Page 90 of Ashen Souls

“Was it real?”

He leaned back, his chair creaking loudly in the dead quiet of the study. “Who gave you that word, Aveline?”

“Nobody,” I answered, holding his stare. “I found it. In the Old City Archives.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn't have access to anything containing that name.”

“Well, I do,” I pressed, bracing my hands flat on his desk. “So whatever you’re trying to hide is already out. I need you to tell me what all of this means.”

Dad scraped his chair back, walked past me, and swung the study door shut. He returned to the desk but didn't sit down.

“Whatever you think you've stumbled into,” he warned, “you need to understand that the line between history and myth is completely blurred there.”

“I just need the myth, then.”

He rubbed his jaw, staring blindly at the bookshelves. “Before you were born, I was clearing out my grandparents' attic. I found a false panel behind a wardrobe. I’d lived in that house my entire childhood and never knew it was there.”

“What was behind it?”

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. “Boxes. Which should have been my first red flag. Families like ours don't usually hide normal things.”

He retrieved the same black leather journal I had seen that afternoon. The binding was cracked and flaking at the edges. He didn’t hand it to me. He just kept his hand clamped firmly over the cover.

“So, yes.” His voice dropped. “When I saw that burn on your wrist after the accident, I knew exactly where I had seen it before. In here.”

I stared at the journal beneath his hand.

“The illusion was so brief,” he continued. “I found the drawing in these pages later that night, but I convinced myself I was projecting. That the sigil in the book and the flash on your skin couldn't possibly be identical.” He looked up, his expression grim. “Now I know they are.”

“What else is in there?” I asked.

“Private genealogies. Records that completely contradict public history. Whole branches of our family tree that just… vanished. Cut off abruptly, as if someone was desperately trying to erase their existence.”

“And Aethrya?” I asked.

He traced an edge of the journal’s cover. “It wasn't written as a metaphor. They described it as a physical place. Not a parallel dimension. This world. What it used to be, thousands of years before official history began.”

He paused, looking down at the book. “And they claimed our bloodline belonged to a house called Nyxeth.”

Nyxeth. The name was new, yet the second it left his lips, it felt like an echo from a place I wasn't supposed to remember.

“A lineage anchored to light,” he continued. “The journals didn't talk about good or evil. They talked about necessity. About balance. The texts claimed the abilities burned out when Aethrya was sealed off. Or destroyed. The translations are a mess.”

“Because history usually is,” I said.

He let out a short breath. “I was a young academic trying to get tenure with a family to feed. Ramblings about forgotten magical realms don’t exactly help you publish. I boxed it up and ignored it. But it always bothered me.”

Dad looked away from that family relic, fixing his eyes on me.

“And now you’re standing in my study with the sigil on your wrist, asking for these names.” He sighed. “You didn’t ask out of curiosity, Aveline. Something found you.”

The sigil on my wrist pulsed, as if in agreement.

“Yes.”

The last trace of the detached scholar vanished. He looked like a terrified father. “Are you in danger, Aveline?”

I thought of the shadows. Of Daeren.