Page 63 of The Scars of War
His jaw tightens by a fraction.. Like a knife that knows it’s about to cut something soft. “You are the gate.”
“To what?”
He doesn’t look away, “Oblivion.”
The word hangs heavy. Not poetic or symbolic. Final. I feel it settle in my chest like a weight. I want to laugh. I want to scream. I want to punch him in the fucking throat and ask why it had to be me. Instead, I whisper, “And what does it want?”
He answers without blinking. “To be known.”
I shift in my seat, fingers curling into the fabric of my jeans. “The vault. The power. The voice that wasn’t mine. It all…it all recognized me.”
“Yes.”
“And the sigils,” I press. “I’ve seen them. Yours. Riven’s. Niko’s. Elias’s. Even the fifth. But I don’t have one.”
“No,” Vale says. “Because you aren’t part of the order.”
“Then what the fuck am I part of?”
“You’re the reason it exists.”
The silence that follows isn’t stillness. It’s pressure. It wraps around my chest and squeezes. I lick my lips. “Why me?”
“Because your blood woke it. Your voice called it. And your body…” he trails off.
“Say it,” I snap.
His gaze sharpens. “Your body can carry it.”
I recoil like he struck me. “I’m not a vessel,” I hiss.
“You already are.”
I shake my head. “No. No. I chose Riven. I chose my bond. That was mine.” He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t agree either.
“Then tell me the rest,” I whisper. “Tell me what happened to the last one.”
Vale’s gaze turns distant. For a moment, he looks younger. A man remembering something that never let him go. “She was a banshee too,” he says. “Born with the voice. The mark found her early. She tried to fight it.”
“What happened?”
“She didn’t scream loud enough.” The words land like a coffin nail. Vale stands slowly, stepping toward me, slow, deliberate, no threat in stride. “And you already have,”he says. “Which means it’s listening.” I look up at him, breath caught in my throat. “Be careful what you say next, Lux,” he murmurs. “It might hear you.”
He leaves without ceremony. One second, he’s standing in front of me, breath cool against my cheek, and the next, he’s just…gone. Without a sound, and now there is just an absence, thick and cold. Bleeding into the seams of the room like ink into paper.
I sit there for too long. Still as the stone beneath me. My heart won't slow. I don’t know what part of me still expected him to reach for me. Maybe the part that needs comfort. Maybe the part that still believes being wanted makes you safe.
Vale has never touched me like Riven does, and now that he’s gone, the air has turned. Everything’s off. Everything’s waiting. The house is too quiet again. But not dead.
It’s breathing. Breaths I can’t hear but feel. I feel them in the floorboards, in the walls, in my skin. The veil is closed now. So fucking close, I think if I opened a window, it would reach through and pull me under.
I find my way back to the hallway slowly, fingertips grazing the wood panels like I’m walking a dream I’ve already died in. There’s no one here. No guards. No Riven. No sound. Just the echo of a question I didn’t ask out loud.
If I’m the key…what does that make them?
I find myself in the glass hallway again. I didn’t mean to come here. My feet just drifted. The moment I step inside, the temperature shifts. Cooler. Still. Reverent, almost.
The glass cases line both walls, illuminated from within like altars. Some are pristine. Others cracked at the edges, like time itself has left its mark. Every case holds something brutal, a relic of violence, of conquest, of ruin.
