The first thing Kaelith noticed when she woke was the sound.
Not the city hum outside. Not the buzz of the radiator.
A voice.
It was in her ears before she was fully conscious. Low. Rhythmic. Threaded through the darkness like silk soaked in blood.
She opened her eyes.
Darkness.
Her apartment was pitch black, the windows swallowing light instead of giving it. Her phone—where she always left it on the nightstand—was gone. Or turned off. Or simply not there.
She sat up, breath tight.
That voice was still there.
Whispering from the corners of the room, behind the air vents, beneath the cracks in the walls.
She knew it.
Saevus.
But he wasn't speaking to her.
He was speaking through her.
"My Oracle."
Two words, heavy with reverence and rot. They filled her skull like incense smoke in an old chapel. Thick. Holy. Suffocating.
Kaelith gasped.
The lights snapped on.
She was in bed.
Alone.
But her hands—her hands were ink-stained.
She threw the covers off and looked down.
Symbols.
Her skin was covered in them. Not written, not drawn.
Stamped in black marker, precise, curved with the symmetry of ritual.
Circles. Eyes. Lines like teeth and branches.
She scrambled to the bathroom. Turned on the sink. Scrubbed.
They didn't fade.
Only then did she notice the paper.
Dozens of pages strewn across her living room floor. Torn from one of her journals. Every sheet filled, edge to edge, with the same symbols.
And at the bottom of every page:
Ashema.
Her breath caught.
She didn't remember writing them.
Didn't remember getting out of bed.
But her fingers knew the pen.
Her wrists ached with the repetition.
She backed away. Slumped to the floor.
The air around her was still.
Too still.
Like someone was holding their breath in the walls.
She reached for her coat.
She had to get out.
She didn't remember the train ride.
Didn't remember badging through security.
She only remembered standing in the west wing of Saint Nerezza before dawn, staring at Cell 77.
The guards weren't supposed to be here yet.
But Saevus was.
Waiting.
As if he knew she'd come early.
As if he'd called her.
Her knuckles rapped twice against the reinforced glass. Her breath fogged the window.
He turned.
And smiled.
Not cruel.
Not kind.
Just certain.
Like gravity had finally remembered her name.
The door closed behind her with a heavy groan. No one else was present. No surveillance would trigger for another fifteen minutes.
She should've waited.
But she couldn't.
She stepped inside the room, her fingers still stained with ink.
He looked at her hands first.
Then her eyes.
"You drew them," Saevus said.
She didn't answer.
"Even asleep, you remember the language."
Kaelith stepped closer. "What did you do to me?"
"Nothing. I spoke. You listened. The rest was yours."
She stopped in front of the table.
Her voice cracked. "Why did I write that name?"
Saevus stood, slow and reverent.
He didn't approach her like a man.
He approached her like a believer.
"Because it was never taken from you," he whispered. "Only buried."
He raised a hand, just barely hovering beside her temple.
"Do you hear her yet?"
Kaelith flinched.
"Who?"
"Ashema."
She shook her head. "That's not my name."
He smiled.
"Not anymore."
She turned to leave.
"Kaelith," he called after her. "Did you find it yet?"
She paused.
"Find what?"
His smile deepened. "The relic. The piece they left behind."
She didn't answer.
Because last night, just before sleep—she had found something.
Something small, metallic. Hidden behind a floorboard.
It was in her coat pocket now.
Heavy.
And warm.
She left without another word.
But as the cell door shut behind her, his voice pressed against her spine like a brand:
"My Oracle has always known the way back."
And this time—
She didn't know if she wanted to forget.