Page 92 of Ashen Souls

I nodded, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Harper plopped down across from me, the journal resting between us.

“Okay. Let’s find out where your ancestors actually came from.”

I reached for it, but before I could touch the cover, Harper held up a hand.

“Wait. Before we open this,” she said, grabbing the cork of the bottle, “rate your current emotional stability on a scale from fine to I’m going to become a forest witch.”

“I’m hovering around functional denial,” I admitted.

“Perfect.”

The prosecco popped with a hiss that felt completely out of place given what we were about to do. She poured two glasses, slid one to me, and pointed at the book.

“Open it.”

The first page was written in a tight, slanted hand. The ink was faded, but legible. There were no dates or introductions. Just a single line centered on the page: Aethrya was not a myth.

Harper took a long sip of her prosecco. “Okay. Cool. Love that. Very normal.”

I turned the page.

The handwriting changed a few times—different people adding to it over the years. Some entries were methodical and academic. Others were frantic, the pen pressed so hard into the paper it left physical grooves.

A rough map sketch appeared three pages later. One region was circled heavily, labeled in archaic script:

Vesper — The main city of Aethrya.

City of Light, Order, and Shadows.

Harper leaned forward, squinting at the page upside down. “Shadows? The texts we found in the Archive only mentioned Light and Order.”

The name triggered a weird sense of recognition. “I know. Someone must have purposely left it out.”

Below the map, a different handwriting provided context. The entries didn't describe a primitive world, but something advanced.

“It says Aethrya wasn’t the only realm,” I muttered, scanning the faded ink. “There were others. But thousands of years ago, the magic across all of them started to destabilize. Fade. When the weaker realms began to collapse, they started attacking the stronger ones to siphon their power.”

Harper paused, the rim of her glass hovering inches from her mouth. “So the other realms were dying, and they came for the one that wasn't.”

“Basically. Aethrya was the most powerful, which made it the primary target. Vesper was turned into a command center to keep the realm from falling apart.” I squinted at a dense paragraph written in the margins. “The person who wrote this, maybe a hundred years ago, was trying to describe things they clearly didn't understand. Cities running on grid-less power, devices for instant communication. They had technology powered by magic that we don't even have now.”

Harper sat still, processing. “And all of that is just... gone. What else does it say?”

Pages of genealogies followed. Houses, lineages, roles. And then, halfway through a dense list of names, I found it.

Nyxeth. It was underlined so violently the nib of the pen had torn the paper.

Harper tapped the damaged page with one finger. “Who the fuck is that?”

“That’s my father's line. That’s… us.”

I read the next section out loud, keeping my voice low.

“House Nyxeth. Anchored to Light. It says they were the primary bloodline. The most influential family of the Lights, practically running Vesper.”

Harper leaned back. “Your family was at the very top of the food chain.”

“It gets darker.” I scanned further down.