Morning came with the heavy stillness of a city waiting for something to break. The sky over Swynden was a pale, washed-out blue, streaked with the remnants of mist that clung stubbornly to the rooftops. The streets hummed with quiet movement, the people of the capital going about their day with the practiced wariness of those who had lived under uneasy rule for too long.

  Callista barely paid it any mind.

  A sharp knock at the door pulled her from her thoughts, and when she opened it, a young servant stood there looking vaguely uncomfortable.

  “Lady Sharmure requests your presence for breakfast,” he said, glancing between her and the others, who were awake— but just barely, scattered dazedly about the suite.

  Julia, still half-asleep, groaned into one of the couch pillows. “It’s too early for ominous invitations.”

  Melissa stretched, cracking her neck. “At least it's breakfast and not, like, a blood ritual.”

  Brandon shot her a look. “Yet.”

  Callista waved off the servant with a curt nod, then turned back to the group. “We’re going. But first— wards.”

  Brenna was already pulling a small pouch from her bag, standing from where she’d been perched on the floor. “Agreed.”

  Melissa frowned. “Isn’t that a little much? I mean, she didn’t do anything to us last night.”

  Callista fixed her with a pointed look. “Nothing that we’re aware of.”

  That was enough to shut down any argument.

  They worked quickly. Brenna, more experienced with warding magic, took the lead, tracing the symbols carefully over the napes of their necks with a fine layer of protective dust— charcoal and ground bone, infused with spells old enough to make Julia frown in recognition. Callista followed, murmuring the incantations under her breath, feeling the faint hum of power settle against her skin.

  “These won’t last forever,” Brenna warned. “But if she tries anything, we’ll know.”

  Melissa wiggled her fingers. “Okay, but what happens if she does try something?”

  “Depends on how strong she is,” Callista admitted, wiping the excess dust from her palms. “If she’s just passively reading us, she might not even feel it. If she pushes—”

  “She’ll regret it,” Brenna finished, smirking.

  Brandon rolled his shoulders. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Evadne’s private dining room was as elegantly understated as the woman herself— dark wood, high windows that let in the weak morning light, a spread of fresh bread, fruit, and tea already waiting at the table.

  She looked up as they entered, taking them in with an amused sort of patience. And then she laughed. The sound was soft, lilting— almost delighted. “Oh,” she said, smiling in a way that made Callista’s teeth clench. “You warded yourselves. How charming.”

  The air in the room shifted, tension curling at the edges of it. Julia stiffened. Brandon’s hand twitched near his belt.

  Evadne lifted her cup, entirely unconcerned. “Please, sit. I assure you, if I wanted to break you, I wouldn’t have invited you to breakfast.”

  Callista held her gaze for a moment longer, then lowered herself into a chair, the others following suit.

  Evadne waited until tea had been poured before speaking again. “Now. You want to know about the Mirrorwood.” She turned her gaze toward Julia. “You were right, you know. It wasn’t just divine punishment— it was something made.”

  Julia sat up straighter. “And how do you know?”

  “I know pieces,” Evadne clarified. “But knowledge is scattered. If you truly want to understand the early days of the Curse, I suggest starting with the archives.”

  Callista frowned. “The archives?”

  Evadne gestured vaguely. “The royal archives hold records from before the fall of Milana. Not all were destroyed when the Nameless Ones revolted— some were simply... buried. Overlooked. I have no doubt you’ll find something useful, if you know where to look.”

  Brenna narrowed her eyes. “And what will you be doing?”

  Evadne smiled. “As much as I enjoy the company, I have my own methods of gathering information. I will reach out to my contacts. There are those who still remember the beginning of all this, and I would rather speak to the living than dig through old parchment.”

  Brandon exhaled slowly. “And you expect us to just take your word on this?”

  Evadne’s smile didn’t waver. “I expect you to make use of the resources available to you. Whether or not you trust me is your own concern.”

  Callista’s fingers tightened around her cup. Evadne was helping them. But she was also leading them, carefully, deliberately.

  And Callista hated being led.

  “I still don’t see why I have to do this,” Melissa grumbled, holding up two bright blue satin ribbons, eyeing them with clear reluctance.

  Callista, already halfway through buckling her coat, barely spared her a glance. “Because if you don’t, the guards will try to kill him.”

  Melissa sighed dramatically and turned to where Gorgoloth loomed in the corner of the suite. His many eyes gleamed as he clicked his mandibles at her. He had been pacing restlessly for the last ten minutes, clearly agitated about being confined indoors for too long.

  “I know you want to go hunt, buddy, but we have rules now,” Melissa told him as she stepped closer, ribbons in hand. “Apparently, some people thing ‘giant spider roaming the palace’ is a problem.”

  Gorgoloth chittered in what she firmly believed was protest, but she ignored him, reaching up to loop the ribbons around two of his front legs and tying them in neat bows. The satin stood out obnoxiously against his dark chitin, a sharp contrast to the subtle menace of his eight-legged frame.

  “Saints above,” Brenna muttered, pressing a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

  Julia tilted her head. “That is... certainly a look.”

  Melissa grinned. “He’s adorable.”

  Brandon raised an eyebrow. “Adorable is not the word I’d use.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  Annemarie, who had been watching the entire exchange with amusement, leaned over to get a better look. “You’re sure this will work?”

  Melissa huffed. “If a grown-ass nobleman can walk around with a velvet cape straight out of a bad romance novel, Gorgoloth can wear some ribbons. She tied a small note to one of them, making sure it was securely knotted before stepping back again to admire her work. The note read:

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  If Lost, Return to Melissa Ramirez c/o Lady Byfox

  Julia snorted. “Very professional.”

  Melissa shrugged. “What? I don’t want him getting impounded or something.”

  Callista, who had been watching the whole exchange with thinly veiled impatience, finally crossed her arms. “Are we done?”

  Melissa gave Gorgoloth a fond pat on the rump. “Yeah, yeah, go have fun, buddy.”

  With an eager click of his mandibles, Gorgoloth skittered toward the door, slipping out the moment Melissa cracked it open. He was gone down the hall in an instant, moving with eerie grace despite the satin bows trailing from his legs.

  Brenna shook her head, still grinning. “This is our life, now.”

  “Better than the Mirrorwood,” Julia muttered, heading for the door.

  With that, they gathered their things and made their way toward the palace archives.

  The royal archives lay deep beneath the palace, entombed in stone and silence. The heavy iron-bound doors had groaned on their hinges as they were pushed open, revealing a cavernous expanse of history preserved in dust and parchment. The scent of ink and time hung thick in the air— old paper turned brittle with age, melted candle wax pooled along the edges of iron sconces, the faintest trace of leather lingering from the bindings of books untouched for decades.

  It was vast.

  Towering bookshelves stretched toward the vaulted ceiling, their wooden frames dark with age, their contents crammed together so tightly that the weight of knowledge itself seemed to press in on the room. Scrolls, manuscripts, and crumbling tomes filled every available surface, stacked in precarious towers atop desks where scribes worked in near silence. The only sounds were the soft rustling of pages, the occasional scratch of a quill against parchment, and the distant shuffle of footsteps over worn stone floors.

  Julia inhaled deeply, eyes sweeping across the endless corridors of knowledge. It was overwhelming, suffocating in its enormity— and yet, to her, it was perfect. “This,” she murmured, almost reverent, “is exactly where I want to be.”

  Melissa wrinkled her nose. “Smells like dust and bad decisions.”

  Brandon gave her a sidelong glance. “Not everything is trying to kill us, you know.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Maybe not, but I don’t trust a place that hasn’t seen daylight in a century.”

  Brandon sighed, glancing around at the sheer enormity of what lay before them. “So where do we even start?”

  Callista didn’t answer immediately. She had stepped away from the group, fingers hovering just above the surface of a gilded volume resting on a nearby table. The cover was well-preserved, the gold filigree marking it as a noble’s book glinting faintly in the dim torchlight. She knew the script at once— elegant, looping Milani letters, written in a precise hand long before the world had turned to ruin.

  Her breath caught.

  Vevra Nazenne Tormevi

  Her mother’s name. A name she hadn’t seen in years.

  The past had a way of creeping in, no matter how hard she tried to leave it behind.

  For a long moment, she didn’t move.

  A scholar crept around her, stealing a glance before snagging the book and moving to a different table.

  Then, slowly, she exhaled, steeling herself. “We start at the beginning,” she said. And so they did.

  The deeper they dug into the archives, the more obvious it became that something was missing. The records were vast, stretching back centuries, but when it came to the Cleansing of the House of Tormevi only thirty years prior, details blurred into shallow praise and half-truths. The scrolls and books they pulled from the shelves spoke glowingly of the Nameless Ones— how they had liberated Milana from an era of tyranny, how they had purged corruption from the noble houses and ushered in an age of unity.

  But there were gaps. Glaring gaps.

  There were no firsthand accounts from the victims. No neutral observations. Nothing that even hinted at the brutality of what had really happened— no mention of the blood that had run through the streets of Swynden, of the slaughtered innocents, of the bodies burned in the city square.

  Julia scowled as she flipped through yet another record that sang the praises of the Nameless Ones. They stabilized Milana. They freed the people from the Tormevi’s iron grip. They ensured the future.

  She slammed the book shut. “This is garbage.”

  Callista barely looked up from the manuscript she was skimming. “Of course it is.”

  Brandon frowned, leaning on the back of Julia’s chair. “So, what? They just rewrote history?”

  “Not just rewrote it,” Julia muttered. “They erased it.”

  Brenna was running a finger along the brittle edge of a scroll, brow furrowed. “No record of the massacres, no mention of how the assassins were hired. No accounting for the families that vanished overnight.” She let out a slow breath. “I was expecting some revisionism, but this is worse than I thought.”

  Annemarie, who had been following along as best she could, hesitated. “But... the Nameless Ones did take Milana, right? They did kill the Tormevis?”

  Callista’s lips pressed together, her grip on the parchment in front of her tightening.

  Julia was the one who answered. “Yes. But the way it’s written here, you’d think they did it with a clean blade and a well-placed speech.”

  Brandon crossed his arms. “And that’s not what happened.”

  “No,” Callista said coldly. “It isn’t. Do you know how many cousins I should have? How many aunts and uncles? Not to mention my entire Saintsdamned family.” She set her jaw. “They killed them all.”

  She turned one of the scrolls toward him, jabbing at the text with her finger. “Do you see what’s missing? The timeline is wrong. The Cleansing was not a swift and decisive coup. It lasted two years, initially. They didn’t just kill the Tormevis, they hunted us down. Slaughtered entire families, even children. Any noble house loyal to them was burned out of existence. The archives don’t mention Byfox, Moorpond, or the dozens of other strongholds that fell. So few survived the Cleansing. It’s just the queen, a handful of cousins in Atriane, and myself.”

  Brandon took a slow breath, absorbing her words. Realizing the stakes.

  Melissa glanced between them, rubbing the back of her neck. “And you guys already knew all this?”

  “Some of us grew up with the real history,” Brenna said quietly.

  Julia nodded. “And I read my father’s journals. He worked under Queen Kiernen— knew what happened. He recorded it so the truth wouldn’t be buried completely.”

  Brandon exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

  Annemarie shifted uncomfortably, running her fingers over the open pages of a book in front of her. “So... the whole country just believes this version?”

  Callista let out a bitter laugh. “What choice do they have? This is the only history they’re allowed to perpetuate.”

  Melissa frowned. “And the people who were there?”

  “The ones who lived through it are either dead or too afraid to say otherwise,” Brenna muttered.

  A silence settled over them. The weight of lost history pressed in from all sides, suffocating and immense.

  Finally, Julia leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temple. “Alright. We’re not going to find anything new about the Cleansing here. Let’s move on.”

  Callista inhaled deeply, regaining her composure. “Forbidden magic it is.”

  They shifted their search, moving from the history of Milana to the darker records.

  It took longer to find what they were looking for— many texts on illicit magic had been deliberately removed or destroyed— but the archives were old, some of the texts even older, and this knowledge could never be fully erased.

  Julia pulled down a heavy tome bound in black leather and set it on the table with a thud. Spiritual Degradation and the Unnatural Arts.

  Brenna found another, thinner volume titled The Eldramoria and Their Gifts. “All the better to know what we’re working with,” she said with a shrug.

  They read in silence, scanning the fragile pages, expressions darkening as they uncovered the truth.

  “Soul Stealers were once primarily healers, like Seers are now,” Julia murmured, skimming a passage aloud. “Their magic was used to sense sickness, to ease pain. They could feel life itself.”

  Melissa raised an eyebrow. “And then?”

  Julia’s eyes flicked over the next few lines. Her stomach twisted. “Then someone figured out how to take instead of sense.”

  Brenna ran a finger along a passage in her own book. “The first recorded cases of spiritual corruption coincided with experiments in Eldramoric magic. It started with minor drains— stealing energy, shortening lives by months, then years.” She swallowed. “And then... worse.”

  Callista, reading her own text, suddenly stiffened.

  “What?” Brandon asked.

  Wordlessly, she turned the book around and pointed to a section near the bottom of the page. Julia leaned in, reading aloud.

  “A persistent belief among scholars is that spiritual corruption— specifically the unnatural binding of souls— can lead to long-term distortions in reality. In some cases, locations where such magic was practiced developed lasting abnormalities. In the worst cases, the corruption lingered long after the practitioners were gone, feeding on itself, growing into something that could not be undone by aught but the strongest of magics.”

  The words settled over them like a shroud.

  Brenna’s voice was quiet. “It sounds like the Curse.”

  Callista nodded slowly. “It does.”

  Annemarie frowned. “Are we saying... the Mirrorwood Curse is alive?”

  “Not alive,” Julia murmured. “But... sustained. Someone— maybe a long time ago, maybe now— is feeding it. Keeping it from dying.”

  Brandon tensed. “Soul magic.”

  No one contradicted him. The implications were too large, too horrifying.

  If the Mirrorwood was feeding on the countless souls trapped within it, then breaking it wouldn’t just be difficult.

  It might be impossible.