Page 208 of The Violet Raven

“This is it,” I murmur, mindlessly. My hands tremble at my sides, and my heart pounds so hard it feels as if it might tear free from my chest.

“Are ye sure?” Callan asks, his brow furrowing as his eyes flick to the horizon and back to me, voice barely more than a breath, strained with uncertainty.

I nod, though the certainty I feel isn’t entirely my own. It’s as if the hill itself is speaking to me, whispering truths buried so deeply I can’t yet grasp them.

“I’m sure,” I whisper, though my voice sounds distant to my own ears.

Callan kneels, setting the pack down on the grass with deliberate care. He pulls out The Stone, and its glow swells, golden and warm and impossibly bright. For a moment, he just stares at it, then looks at me.

“Here,” he says, holding it out, his hands steady.

With trembling hands, I take it. Heat blooms through my fingers, and a surge of power sends shivers cascading down my spine. The linen wrapping is old and soft, but as I pull it away, a sudden surge of light bursts through the fabric. I gasp, nearly dropping it as the power within it grows stronger, more insistent.

The moment the last fold of linen falls away, the world shifts.

The ground beneath my feet quakes. The Stone glows brighter than the sun, its light spreading out in waves that roll across the hilltop and beyond. I hear Callan shout my name, but a low, resonant hum that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once drowns his voice out.

And then it happens.

The light surges, shooting skyward like a pillar of fire. Somewhere on the edges of my awareness, I sense Callan being hurled away, but I can’t focus on him—not when the energy courses through me, crackling through every vein like a living storm.

I rise, weightless, lifted by the sheer force surrounding me. The light grows impossibly bright, as though I’ve become the sun itself—searing and freezing in the same breath, too vast to hold, too powerful to resist.

Memories that aren’t mine flood my mind—visions of a land steeped in golden light, where forests breathe magic, where rivers sing and mountains pulse like beating hearts. Faces I don’t know but somehow recognise come into focus—too many, too fast.

And then—one among them is vastly different. A presence. A love so deep it aches, its weight pressing into my chest. But the face remains shrouded, just beyond reach, slipping through my grasp like mist.

Voices rise all around me—pressed, layered, not from one place, but everywhere. They don’t call me Caitríona.

They call me something else—something older.

Ériu.

The name booms through the air like thunder. It echoes through bone and blood, not spoken to me, but claimed by me.

It’s not just a name.

It’s a memory. A legacy. A homecoming.

The name belongs to me.

My heart hammers. The world around me blurs as the memories surge deeper—rising, roaring—pulling me beneath like a tide too strong to resist.

And I don’t fight it because somewhere inside, I remember what it means to be her.

I see myself standing on this very hill, my hair flowing in the wind, my hands raised as the land itself responds to my command. The sky darkens, and the earth splits beneath my feet, a fissure of light bursting forth. I feel the power in my veins, ancient and endless, as I give myself to The Stone—my stone.

The Soul Stone of Fál.

My voice carries an incantation, the words that bind my soul to the earth, sealing it away to save the land from destruction.

And then, four thousand years later, here I am. A fragment of myself, broken and mortal, standing in the place where I once sacrificed everything.

The light fades, and I collapse forward onto my hands, breath ragged. My body pulses with a strange power—both heavier and lighter, as if something inside me has been reforged. When I lift my head, I find Callan staring, eyes wide with disbelief. Blood streaks his face, his lower lip split. A jolt runs through me. The blast must have thrown him.

“Triona,” he says, his voice frantic, “yer eyes… they were glowin’ a purple hue like nothin’ I’ve ever seen. And yer hair… it went silver.”

I blink at him, trying to process his words, but there’s no time.