60.

Caelan’s breath caught. “You felt it.”

She nodded.

Tears slipped down her cheeks. But she wasn’t crying out of sorrow.

Just… release.

“I think I want to remember,” she said.

And Caelan—for the first time in a long, long time—smiled.

The pendant was cold when Alina first put it on, but moments later, warmth seeped into her skin. Not heat, exactly. More like a memory. A presence. Something half-remembered, like a melody from childhood or the scent of old paper that made your chest ache.

The silver chain settled against her collarbone, and the snow frost pendant glimmered faintly, catching a shard of sunlight through Caelan’s tall windows.

She stood there, fingers resting lightly over the charm.

Caelan watched in silence. He didn’t need to speak. His gaze said everything.

Alina drew a shaky breath. “What is it made of?”

He hesitated. “The silver came from the old Press. The one where we used to bind the first editions. But the core... it’s a froststone. Rare. From the northern cliffs of the First Kingdom.”

Her brows drew together. “It didn’t melt?”

“No,” he said. “Because she never wore it when she died. The fire took everything.”

Alina stepped back, her palm closing protectively over the pendant. It pulsed faintly against her heart.

“I dreamed of her again last night,” she said. “Only this time… it wasn’t fire. It was snow.”

Caelan’s brows lifted.

“I stood on a mountain of books. Everything was covered in frost, like the world had frozen mid-sentence. She was there. She didn’t speak. She just pointed.”

“To what?”

Alina’s throat tightened. “A name.”

She pulled her journal from her bag. The pages were slightly warped from the night before, edges still curled from where flame had kissed them. But she flipped to a blank page, pulled out a pen, and wrote it down.

One word. One name.

Lyssira.

Caelan stared at it like she’d carved it into his chest.

“She remembered,” he whispered. “She remembered who she was.”

Alina’s fingers trembled. “Then it’s true? That was her name?”

“It was her soul-name,” he said. “The one only I knew. The one she whispered to me the night we were born from the book.”

Alina’s breath caught. Her vision blurred.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she admitted. “Like I’m standing between two lives, and neither of them is solid.”

Caelan crossed the space between them and knelt beside her.

“You’re not losing anything,” he said gently. “You’re remembering.”

She clutched her journal to her chest.

“But what if I don’t want to be her?” she whispered. “What if I want to stay me?”

“You are you,” Caelan said. “Lyssira didn’t vanish. She became. Just like you. And if she chose this form, if she chose to be reborn… then it was because she believed this world still needed her.”

Alina turned to the window.

Outside, the clouds had begun to gather again. The hush before another rainstorm.

“Then tell me everything,” she said. “Tell me about her. About you. About what we lost.”

Caelan nodded.

He led her to a side door she hadn’t noticed before—tall, narrow, carved with unfamiliar runes. With a faint hum, it opened at his touch.

The room beyond was unlike the rest of the estate. It felt older. Sacred.

Books lined every wall, but they were different here—bound in strange materials, etched with languages that didn’t exist in the modern world. Floating orbs of light bobbed overhead. The scent of parchment and time saturated the air.

At the center of the room stood a pedestal. Upon it rested a single book—large, thick, bound in what looked like blackened ivy and silver.

“This,” Caelan said, “was the original.”

Alina approached it slowly. “The Paranormal Encyclopedia?”

“Yes. The one we guarded. The one they tried to destroy.”

She reached out, but her fingers hovered inches above the surface.

“She bled for this book,” he said. “We both did. It holds every truth the world forgot. Every creature, every realm, every law of magic hidden beneath concrete and steel.”

“And they feared it?”

“They still do.”

Alina looked up. “Why?”

“Because knowledge is the most dangerous magic of all. And fantasy... fantasy is freedom.”

She finally touched the cover.

It pulsed. Once. A slow, deep thrum. And then her vision blurred—not from tears, but from images.

A city made of mirrors. A serpent with wings. A tower of stars. A gate of bone.

She stumbled back, and Caelan caught her.

“I saw—”

“I know,” he whispered. “It always shows itself to the keeper.”

“I’m not ready,” she said, voice cracking.

“Then you don’t have to be.”

She buried her face in his chest, the pendant pressing between them.

Outside, the first snowflake fell.

But it was June.

Caelan looked up at the sky, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“She’s waking up,” he said softly.

And Alina, heart pounding, clung to him like the world had shifted beneath her feet.

She didn’t know what was coming.

But she was beginning to understand what had been lost.

And perhaps—just perhaps—what could still be found.