Chapter 124: The Veil of Inheritance
The corridor to the hidden archives was warm with silence, the air still as breath held too long. The walls shimmered faintly with sigils that had not glowed for decades. They pulsed now — not in welcome, but in recognition.
Eva walked alone, her small footsteps muffled by the velvety runner that wound its way through the ancient library's private wing. She had followed the faint whisper of curiosity — a hunger born not of rebellion, but of longing. She wanted to know more, to understand the whispers that swirled behind her name.
The doors to the de Mercière Archives had never opened before.
Not for Vivienne. Not for Evelyn. Not even for the archivists who kept its exterior dusty- free, never daring to step beyond its threshold. But when Eva approached, the iron lattice melted into itself with a soft clang, and the lock clicked back as if sighing.
A warmth settled into her chest. Not comforting — reverent. As though the room itself had been waiting.
Inside, time moved differently.
Golden light poured from a sunless ceiling, and scrolls hung suspended in crystalline air. Ribbons of memory twisted through space, encoded in delicate glass orbs and tethered books that drifted just out of reach until summoned. "Archived Codex Code"
Eva's fingers tingled as she stepped in.
"Where… am I?" she whispered.
A voice — not spoken, but felt — answered in the hush of air:
You are where only the heir may stand. Claimed by name. Bound by blood. Last of the de Mercière line.
And the archives began to awaken.
A glass tablet descended before her. Images unfurled — a woman cloaked in moonlight, a crown woven from the feathers of ravens, her hands outstretched over a city lit with ancient fire. Beneath her stood four figures: Athena, warrior of logic and law; Aphrodite, enchantress of longing and devotion; and a third — darker, unnamed in human tongues, her eyes luminous with hunger and tenderness. Vaethea D'Aragon, whispered the archive. And then — Aira.
Aira. Succubus. Mortal. Royalty Vampire. Goddess.
The first - born mother of transcendence.
Eva stood rooted, breath caught in her throat as the tapestry unfolded. These were not fairy tales. They were memory.
Aira — whose kiss burned into legend, whose blood sired empires and sealed wars. Vaethea D'Aragon, her mother - queen, ruler of the Undying Courts. Athena, whose sword carved truth. Aphrodite, who blessed the soul's deepest bonds.
Together, they touched one mortal line.
Eva's.
Her fingers brushed the surface of the tablet, and the air trembled. Bloodlines unfurled in threads of gold and silver and amethyst, revealing four legacies wound into her name:
de Mercière — The secret aristocracy that ruled beneath veils, surviving through shadow and silence. Twelve heirs born across six centuries. Eleven lost. One remained.
Maxwell — The known line of scholars and tacticians, noble and brilliant, though blind to the deeper truth of their founding.
Lioré — The silken monarchy of the East, where bloodlines were guarded as if divine, and power was woven into language itself.
Solenne — The purest. The most sacred. The line that bore the touch of the divine.
D'Aragon — The bloodline of storm and seduction, born of twilight and battle. Known for rulers who loved like fire and reigned like dusk — beautiful, dangerous, and half - myth themselves.
Eva's eyes widened. Her breath grew shallow.
Her name was not merely Evangeline "Eva" Clair Ainsley. It was a prism. A cipher. A culmination.
The air stirred, growing cooler.
The archives responded to her awe, drawing forth more: memories of queens who wept on battlefields, kings who bent knee before a child born under a shrouded star. She saw herself in fragments — a girl in white standing at the mouth of a battlefield, her eyes aglow, her hand raised in peace. Another vision: her name carved into the stones of an old cathedral, beneath a fresco of Athena handing down judgment.
And then — something shifted.
A stillness, unnatural. Too perfect.
One scroll, ancient and luminous with violet runes, began to drift down before Eva. The moment her hand reached for it —
A soft pulse.
A shiver in the air.
Time stopped.
The golden light dimmed. The scroll froze mid - air.
Then the vision turned to shadow.
The warmth vanished from her limbs. A scent like lilac and starlight rose in the air.
Something vast entered the room. Not with footsteps. Not with sound. But presence.
A figure — no, a force — descended in silence. The air became dense with reverence and fear. She did not appear fully, only the impression of her: wings made of midnight, eyes of living crystal, and a voice that was not voice at all.
Too soon, little one.
The voice rang like bells over water.
The weight of what you are will come when you are ready to carry it. For now…
She extended a hand — not to touch, but to will.
Eva's eyes fluttered.
The scrolls faded. The archives dimmed. The sigils along the door returned to sleep.
Eva collapsed gently to the floor, asleep before her body touched stone.
She woke in Evelyn's arms, her cheek pressed against her mother's shoulder, her limbs heavy with sleep.
"Darling," Evelyn whispered. "What are you doing here?"
Eva blinked. She looked around at the hallway outside the sealed archive doors. Her memory was a foggy mirror. "I don't know. I was reading… I think."
Evelyn brushed her hair back gently. "You must've wandered in by accident."
"I was learning something," Eva murmured, already fading again.
"You can tell me later, mon ange," Evelyn said, kissing her brow. "For now, let's get you to bed."
She didn't see the way the sigils behind her mother's back glowed faintly at her departure — or how they sealed tighter than before.
*****
That night, at the Ainsley estate in G••••• — a quiet sanctuary nestled between the lake and the old city walls — Evelyn stood at the window of the west study, the glass cool beneath her fingertips. Outside, the gardens stretched into darkness, trimmed with moonlight and the whisper of leaves.
Vivienne stood beside her, arms folded, silent for a long time.
"She opened the archives," Evelyn said softly.
Vivienne didn't react. "I thought she might."
"She wasn't supposed to. Not yet."
"She is who she is," Vivienne murmured. "And the archives knew it. They opened without resistance. They always know."
Evelyn's jaw tightened. "When I found her down there, I felt something. Not just the archives. Something else. Watching. Vast."
Vivienne turned slightly. "Then she's protected. Interfered with. That kind of presence — my guess is Athena. Or worse."
"Why stop her now?" Evelyn whispered. "Why make her forget?"
"Because if she remembers too much, if she understands what she is, others will too. Maxwell will start watching. The Lioré's will investigate. And if even one of them puts it together — what Solenne was, what the de Mercière blood carries, what Aira left buried in D'Aragon — it'll be war."
Evelyn's voice cracked. "I walked away from my heirship the moment I understood what was converging. I saw what would happen if even two of those lines met."
Vivienne's voice dropped. "And now they all have. In her."
Evelyn nodded, eyes stinging. "The world isn't ready."
"But it will be," Vivienne said gently. "And when that day comes, she won't just carry the past. She'll reshape the future."
A long silence fell between them — quiet, almost sacred.
"She's our legacy," Evelyn whispered. "And theirs."
Vivienne glanced at the sky through the high window. The stars seemed brighter here.
"She's not just a legacy, love. She's the new genesis."
The next morning, in a sun - warmed room of the Ainsley estate, Eva stirred alone. The silence was soft, the kind that came with mountain air and foreign soil. She blinked slowly, disoriented by the light and by the emptiness beside her.
No Seraphina.
She wasn't supposed to be here anyway.
Different country. Different rules.
Still, the absence felt strange. Cold.
Eva sat up and glanced toward the small nightstand, where her notebook lay half-open beside a capped pen and a smooth coin she didn't remember touching.
Something pressed against her thoughts — a dream already dissolving. A sensation of weight, of knowing, without understanding.
She reached for the notebook and flipped through the pages.
Midway through, she found it: a single line, written in her own script, as though in sleep or trance:
D'Aragon lives in the heart of silence.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then, quietly, she turned the page.
*****
Elsewhere, in a ruined cathedral sealed beneath layers of salt and stone, a figure walked barefoot across the altar, her dark ash brown or deep slate grey hair sweeping the ground. She looked into a broken mirror, her gaze unreadable.
"She's awake," said Athena, stepping forward from the shadows.
"She's not ready," murmured Vaethea D'Aragon.
"She will be," Aphrodite replied from behind them both. "We must wait."
Aira stood at the edge of the broken sanctuary, her eyes distant.
"When the bloodlines converge," she whispered, "the gods themselves must kneel."
And far away, in the quiet of her estate, Eva sat in a sunbeam with her tea, drawing stars she didn't yet know she remembered.