Page 80 of Embers of Midnight

The words fit under my ribs like a warning label. I hate prophecy. I memorize it anyway.

I pull in a breath that shakes once, then holds. “Will I see you again?”

“Yes,” she says. “Not like this. At a door. Maybe water. Maybe in a fire that isn’t yours.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “We were bad at choosing only one path.”

“Genetic,” I mutter, and she brightens like I handed her a gift that weighs nothing and matters anyway.

“Find your father,” she repeats, firm. “You are only half free.”

The edges of her go thin. The white of the dress starts to take the color of the dark. I panic in a small, ugly way and don’t make it the whole show.

“I’m not ready,” I say. It’s the truest sentence I’ve spoken all year.

“You’re readier than you think,” she says, and lifts her hand one last time. “Breathe.”

Two short. One long. I match it. The exhale steadies everything that can be steadied.

“Always,” she says again, and the clearing folds.

I sit up in the dark with my heart sprinting and my mouth dry. Sheets cool fast along my back. The room is exactly itself—ward line quiet, low hum in the wall, night air under the window. Bracelet warm against the thread. I clamp a hand over my mouth, then drop it because I’m not hiding from an empty room.

“Mom?” The word scrapes and lands and stays.

My door opens on a soft click. Caelum—bare feet, soft T-shirt, hair in mild disorder—takes one look and crosses the room like he trained for this exact route. He doesn’t ask a single question. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me into his arms.

Heat, weight, heartbeat. Clean cotton. Rosin and citrus. His hand settles in the middle of my back, steady pressure, no shushing.

I breathe into his shoulder. Two short. One long.

And I let the shake leave my body while he holds the line.

'Mo rùn'

Caelum

The house is quiet in the honest way—water in a pipe, the low hum at the baseboards, a stair settling because wood settles. I’m two pages into a dull report about dream scaffolds when the air over my desk shifts. Not cold, not loud. Pressure change along the back of my neck, the way a note feels before it sounds.

Presence.

Not mine. Not hers. Not anything I taught her.

I’m standing before I admit I’m worried. Breathe. Two short, one long. It steadies the hands, not the heart. I set the report aside, press two fingers to the ward thread on my wrist, and track it.

Her room. The line is clean—Sera asleep, breath regular—but the space around that line is wrong. It flexes like a door worked off its hinges.

I don’t knock. Not at first. The door isn’t locked. I open it two inches, enough to see her shape under the blanket, the lift of her ribs. Alive. Warm. I take that fact and put it in the front of my skull.

Then I do the thing I tell students to do only when they’re sure—anchor first, entry second. I lay the small ward tab on the inside of the jamb, press until the rune hums, and lean my shoulder to the wood. Eyes closed. Breath steady. I fold down into the same quiet I use on stage before a hard piece and step once.

The dream takes me without argument.

A clearing, rimed. Frost catches along the grass tips. Every sound is bare of echo. The space has that weight good dreams and bad news share.

She’s there—Sera—centered, feet planted, wrist heavy with Darian’s thread and the new band I’ve only let myself look at when no one was watching. Her body holds a line I taught her this week without meaning to: knees soft, jaw loose, shoulders down. She learned it for combat. She’s using it to keep a world’s worth of feeling from spilling.

Hoof on frozen ground. Slow. Measured.

The shape that walks out of the trees lights every nerve I own. Big body. Heat under the hide without showing off. One long horn, clean angle. The eyes hold light instead of throwing it. There is a knowing in the way it stands that makes my palms sweat. It nods once, a small punctuation mark, and folds.