The dreams came like a flood.
Eloryn lay motionless by the riverbank as Maren tended to her burns. But within her mind, another world stirred—a memory so deep it felt like drowning.
She was no longer Eloryn.
She was Ilven of the Stormcallers, last Oracle of the coastal empire of Drelai.
She stood at the prow of a ship wrought in silver and obsidian, slicing through churning seas. Her hair was braided with shards of driftglass. Her arms bore inked runes—each one a prophecy fulfilled. The ocean roared beneath her, hungry and ancient.
In this life, Ilven had not hidden from fate. She had wielded it.
The priests of Drelai once begged her to summon calmer tides. Instead, she summoned truth.
That truth had a name: Kaelren.
He had been her student, her shadow—a mute boy born of unknown lineage, with eyes that bled starlight. Ilven taught him the old language, the secret one—the one that made the stars listen.
And together, they saw the lie at the heart of the Book of Stars.
"Every written fate narrows the path," Ilven told him once. "We think we are guiding the world, but we are binding it."
On the night the Crown sent warships to claim the Book from Drelai's vaults, Ilven climbed the spire and spoke her final prophecy.
A throne will rise on false blood. The hollow will speak. And the Book will burn by the hand that once praised it.
They called her a traitor.
The high priests drowned her in the tide and claimed her words were madness.
Kaelren disappeared.
And now, lifetimes later, Eloryn remembered everything.
She gasped awake on the riverbank.
Maren knelt beside her, eyes wide. "You stopped breathing."
"I was remembering," she whispered hoarsely. "Kaelren… I taught him. In another life. He was the first to understand."
She clutched her chest. Her heart still beat like thunder.
"We need to find his spire. The Frostmarch. There's something there—something older than the Book itself."
Maren hesitated. "Eloryn… if this Kaelren lived centuries ago, how could he still be waiting?"
She looked at him, eyes full of starlight.
"Because he died a prophet," she said. "And prophets never stay dead."
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