The morning came too fast, grey light creeping through the thin curtains before I felt like I had slept at all.
Seraphina had fallen asleep in the chair beside my bed sometime in the night, keeping watch even in her exhaustion, and for a moment I just sat there watching her, hair messy, face soft in a way it never quite was when she was awake and composed and holding the whole world together for both of us.
I did not want to wake her. But the convent was still a full day’s ride away, and every hour we wasted was an hour closer to Kael reaching the same answers first.
I touched her shoulder gently. "Seraphina. We should go."
Her eyes fluttered open, confusion clearing into recognition within a second. "Morning already."
"Morning already."
She stretched, wincing slightly, and stood. "Right. The convent."
We ate quickly downstairs, bread and cold meat, the innkeeper packing extra dried food into our bags without being asked, waving off the coin I tried to press into his hand before finally accepting it with a tired smile. Kind man. I hoped nothing followed us here that would ever make him regret helping two strangers on the road.
The horses were restless and ready when we stepped outside, Storm snorting impatiently like he had somewhere better to be. The sky was streaked pink and gold, the air still cool enough to fog slightly with each breath.
We rode out in comfortable quiet, the previous day’s violence sitting somewhere behind us now, not forgotten but folded away for the moment. My mind kept circling back to Lily instead. What she would look like. Whether three years in a convent had hollowed her out or hardened her. Whether she would even want to see the brother who never once visited.
"Stop worrying," Seraphina said eventually, not even glancing over.
"I am not worrying."
"Liar." A small smile tugged at her mouth. "You are scared she will not want to see you."
"Is it that obvious."
"Extremely obvious." She nudged her horse closer to mine. "But you are wrong about it. She is your sister. Some part of her will always want to see you, even if it takes her time to admit it."
"You do not know that."
"I know family is complicated," she said, quieter now. "I have a brother. We barely speak. He is cold, distant, always has been. But I know, somewhere underneath all that, he still loves me. In whatever broken way he knows how."
I looked at her properly. "That sounds sad."
"It is just life sometimes." She shrugged, like she had made peace with it a long time ago. "We do not choose our families. We only choose what we do with what is left of them."
We rode through hills and shallow valleys most of the morning, tall grass swaying gold and green on either side of the road, the sky opening wide and blue above us. It was beautiful in a way that felt almost cruel given everything churning underneath the surface of the day.
We stopped briefly near a river at midday, letting the horses drink while Seraphina spread the map across her knees, tracing our progress with one finger.
"We are close. Four more hours, maybe less."
"Four hours. That is not long at all."
"Long enough to get nervous in." She glanced up, smiling gently. "But you will be fine. I will be right there the whole time."
"She always knows exactly what to say, always finds the thing that actually helps instead of the thing that just sounds nice, how does she do that, how does she always land exactly where I need her to."
Her smile softened further, catching the thought anyway. "You deserve more than you think you do, Ethan. You just have not caught up to that yet."
I did not have an answer, so I just nodded and let the moment settle instead of pushing it away like I usually did.
The trees thinned as the afternoon wore on, the road widening, and eventually the convent came into view in the distance, grey stone walls rising against the hillside, a modest church standing beside it, a small garden of flowers softening the otherwise stark grounds. It looked peaceful. Lonely, too, in a way I felt somewhere deep in my chest before I could name why.
I pulled my horse to a stop, staring at it. My heart was suddenly hammering harder than it had during the bandit attack.
"Are you ready," Seraphina asked, stopping beside me.
"No."
"That is okay." She reached over, squeezing my hand once, firm and warm. "I am ready enough for both of us."
We rode the rest of the way in silence, reaching the gate as an elderly nun in a brown habit stepped out to meet us, sharp eyed despite the deep lines carved into her face by age.
"Can I help you," she asked, gaze moving between us.
Seraphina spoke first, calm and practiced. "I am Lady Seraphina, from the western province. My aunt is a benefactress here. I have come to visit her."
The nun’s eyes shifted to me. "And you."
"Ethan Blackwood. I am here to see my sister. Lily Blackwood."
Something flickered across the nun’s face, subtle but unmistakable. Surprise first. Then something heavier settling in right behind it.
"Lily Blackwood," she repeated slowly, like the name itself carried weight. "She is not here."
My stomach dropped straight through the ground. "What."
"She left. Three years ago."
"Left. Left where."
The nun shook her head slowly. "I cannot say. She was taken. A man came with papers, authorized by the Duke himself."
Cold spread through my chest instantly. "My father."
"Yes." Her eyes met mine, sad and steady. "He took her away. We were never told where. We were instructed to forget she had ever been here at all."
"He took her. Erased her. Why would he do that, what was she hiding, what did she know that made her worth disappearing entirely."
Seraphina’s hand found my arm, grounding me before the spiral could pull me under completely. "Ethan. Are you alright."
I could not answer immediately, my throat too tight around the words. I looked back at the nun instead. "Where did he take her. Please. I need to know."
She hesitated, glancing briefly toward the church behind her like she was weighing something against her own conscience. Then she sighed, decision made. "I do not know the exact location. But I heard a name once, whispered by the man who came for her. The Grey Tower. An old prison, abandoned, up in the northern mountains. Your father owns it."
The Grey Tower. A name that had never once appeared in the novel, not in four hundred Chapters, not in a single throwaway line.
"That is new. That is not in the story. Whatever this is, it exists outside everything I thought I knew."
"We need to go," I said, turning toward my horse.
"Now," Seraphina asked.
"Now. Before my father learns we came here. Before he decides to move her somewhere we will never find."
She nodded, already moving toward her own horse. "It is a long journey. Days, at least, into the mountains."
"I do not care how long it takes. I need to find her."
We mounted quickly, and the nun stepped closer to the gate as we prepared to ride out, her expression unreadable now, layered with things she was clearly not saying.
Then, just as I turned my horse toward the road, she stepped forward again, voice dropping lower, almost a whisper meant only for me.
"Wait. There is something else you should know."
I stopped, turning back. "What."
"Lily. Before she left, she said something. She told me if her brother ever came looking, to pass along a message." The nun’s eyes were sad, ancient looking in the afternoon light. "She said she knew you would come eventually. She said she did not blame you. She said you were only a child when it happened. And she said to be careful. Your father is not the only one in this story hiding secrets."
Ice settled into my chest. "What secrets."
"I do not know. She would never say. But she was frightened, more frightened than I had ever seen a child be. She said the truth would destroy everything if it ever came out. She said it might be better if you never learned it at all."
"But I need to know. I cannot keep living inside a lie I do not even understand the shape of."
"She said you would say exactly that too." A faint, sad smile crossed the nun’s face. "She said you were stubborn. Just like your mother."
Something in my chest twisted painfully at that word. Mother. A woman I barely remembered, a handful of vague images and almost nothing else, the novel itself giving her only a passing mention across four hundred Chapters.
"Tell me about my mother."
The nun hesitated again, glancing down at the dirt path beneath her feet before finally meeting my eyes once more. "Your mother was a good woman. Kind. Gentle with everyone she met. She loved you both deeply, more than most mothers I have known in my years here. But she discovered something. Something she was never meant to find. And it cost her everything."
My chest tightened until it physically hurt. "What did she discover."
"I do not know the details. But it had something to do with the Blackwood legacy itself. Where the family’s power truly comes from." Her voice dropped further still, barely more than breath now. "Your mother was not the only one who died from getting too close to it. Others have too. People who asked the wrong questions in the wrong rooms."
"My mother. Lily. Now this. The Blackwood legacy, whatever that even means, something dark enough that people die just for looking at it too closely. This was never in the novel. I am walking into something the story itself was too afraid to tell."
Seraphina’s hand slipped into mine, quiet and steady, grounding me the way it always seemed to know how.
I looked back at the nun. "Thank you. For telling me this. I know it was not easy."
"Be careful, young man." Her eyes carried something close to fear now, buried deep beneath decades of practiced calm. "The Grey Tower is not simply a prison. It is a place of power. Dark power. Your father did not build it by accident, and whatever waits inside is not only your sister."
I mounted fully, hands trembling slightly on the reins despite everything I tried to keep steady.
Seraphina studied my face carefully. "Are you okay."
I was not. Not even close. But I nodded anyway, because there was no version of this moment where falling apart actually helped either of us.
"Let us go," I said quietly.
We rode away from the convent as the sky darkened overhead, the grey walls shrinking slowly behind us until the hills finally swallowed them whole, stars beginning to prick faintly through the deepening blue above.
My mind would not settle, circling endlessly through everything the nun had said. My mother. Lily. The Blackwood legacy. Dark power hidden inside a tower nobody in the entire novel had ever once mentioned.
Whatever waited for us up in those northern mountains, it was clearly bigger than the story I thought I understood, bigger than the countdown ticking quietly in the corner of my mind, bigger, possibly, than anything I had prepared myself to face.
And I was riding straight toward it, with no idea what version of the truth was waiting on the other side.
Seraphina rode close beside me, her face set with quiet determination in the fading light. "We will find her, Ethan. Whatever it takes."
I looked at her, steady and certain even now, even with everything stacking up against us. "I know," I said, and for the first time since hearing the nun’s words, I actually believed it. "I know we will."
The system flickered faintly in the corner of my vision as the last light disappeared behind the hills.
"New location unlocked. The Grey Tower, northern mountains. Objective updated. Find Lily Blackwood. Warning. The Duke is now aware of your absence. Search parties have been dispatched. Time remaining is limited."
Time was always limited. That much, at least, had never once changed since the moment I opened my eyes in this body.
I kicked my horse forward into the dark, Seraphina matching my pace exactly, the road stretching ahead of us toward mountains I could not yet see but could already feel, somehow, pressing closer with every mile. 🌌