, the Vault had changed her.

And two, someone—maybe even Elijah—was lying.

The morning after they emerged from the Vault, the school didn't feel the same.

Students looked at her differently now. Not with fear or mockery.

With reverence.

It made her skin crawl.

She passed a pair of second-years whispering in the East Hall:

"Did you hear? She survived the Vault."

"She brought someone out with her. The Thread didn't snap."

"She's the chosen one."

Sera clenched her jaw and kept walking. If they only knew how terrified she still was. How uncertain. How the sigil on her palm itched every time Elijah walked into a room.

They met in the observatory that night.

She'd summoned him with a thought—and he came. The bond worked both ways, after all.

"I keep thinking about what the Vault said," she said quietly, sitting on the edge of a stone ledge. "That one of us lied."

He didn't respond at first. The stars above shimmered in constellations she didn't recognize. Some looked like runes. Some looked like eyes.

"Elijah," she said again. "What did you see inside?"

He didn't meet her gaze. "My memory. My birth. My mother."

Sera froze. "You told me your parents were mundane."

"They were. The ones who raised me. Not the one who bore me."

He turned then, and his face was drawn in shadow.

"She was Shadowbound. Vault-born. She died the day I was born."

Sera stared. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know. Until the Vault showed me."

She rose to her feet. "Then it was you. The one who lied. That's why the curse isn't broken."

"No." He stepped closer. "That's not the lie."

The wind stilled.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the ledger—the same one from the beginning.

"Your name isn't the last in the book anymore."

He handed it to her.

She opened the back page.

Her blood ran cold.

Liora Vexen – Vault-Bound, Unseen

Beneath it: Status: Active. Location: Unknown.

"There's someone else?" she whispered.

He nodded. "She was bonded to someone once. The first Crimson Thread. The original breaker."

"And she's still alive?"

"That's the real lie," he said, voice cracking. "The Vault didn't curse us. It called us. Because it needs something from the ones it couldn't take."

They returned to the Headmaster's tower that night.

Thorn didn't seem surprised when they burst in.

"So you've found the other name," he said without turning.

"You knew?" Seraphina demanded.

"I suspected. But I didn't have proof."

"Where is she?"

Thorn turned around slowly, his black robes rustling like wind through leaves.

"She disappeared seventeen years ago during the Severing Trials. She was bonded to a student named Adric Vane. When the Vault cracked for the first time... only one of them returned."

"And you never looked?" Elijah snapped.

"I did. But the Vault erased her presence. We thought she'd been consumed. Until now."

Thorn handed Sera an envelope sealed in red wax. "I found this on my desk this morning. No magic. No trace. But I recognized her handwriting."

Sera broke the seal.

Inside, a single sentence:

"Not all ghosts are dead. Come to the room beneath the bell."

The Bell Tower was forbidden.

Not just locked. Sealed with half a dozen enchantments and old blood runes.

The bell itself hadn't rung since the Severing.

Sera and Elijah stood at its base. Nyra had joined them without asking. She didn't even flinch when Sera explained.

"You think she's still alive? After all this time?" Nyra whispered.

"She left a note," Elijah said. "And she used my father's sigil to seal it."

Sera blinked. "Adric Vane was your—"

"My father. The one who died to break the Vault open the first time. I just didn't know who he was until now."

Sera felt the floor tilt beneath her. "Then you weren't lying before."

"No. But I didn't know what truth I carried until the Vault showed me."

He placed his hand on the wall beneath the bell.

It pulsed.

Then vanished.

A spiral staircase descended into darkness.

They climbed down slowly.

The air was thick. Like honey mixed with ash. Every step echoed with a whisper.

They reached a chamber of stone and glass. Dozens of mirrors lined the walls—but none reflected their image.

In the center stood a woman.

Liora Vexen.

She hadn't aged.

Long dark hair. Robes woven with silver thread. Eyes rimmed in violet fire.

"I wondered how long it would take you," she said, voice smooth as velvet.

Sera stepped forward. "You're Vault-bound."

"Yes. The first to ever be marked without consent."

"You disappeared."

"I escaped. I refused the Vault's final offer. I severed the bond and fled into the echoes. I've been hiding from it ever since."

Nyra whispered, "How?"

"I found something older than the Vault. A name it fears. A place it cannot touch."

Sera's mark burned. "Then help us end it."

Liora shook her head. "No. You can't end it. But you can become what it wanted—and rewrite its origin."

Elijah stepped beside her. "You mean replace it."

She nodded. "Exactly."

Sera took a breath. "Tell us what to do."

Liora showed them the ritual of recursion—a spell that could mirror the Vault and overwrite its purpose. But it required three Vault-marked souls.

One for memory.

One for sacrifice.

One for anchor.

"You," she said to Sera, "are memory. You carry every version of the Vault within you. You've seen its truth."

She turned to Elijah. "You are the anchor. Tethered to two bloodlines. Vane and Thorn."

She placed a hand over her chest. "I am the sacrifice."

"No," Sera said immediately. "There has to be another way."

"There isn't. I've been living on borrowed time since the Severing. I escaped fate once. Now I choose it."

They argued. Pleaded. Begged.

But Liora would not be moved.

The ritual began at dawn.

Back inside the Chamber of Null.

Runes were carved into the floor with obsidian dust. The three stood in a triangle.

Sera held the ledger.

Elijah held the sigil of his father.

Liora... held nothing.

But as she stepped into the circle, the mirrors all cracked at once.

Her voice sang in a language older than sound.

The ground shook.

Sera's mark split open.

The Vault screamed again.

The cycle began to rewrite.

Until—

Light.

Blinding. Infinite.

Then silence.

Sera awoke in her bed.

The locket lay open.

Her mother's face smiled at her.

Whole. Warm. Alive.

She sat up.

The mark on her palm was gone.

Outside, the Bell of the Bound rang for the first time in seventeen years.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

But far below the school, in a place no longer mapped, a single mirror remained unbroken.

And within it—

Liora watched.

Smiling.