The days grew stranger after their conversation with Kaelion. The two brother's began to discuss about the thing their father told them. "I didnt really understand what father meant by that weave thing, how have we been written into it and how is it our trail", said Arnold, "I guess reality will always tend to throw things at you that lose sense even more when you try to understand", Doster replied.
"For a mere 5 year old, you sure do talk big Doster" exclamated Arnold with a smug expression.
Arnold still smiled with the same radiant hope—his eyes lit by every new lesson from the scholars, every rune etched into the estate walls. But Doster… Doster began to watch the city not like a boy dreaming of adventure, but like a hunter tracking something beneath its skin.
It was Lyo who noticed first.
"You don't sleep anymore," the boy whispered one evening, as they lay beneath a cluster of ivy near the south gardens, hidden from the eyes of the palace guards.
"I dream better awake," Doster replied, staring at the moonlit shimmer of the floating rail overhead. "The things I see in sleep... they don't feel like mine."
Lyo rolled onto his side, his dark curls wild and untamed. "Then let's find something that is."
That was how it began.
---
There were old paths beneath Daelion's estate—forgotten tunnels left behind by previous ages. Servant passages. Escape routes from wartime. Storage rooms for relics no one dared throw away. Miriya once warned the twins never to follow the corridor beyond the sixth pillar in the western wing. "Some doors were never meant to be opened," she said.
Which, of course, only made it irresistible.
The torchlight wavered as Doster and Lyo slipped down the spiraling stone corridor, their footsteps muffled by layers of dust and ancient moss. Glyphs flickered faintly on the walls—warning runes long out of power, carved in languages even Doster couldn't name.
"Here," Lyo whispered, stopping before a circular iron door—rusted, but not sealed. "I saw a drawing of this emblem in the archives. It's from the 'Pre-Concord' era."
Doster brushed his fingers over the sigil. It resembled a serpent swallowing its tail, its eyes glowing faintly as if it remembered being feared.
With effort, they pushed the door open.
Inside was a domed chamber, lined with cracked mirrors and shelves stacked with scrolls too brittle to touch. In the center stood a pedestal—smooth obsidian, untouched by time.
And atop it lay a slab of crystal, fractured down the middle.
Etched into it was the prophecy.
> "Should twins be born with their hands as one, they will bring the world to harmony or ruin.
One shall burn to save.
One shall break to heal."
Lyo swallowed. "This is the original."
Doster knelt beside it. There were more markings below the prophecy—lines in a tight, spidery script that danced around the cracks like vines.
"It's the old language," he said. "Before even the Vjec pacts."
Lyo leaned in, muttering translations under his breath, fingers twitching across the lines. "I… I can only make out part of it. Most of it's lost."
"But what can you read?" Doster asked.
Lyo hesitated. "A single phrase."
He met Doster's eyes.
> "One… must be sacrificed."
The words echoed, not just in the chamber, but in Doster's spine, his chest, his breath. He stood, his thoughts spiraling.
"This… this isn't in any version they teach," Doster whispered. "Why hide this?"
"Because either someone meant to," Lyo said grimly. "Someone knew what would happen if the truth came out."
As they turned to leave, a mirror on the far wall flickered—not with reflection, but with an image not their own. Two boys, older. One cloaked in white, eyes to the sky. One in shadow, his gaze buried in ash.
And the mirror shattered.
---
Back in the estate, Arnold was at the greenhouse, learning to charm saplings with resonance-songs from a visiting scholar from Azladen, the Country of Harvest. He looked up, sensing something in the air—like lightning in the blood.
A whisper, not of fear, but warning.
Something had shifted.
And far beneath the city, two boys walked away from a truth that had waited for centuries to be found.
---
The chamber wasn't just a relic room—it was a catacomb of memory. Doster realized that as he stepped deeper past the fractured crystal slab. The air had weight here, like grief carved into stone. The mirrors that lined the walls weren't decorative—they were recorders, enchanted probably during the Age of Voice to reflect the echoes of time. Each shard showed flashes—flickers of forgotten figures. One, a masked woman whispering to a chained beast. Another, a knight impaled upon his own blade, smiling. And strangest of all was a man, with flowing long beard extending down his face and his head covered by something that looked like a pointed hat, holding some kind of mechanism that the duo couldn't recognise.
"None of this is in the Academy Archives," Doster murmured, running his fingers over a sigil inset into a cracked panel.
"It's older than the Age of Severance," Lyo said. "Maybe even older than the Concord."
They turned back to the inscription beneath the prophecy—once hidden beneath soot and time. Lyo summoned a whisperflame, and Doster cleaned the slab with the sleeve of his cloak.
The script now shimmered faintly—faint glyphs of the Vjeca'an, the proto-script of the Vjec and their first bonded. It was a language not spoken aloud but felt—an emotional script, each word layered with intent, memory, and consequence.
Lyo, gifted with the tongue of understanding, trembled.
"It's not just a prophecy," he whispered. "It's a contract."
Doster's breath caught. "What kind of contract?"
Lyo pointed to a symbol: a circle broken by three intersecting triangles.
"This was the mark of the original Weavers," he said, his voice dry with awe and fear. "The ones who formed the first covenant with the Vjec. They didn't just predict the twins—they designed them."
The mirrors flickered again—showing now an ancient council seated around a basin of flame. A voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once, vibrating through the stone:
> "When the stars align and blood is reborn, the cycle will test itself once more.
Two shall rise as one. One shall fall to free the other.
One must be sacrificed.
So decree the Weave Eternal."
Doster and Lyo stood frozen. The light faded, and silence returned.
"…The Weave Eternal," Doster repeated. "That's the framework the world rests on. The balance between magic and machine."
Lyo nodded. "And it's rigged."
The realization was poison on the tongue. The twins hadn't been born to change the world. They had been written into it. Written to fulfill a contract between Man and Vjecs or maybe something beyond the Vjecs. A bloodline engineered by a power older than the Vjec, maintained across generations by silent pacts and sealed truths.
"Who knew this?" Doster asked. "Does Father know? Mother?"
Lyo's silenced by the situation himself didn't answer.
They left the chamber in silence, but it did not leave them. From that day on, the city of Loras, bright with spelllight and hope, felt colder to Doster. Each tower a pillar of ignorance. Each spire a lie reaching skyward.
Arnold still smiled that bright, unburdened smile.
And Doster… now he knew why.
He bore the weight for both of them.
---