Ancestry of Secrets

The road to the Crimson Athenaeum was not a road at all.

Ethan walked through a land where time frayed. Forests melted into deserts, and rivers flowed upward, their waters whispering in languages extinct before his bloodline began.

The raven symbol on his palm burned with every step, guiding him through the distortions. The codex, now fused to his satchel by threads of starlight, hummed a dirge only he could hear.

He tried not to think of Mara.

Three days earlier, her voice echoed in his nightmares.

"The Athenaeum isn't a place—it's a test. It'll dig into your bones and make you choose: the truth, or the lie you've lived."

Ethan hadn't understood then. Now, as the horizon warped into a jagged spire of crimson stone, he felt the weight of her warning. The Athenaeum loomed, its architecture impossible—a library built from the fossilized remains of dead stars, its shelves stretching into a sky choked with green-black storm clouds.

At its gates stood a figure.

Not Cedric. Not the Order.

A child.

She wore a tattered dress, her hair streaked with ash, holding a lantern filled with flickering shadows.

"Hello, Duskheir," she said, her voice too deep, too ancient.

"I've been waiting."

The child led him through the gates, her lantern casting no light but instead drinking it. The Athenaeum's interior defied reason, corridors twisted like entrails, ceilings opened into vacuums of space, and books floated like carcasses in a dead sea.

"I am the Keeper," the child said, though Ethan hadn't asked. "Not the liar who stalked your estate. That one… he stole the title. Just as he stole your grandmother's mercy."

Ethan's hand drifted to the empty space where the locket had hung.

"Are you here to stop me?"

The Keeper laughed, a sound like ice breaking. "I'm here to ensure you pay the price. All knowledge here demands sacrifice. What will you give to save your rotting world, Duskheir?"

"Whatever it takes."

Her grin split her face too wide. "Oh, you'll regret that."

The chamber at the Athenaeum's heart was a mausoleum of forgotten truths. A pedestal of black glass stood at its center, etched with the raven and star. The Keeper gestured to it. "Place the codex. Then the anchor."

Ethan hesitated. "What happens?"

"The Star's shard will merge with the codex's power. It will seal the rift—or destroy you. The Veyra line has always been… combustible."

As Ethan laid the codex and locket on the pedestal, the walls began to bleed. Crimson liquid oozed from the stones, forming words in a dozen tongues.

Coward. Traitor. Murderer.

"Your family's epitaphs," the Keeper murmured. "The Athenaeum remembers every sin. Even yours."

The locket and codex fused with a scream of rending metal. Light erupted—and Ethan's mind tore.

He was Liora, standing in this same room, Cedric's dagger in her gut. "Why?" she gasped.

Cedric wrenched the blade free. "Because you loved a world that hates us. The Star promised me a kingdom. All I had to do was kill its jailer."

The memory shifted. Ethan was himself, age six, hiding under a desk as his mother argued with a man—Cedric. "Take Ethan and go," she begged. "They'll come for him next."

Cedric's smile was venom. "Why would I save your half-breed brat, Elara? He's not even pure Veyra."

The door exploded. Shadows consumed his mother's scream.

Ethan reeled, the Athenaeum swimming back into focus. The Keeper watched, unblinking.

"Ah. So that's the memory you'll lose. The last of your mother."

"What?"

"The price, Duskheir. To wield the codex and anchor, you must surrender a truth. The Athenaeum chose… her."

Panic surged. Ethan clawed at his temples, but the memory was already dissolving—his mother's face, her voice, the smell of her perfume.

Gone.

All that remained was a hollow rage.

The fused relic glowed in his hands, a jagged key of starlight and shadow. The Keeper stepped back. "It's done. Now, run. Your uncle is—"

The wall detonated.

Cedric strode through the rubble, his body a grotesque tapestry of flesh and void. The Thirteenth Star's power pulsed within him, distorting the air.

"There you are," he crooned. "Come to finish mother's mistakes?"

Ethan didn't speak. He moved.

The battle was a blur of light and screams. Ethan wielded the relic like a scythe, its energy carving through Cedric's shadows. But with every strike, the Athenaeum itself rebelled—floors became quicksand, books lashed out with razor pages, and the Keeper's laughter echoed like a dirge.

"You're weak," Cedric spat, seizing Ethan's throat. "You don't even remember why you're fighting!"

Ethan's relic flared. "I don't need to."

He plunged the key into Cedric's chest.

The Thirteenth Star howled.

Cedric's body disintegrated, the void within him collapsing. But as the light faded, Ethan saw it—a shard of green-black crystal embedded in the rubble. The Star's heart.

The Keeper materialized, her childlike form flickering.

"You've won… for now. But the heart remains. Destroy it, or this is all for nothing."

Ethan raised the relic.

"Wait!" The Keeper's voice sharpened. "Shattering it will unleash the Star's full wrath. The Veyra line will burn to contain it."

Ethan hesitated—then remembered Mara's words. "Sometimes the only choice is the one that breaks you."

The explosion ripped the Athenaeum apart.

Ethan fell through void and fire, the relic disintegrating in his grip. When he woke, he was in a field, the sky bleeding dawn. His body ached, his mind a patchwork of missing pieces.

But in the distance, a shadow stirred. The Thirteenth Star's heart, though fractured, pulsed faintly.

And deeper still, in the marrow of the world, something ancient and ravenous began to wake.

He struck.