SWNOVELXO Chapter 9: Chapter 9: The Book That Spoke Her Name
Kaelith didn't sleep that night.
Not even after the moon had crossed its zenith. Not after the castle fell silent. Not even after the strongest sleeping draught was brought to him by his steward and laced into wine.
Sleep meant dreams.
And lately, dreams meant her.
He stood barefoot by the long window of his private chamber, staring down at the courtyard below. The gardens were empty. The wind had stilled. The air pressed against the glass like it wanted in.
His hand reached up without thinking, tracing the faint condensation with his thumb. A single word escaped his lips-whispered, uncertain, foreign.
"Elara…"
But where had he heard that name?
Why did it sound like grief?
Meanwhile, Elara stood beneath the hidden staircase in the east wing library-one of the palace's many forgotten corridors. The room hadn't changed since her third death here. Dust still coated the arches. The light filtering through the stained-glass dome shimmered like colored flame on the stone floor.
And the book sat where she left it.
Bound in silver veins of root-like tendrils, resting atop a pedestal that hadn't seen sunlight in years, the Volundari Manuscript pulsed like it was alive.
Elara stepped forward slowly.
When her fingers brushed the cover, it shivered. Not cold. Not warm. Something… older. As if the book had been waiting for her touch to wake up.
It opened without her command, and a single line wrote itself across the page in ink that faded as fast as it formed:
"The prince is remembering too soon."
She stared at the page. "Why?"
Another line formed:
"Because this life began with death."
In the palace tower above, Kaelith gripped the balcony railing until his knuckles went white.
He had tried to ignore it. The feeling. The memory. The heat behind his eyes when he saw her.
But now it haunted him.
The feather.
The face.
The way she had looked at him as though she'd seen every version of him from birth to dust.
He turned away from the window, stormed across the chamber, and yanked open a hidden drawer inside the base of his bookshelf.
He pulled out the only thing he didn't understand.
A journal-not his. Bound in black leather with no markings. No seal. No origin. It had been given to him years ago by the royal librarian who whispered, "You'll need it one day."
Kaelith had never read it.
Until now.
Elara turned the next page of the Volundari.
A name etched itself in jagged strokes: Kaelith, son of Ashar, bearer of forgetting.
She traced her fingertip over the ink.
"If he remembers too early…" she murmured.
"He burns," the book answered.
Below the castle, in the sanctuary known as the Hall of Chains, a man in grey stood before a mirror that did not reflect.
He watched the surface ripple. The vision forming within showed the girl entering the library. The prince holding a cursed journal.
The man's eyes narrowed.
"She's moved too soon," he muttered.
A second figure stepped out from the shadows. A woman, face half-marked with silver sigils. She wore no armor, but danger clung to her like perfume.
"Do we act?" she asked.
"Not yet," the man said. "If she unlocks the seventh seal before the prince remembers who cursed them both… they'll die the final death."
The woman looked toward the mirror. "Then we should pray she fails."
Kaelith stared at the open page in front of him.
There was no title. No chapter. Just one sentence.
Written in his own handwriting-but one he didn't remember writing.
"I killed her before I loved her."
The ink shimmered. Then vanished.
Kaelith's breath hitched.
He slammed the journal shut and turned toward the door.
He needed answers.
And he knew exactly where to start looking.
Elara stepped back from the Volundari as it sealed itself again.
The ink had stopped moving.
But her heart hadn't.
She turned to leave, cloak flaring behind her, and didn't notice the single feather that drifted from her shoulder, landing softly beside the pedestal.
It glowed.
And cracked.
And from within, a spark of flame bloomed.