CHAPTER NINETEEN:The Gathering Storm.

Xadriel

He hadn't seen this room in years.

The war chamber beneath the old library hadn't been touched since his great-grandfather's time — hidden under floorboards and sealed with runes that only responded to bloodlines awakened.

Now, it thrummed with energy.

Elianah stood at its center, her hand hovering above a circular table carved with celestial sigils. Selene paced the perimeter like a shadow given form, speaking in clipped tones to a young man named Calyx — another soul-bonded, she said, one who had remembered after being struck by lightning last spring.

Xadriel wasn't sure he trusted any of them.

But he trusted her.

Elianah looked over at him, her eyes calm but fierce. "This was always more than us," she said. "The past lives weren't just love stories. They were battles. We didn't just die — we lost."

He nodded. "Not again."

Selene turned toward them. "The enemy calls themselves The Hollowed. They are fractured souls — ones who severed their own light to escape the pain of remembering. But pain is not what destroyed them." She paused. "It was jealousy. They saw what bonded souls had… and they wanted it for themselves."

Calyx stepped forward, holding a glass orb that flickered with stormlight. "This is a Memory Core. We recovered it from the ruins of the Old Sanctum. It contains a vision you need to see."

Elianah and Xadriel exchanged a glance, then nodded.

Calyx placed the orb in the center of the sigil table and muttered a chant under his breath.

The lights in the chamber dimmed.

Then — the orb activated.

The vision struck like lightning:

A city in flames.

A girl screaming as her lover is torn from her arms.

A voice whispering: "This is your final lifetime. Fail here, and you return to the void."

Then — silence.

And darkness.

The orb dimmed.

Elianah's knees buckled. Xadriel caught her before she fell.

She clutched his shirt, eyes wide. "That voice… I've heard it before. Not in this life — but in the space between lives. It's the one that keeps calling us back."

Xadriel's arms tightened around her.

Selene stepped forward. "Then you understand. This time, you don't just fight for each other. You fight for the cycle. For the souls who've never known peace."

A storm rumbled in the distance — real this time.

Elianah pulled away from Xadriel gently and rose to her feet.

"Then we start preparing," she said.

"Because the Hollowed won't wait."