Ancestry of Secrets

Ethan drove until the fuel gauge screamed, the codex burning a hole in his satchel and the locket cold against his chest. The road twisted through skeletal forests, the sky bruised purple by storms that never quite broke.

He didn't stop until he crossed into the ragged outskirts of Hollow's End, a town his father had once spat was "crawling with Veyra ghosts."

The motel's neon sign flickered: The Restless Raven. A coincidence, he told himself. But the peeling mural of a seven-pointed star above the front desk suggested otherwise.

Sleep brought no respite.

He stood in a library older than time, its shelves carved from living bone. The woman from his vision—Liora Veyra—stood before him, her hands stained with ink that wept like tar.

"The codex is not a map, Ethan. It's a key," she said, pressing a finger to his chest. "Your blood is the first thread. Break the lock before the Order does, or the Thirteenth Star will feast on this world's marrow."

Shadows surged, swallowing the shelves. Liora's face contorted. "Beware of the Keeper. She lies with every truth she—"

Ethan jolted awake, the motel phone ringing violently. No one knew he was here.

He lifted the receiver. Static hissed, then a voice.

"Three miles east. The old chapel. Come alone, or the Ravenscroft girl dies screaming."

The line went dead.

Ravenscroft. His father's name, scrubbed from family records after he married his mother.

A trap, his mind warned.

But the locket around his neck pulsed once, hot as a brand.

The chapel sagged at the forest's edge, its steeple crowned by a rusted iron raven. Inside, moonlight sliced through shattered stained glass, painting the pews in jagged color. A figure knelt at the altar—a young woman, bound and gagged, her auburn hair matted with blood.

"Let her go!" Ethan's voice echoed, raw.

Laughter slithered from the shadows. Two figures emerged, their faces hidden behind masks of polished onyx, the Order of the Shattered Veil. The taller one dragged a serrated blade along the woman's shoulder.

"The codex. Now."

Ethan's hand hovered over his satchel. 'The Keeper lies with every truth', Liora's warning echoed. He hesitated.

The woman met his gaze—green eyes, familiar and fierce. His father's eyes.

'Impossible.'

"Don't… give them… anything," she choked out.

The Order's blade rose—but Ethan's fingers found the codex. Symbols ignited as he slammed it onto the floor. Light erupted, searing the air.

Reality peeled back.

The chapel dissolved into a memory not his own. A younger Liora Veyra stood in this same room, gripping the locket, her voice desperate. "I bound the Star's hunger once. My blood won't hold it again. You must hide the anchor—"

"The boy will find it," interrupted a man's voice—the flickering figure from the estate. "And when he does, I'll be waiting."

Liora spun, dagger flashing. "Traitor."

The vision shattered with the sound of her scream.

Ethan staggered, the codex's light dimming. The Order's agents lay unconscious, their masks cracked. The woman—Mara Ravenscroft—had freed herself, clutching a shard of glass like a weapon.

"You're him, aren't you?" she breathed. "Liora's grandson. The one they called Duskheir."

The title slithered into place in his mind, unearthed from some ancestral deep. Heir of the Dusk—a guardian of thresholds, a weaver of dying light.

Before he could speak, engines snarled outside. The Order had reinforcements.

Mara grabbed his arm. "There's a safehold nearby. A place Liora used. But we need to move."

They fled into the woods, the codex humming in tune with the locket. Mara's revelations came between gasps: She was a historian, hunted for decrypting Veyra texts. The Order had razed her university, seeking the "anchor" Liora hid—a relic tied to the Thirteenth Star.

"Your grandmother didn't just bind the Star," Mara panted. "She stole a piece of it. That's what's in the locket. That's why it's waking."

Ethan's fingers brushed the locket. Cold seared his skin. A star's shard, not a portrait.

The forest opened to a cliffside, waves raging below. Mara knelt, brushing moss from a stone etched with the raven crest. "It's here. The entrance to—"

A gunshot cracked. Mara lurched forward, crimson blooming across her back.

Ethan turned. The flickering figure stood at the tree line, a smoking revolver in hand. No—not the figure. A man, flesh and blood, his face a mirror of Ethan's own.

"Hello, nephew," the man drawled. "Did you really think I'd let you undo Mother's work?"