The Sealed Year

When Keiran returned from the Garden, he didn't speak.

He didn't have to.

Merin met him in the lower scriptorium, the candlelight casting his features in the same cold fire that now burned steadily on Keiran's wrist. No questions. No greetings.

Just silence, and the long, stone table between them.

Laid out on it were twelve bound tomes.

Each labeled with a year.

Except one.

The spine of the eleventh was blank.

"This is where the world blinked," Merin said, placing a palm over the cover. "And when it opened its eyes again, you were gone."

Keiran said nothing.

His wrist pulsed once. Not in pain.

In recognition.

"It wasn't just a mind-wipe," Merin continued. "It was a historical severance. A full-cycle deletion, orchestrated by the High Concordium during the Obfuscation Protocols."

He tapped the empty tome.

"This is Year 237 of the Lunecycle. It does not officially exist."

Keiran frowned.

"But there's a record."

Merin's lips tightened.

"No. There's a vault."

"And inside it, only one page was never incinerated."

He opened the tome slowly.

Inside, tucked between rune-scorched parchment—

A single, pale scrap of paper.

On it, four words:

"Auren walks beneath Vaelen."

Keiran blinked.

The name. The moon.

The alignment.

The night of the twin moons.

The night the world remembered—and then forgot.

"You were seen," Merin said quietly. "Too clearly. Too brightly. You walked openly across the Dominion. You used the mark not as a shield, but as a signal. People followed you."

"And then?" Keiran asked, his voice thin.

Merin looked down.

"Then Lys vanished."

The room felt colder.

Keiran stepped back.

"What do you mean vanished?"

"I mean removed. From Archive. From record. From recall."

"No one ordered her death. No grave was registered. But the moment the moons shifted back, and the seal was ordered—she was… scrubbed."

Keiran sat.

Slowly.

The fire on his wrist flickered—uncertain.

"They buried a year," he murmured.

"To hide a name."

Merin didn't respond.

He simply placed a second object on the table.

A broken badge.

Not Keiran's. Not his own.

Lys's.

The sigil was half-burned. A single spiral, cracked down the center.

"Where did you get that?" Keiran whispered.

"I didn't," Merin said.

"It appeared in my sanctum the same moment your flame turned silver."

Keiran ran his fingers over the badge.

It was warm.

Not from heat.

From memory.

"There's more," Merin said.

"The Seal wasn't a Concordium-only operation."

Keiran looked up sharply.

"What does that mean?"

"It means the Council of Seven didn't act alone. The Dominion signed the severance. The Cloistered Mages enforced it. And one of our own divisions—Pathfinders—delivered the fragment that sealed her from time."

"A fragment?"

Merin nodded grimly.

"Of your voice."

Silence.

Keiran stared at the flickering glyph in his palm.

So much of him had been stolen.

But this—

This was different.

This was sacrifice.

"I want it back," he said.

"The year. The name. The memory."

"Even if it kills me."

Merin didn't look surprised.

Only tired.

"Then you'll need to find the Vault of Aerenmoor."

Keiran's breath caught.

That name—

He'd seen it once, burned into the underside of a ruined bridge.

In a dream that hadn't felt like his.

"It's a cursed vault," Merin said. "Its lock is memory. Its guardians are names."

"If you fail, your mark will burn out."

"And you'll vanish. Like she did."

Keiran stood.

The badge still clutched in one hand.

The flame still steady on his wrist.

"Then I'll succeed."

"Not because I want to remember."

"But because she deserved to be remembered."

Before he left the room, Merin called after him.

"One last thing."

Keiran turned.

"The name you saw on the Garden stone—Vayne Orrell."

"That wasn't your first name."

"It was your last before the seal."

Keiran didn't respond.

But inside, he felt it shift.

Like the weight of a dozen locked doors clicking in sequence.

Vayne was the version that survived the purge.

The face the world could forget without guilt.

But Auren—

Auren was the one they buried.

And Lys was the price.

As he walked away from the table, the candle on his wrist flickered once.

Then a second time.

Then, like breath, a voice rose inside his chest:

"If memory is flame…"

"…then burn until the stars remember me."