Lyra stared at the page with her name scrawled across it.
Not typed. Not printed.
Written.
Fresh, the ink still glistening—like someone had written it just seconds before she arrived.
She backed away from the pedestal, but the room resisted her. The air grew heavier, the walls closer. In the mirrors that ringed the chamber, her reflection shifted. In one, her eyes were gone. In another, her mouth was sewn shut. But the worst was the last one, closest to the exit.
In that one, she wasn't alone.
Elias stood behind her, pale and silent.
She turned—he wasn't there.
But his voice echoed faintly: "The book remembers you now."
---
Back in the library, Lyra laid the book across the floor and began flipping through the pages. They weren't all about her—some spoke of The Hollow, some of rituals and broken promises, and others of "the Bound."
She kept seeing his name again and again: Elias.
But it wasn't just one name.
There were dozens of them.
> Elias Vale, age 9. Bound, 1831.
Elias V., age 12. Bound, 1875.
Elias Unknown, age 10. Bound, 1902.
Elias—no surname. Age 13. Bound again, 1966.
Status: Contained.
Soul Fragment: Active.
Her throat tightened. "Again?"
She flipped to a torn page near the center. The ink bled into the parchment as though weeping.
> The ritual was never meant to last. The boy is the vessel, the house the cage. But cages rust. Souls remember. And blood calls blood.
There was a line drawn beneath it.
A name.
LYRA V.
---
That night, she dreamed.
She stood in the forest behind Everrest. The trees pulsed like veins. Fog swallowed the stars. And ahead of her stood a younger version of herself—maybe ten years old—holding a lantern.
The girl turned to face her.
"You left me behind."
Lyra staggered back. "No—I don't understand—"
The girl stepped forward, her face flickering between child and corpse.
"You knew him before the house. Before the mirrors. You made the promise."
A shape loomed behind the child. A boy, face hidden, hands bound by black ribbon.
Elias.
"I never—" she choked. "I never met him before the house!"
But the girl just said:
"You did. You always have."
Then the forest swallowed them.
And Lyra woke screaming.
---
She didn't sleep again.
Instead, she returned to the study at dawn, searching desperately through every journal, every page that mentioned the boy, the ritual, or anything that might explain what he was and why her name was in the book.
She found an old photograph, warped with time.
Three figures stood in front of the house: a stern man in a long coat, a girl in white, and beside her… a boy. Elias.
The back was labeled:
> Corwin Vale, Annora Vale, Elias (Bound). 1890.
Elias hadn't aged.
He couldn't.
He was always the same.
And that meant…
"Every generation," Lyra whispered. "They called him Elias. They made him stay."
She didn't know if he was a ghost or something else entirely—but she now understood one thing:
He had been a prisoner for centuries.