I didn’t tell anyone about the symbols at first.


    They were subtle in the beginning–more like impressions than images. Faint shapes caught in the fog of early morning breath. A smear of dust on a shattered windowpane. A condensation streak curling across a water jug. Each time I looked back, they were gone. Or rather, they had always been gone. Like they were never meant to be seen for more than a second. Like they were testing me. Waiting.


    The pulse I had felt the night before hadn’t gone away. It lived inside me now, steady and soft, not painful, but present. More than my heartbeat, more than breath. It felt like a tether tied between my soul and something older than time. I didn’t know whether to fear it or cradle it. So I did both.


    Bastain arrived midmorning. He walked with a limp now, slower than usual, but his eyes were as sharp as ever. The scar across his ribs was fresh, still healing beneath his shirt, but he carried himself like he’d walked away from worse.


    He didn’t waste time on greetings.


    “There’s a shift in your aura,” he said as soon as we were alone in the study wing. “Not from the pregnancy. Something more foundational.”


    I nodded. I hadn’t been able to put words to it until now, but hearing him say it out loud solidified the feeling. Something had changed. The child had done something to me, or maybe unlocked something that had always been dormant.


    “You felt Serina’s magic when she gave you the scrolls,” he continued. “Did you ever read the codex on Sovereign omens?<b>” </b>


    “Only parts,” I admitted. “They didn’t always make sense.”


    “They weren’t meant to. Until now.”


    He handed me a thin page, brittle with age, written in Serina’s looping script,


    When fire and veil merge beneath a sovereign womb, No name shall im the child, But the child will answer when called, Not in word, But in weight.


    “Weight?” I echoed.


    “Meaning presence,” Bastain said. “The feeling you’re experiencing that pressure in your chest, the sense of being watched through your own eyes? It’s the child responding to a name that hasn’t yet been spoken. Because it doesn’t have one.”


    “Then what do we call it?”


    He hesitated. “You don’t. It reveals itself when ready. And when it does, the Hollow will listen. They always have.”


    My skin prickled at the word. Hollow. It rang too easily now. Like a thread being pulled through a wound that hadn’t closed.


    Later that afternoon, Eva and I sat in one of the unused hall rooms, a space that had once been used for first–year lectures. The walls still bore chalk marks, and the air held the faint smell of burned paper and lemon polish. I had a stick of charcoal in hand and a nk piece of parchmentid across the


    desk in front of me.


    “I keep seeing something,” I told her. “But I don’t know what it means. It’s never clear. Like a shadow just out of reach.”


    She leaned forward, elbows on the table, her expression open and calm. “Try. Just let your hand move. Don’t think too hard.”


    So I did.


    I let my fingers guide the charcoal, dragging it slowly across the page. At first, it felt random. Pointless. Lines curved into one another without <b>logic</b><b>. </b><b>My </b>hand hesitated, then twisted the stroke into an angle I hadn’t nned. The shape came together not by design, but by pull–like my body <b>remembered </b>


    <b>1/3 </b>


    <b>Chapter </b><b>182 </b>


    <b>something </b>my mind didn’t.


    When I lifted the charcoal, Eva inhaled sharply.


    <b>“</b>What is it?” I asked.


    She didn’t answer. Her eyes had gone wide, her fingers trembling slightly.


    “Eva?”


    She clutched the edge of the desk.


    “That’s not just a symbol,” she whispered. “That’s Hollow–Born script. I’ve seen it once. In Serina’s locked journals. It means… ‘unseen return<b>.</b><b>“</b>*


    I stared at the symbol. It didn’t lok threatening it was clean, elegant e


    “Do you think it’s a message?” I asked.


    “I think it’s a warning,” she said, voice low. “Or a name.”


    <i>put </i>something about it sent a chill crawling up my spine.


    Ethan found us an hourter.


    He’d been quiet since yesterday, only speaking when absolutely necessary. But the second he stepped into the room and saw the look on Eva’s <b>face</b><b>–</b>and the charcoal mark on the page–his whole posture shifted.


    “Is that one of your visions?” he asked.


    “No,” I said. “It came from me. From the child.”


    His eyes met mine, and something in them broke. A crack that had been forming for days finally split.


    “I thought…” <i>He </i>swallowed. “I thought this would be hard, sure. Dangerous<i>, </i>maybe. But I didn’t think I’d have to question whether or not my sister would survive giving birth. Or that the thing inside her would rewrite our entire bloodline.”


    “It’s not a thing,” I said, sharper than 1 meant. “It’s my child. Ours.”


    He stepped back like I’d struck him.


    I exhaled. “I didn’t mean-”


    “No. You did.” He ran a hand through his hair, eyes glinting. “And that’s the problem. You love it already. Even though we don’t know what it is. Even though it might be…”


    “Even though,” I interrupted, “it’s still mine. And I won’t abandon it just because we’re afraid.”


    Ethan looked <i>like </i>he wanted to argue. Then his shoulders dropped. His voice came quiéter.


    “I don’t want to lose you, Jizzy<i>.</i>”


    “You won’t,” I whispered. “But I might lose myself if I don’t fight for this. And I need you with me. Not against me.”


    Eva stepped between us, cing a hand on Ethan’s chest. “You said we were in this together. That <b>doesn’t </b>mean only when it’s easy.”


    He nodded slowly, not trusting his voice.


    01:47


    The sound of ws on stone pulled us all to alert.


    A scout ran through the hallway, breathless,


    “There’s someone at the gate,” she said. “A rogue: He’s injured. Said he had to find the Sovereign before he died.”


    We rushed to the courtyard, the scout leading us through the half–ruined archway to where the perimeter guard had formed a loose circle. In the centery a wolf, blood pooling beneath his chest, one leg twisted unnaturally.


    His eyes locked onto mine the second I stepped forward.


    They widened.


    “She…” he gasped. “She stirs…”


    He clutched something to his chest–a bone relic, smooth and white, etched with runes I recognized. The same one I’d drawn.


    “Where did you get that?” I asked, kneeling.


    He looked at me, trembling. “It woke up when she did.”


    “Who?”


    He choked on blood. “The Hollow… are listening. They heard the child stir.”


    Then he died.


    And the bone in his hand began to glow.