6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
By morning, the tavern felt distant, though its weight still pressed on me.
I woke before Saorla, washed in the basin’s cool water, and left with the sun still tangled in the trees.
The air had a bite to it that morning, laced with wet earth and pine.
Ahead, the temple rose before me as if grown from the forest itself—stone walls veined with ivy, its spires lost in the mist. I’d walked these steps countless times, but today the quiet had a different feeling to it, an electricity almost.
I shuffled past all the acolytes, who stared at me as they always did.
I ignored them and quickened my pace. If I were lucky, I'd make it to the Oracle's chambers before anyone tried speaking to me.
I had no interest in seeing Brannach's scowling face this morning, nor the High Priestess for that matter.
Five more steps, four, three, two, one…
Made it. I let out the breath I'd been holding and opened the ornate door in front of me.
The Oracle’s chamber glowed dim and warm, lit by braziers in a wide circle. The air carried the faint tang of ash and myrrh. She floated above her dais at the center, face half-veiled by her hood, with a braid of silver falling over one shoulder.
This was the easiest part of my day, I zoned out as the Oracle performed her daily blessings over me, and for once, my thoughts were silent.
The hours went on and on, until I eventually finished telling her of my recent visions. When that was done, I should have been dismissed, so I bowed.
But her voice cut clean through the stillness, stopping me with its resonance. “There have been stirrings in the Weave.”
My gaze snapped up, surprised. The Oracle rarely spoke to me plainly. Her language was that of the Old Gods, and she scarcely spoke outside of blessings and prayers.
I swallowed. “I know. I’ve felt them.”
Her clouded eyes fixed on me, both distant and piercing. “Tugged strands. Loosened knots. Whispers where there should be silence. That is why your protection matters, child. It is why the Tuatha have sent it.”
My jaw clenched. “I know who they sent.”
“And you are not pleased?”
“That’s one way to phrase it.” The words slipped before I could stop them. My anger was rising like a tide lately. I braced for chastisement—for her to remind me that emotions were a weakness, that they clouded my Sight.
Instead, she paused before speaking lower. “The choice was not made to please you, nor to comfort. Fate does not ask. It binds. Not what you want, but what must be.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It was not meant to soothe,” she said, firmer now. “You wonder why he was chosen. I will tell you this: the one who will walk beside you has already walked further than you can see. He has seen ends you have not begun. And he does not bend easily. That is why.”
Frustration tightened in my chest. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only one you will have from me today.”
Her words fell into silence, leaving only the low crackle of the braziers. “Go now, Seer,” she said at last, her voice edged with dismissal. “Tend to your other duties. Much remains to be done before the moon turns.”
I turned sharply toward the doors.
Her voice followed me. “Go to the east wing of the library. Seek out a book on the Seven Realms.”
She could not be serious.
“I have spent countless hours buried in those tomes.” My voice was laced with irritation.
She let the pause linger. “You do not know all there is to know. Your arrogance is a scourge upon this land, Seer. It will need to be mended. The path ahead will force you to walk where even gods go blind. Beyond the borders you thought fixed. Beyond the light you call truth.”
Her white gaze drifted past me, clouded, the way it did when she was caught by a vision she hadn’t expected. Her pupil-less eyes burned brighter. “You will see the shape of endings before their beginnings. You will choose which threads to cut and which to bind, though neither will thank you.”
My throat tightened. I’d never heard her speak this way. “You told me the Weave was not mine to touch. What does that mean?”
Her eyes snapped back into focus, dimming to their usual ashen glow. Whatever vision had seized her, it slipped away just as quickly, leaving her as unreadable as ever. “Seven realms, seven veils, seven truths. Learn their names, but more importantly—their lies.”
Her hand lifted again, palm outward, the dismissal final. “The moon waits for no one. The tides are already turning. And you are being called.”
Well, that sounds promising…not.
I turned from the Oracles chamber with a whip of my cloak and entered the main hall. The air shifted cooler here, damp with the scent of running water. To my right, the temple waterfall spilled in a silver veil over obsidian etched with runes worn soft by time.
It should have thundered, but the water’s voice was little more than a whisper. An enchantment of Razoth held the sound close, a steady pulse in the air like a heartbeat. The priests said it stilled mortal thought. Once, I’d overheard a different truth—that the fall carried the song of the realms.
If you listened closely, the seven streams that fed it could be traced across realms—from Caerthannas, where all light is born, to the inky depths of Karthmor, where nothing returns unchanged. Each drop was a traveler, carrying whispers from crown to roots of the World Tree.
Sunlight from the celestial windows broke into faint prisms, scattering rainbows across the mist. I slowed, letting my fingers brush the cool spray, and pulled back before it faded. Sacred beauty always ached that way—impossible to possess, impossible to forget.
The Oracle’s words pressed at me: Seven Realms, seven truths, seven lies. Their sharp edges caught in my mind, restless as the fall itself.
I recalled something the Shaman once said: Truths are patient. They wait in the dark, shifting their shape until the moment you’re ready to see them—whether you understand them or not.
Whatever that vision meant, I couldn’t unravel it now. Visions rarely yielded when you wanted them to. Better to carry it forward than waste myself chasing answers that wouldn’t come on command, frustrating as it was.
The library waited, but for a moment longer. I stood beneath the hush of the fall, letting it sink into me like a ward. Then I moved on, following the curve of the colonnade toward the oldest books.
The library opened vast as a cathedral, its vaulted ceiling painted with constellations that shifted when you weren’t looking directly at them. Shafts of gold spilled from high windows, dust drifting as if time itself had slowed.
Every inch of the place was built to seduce the senses—the honeyed scent of oak, the low rustle of pages somewhere down a gilded aisle, the steady crackle of candle flames in sconces shaped like blossoms. Shelves soared toward painted heavens.
Ladders glided soundlessly along rails as though unseen hands were eager to fetch whatever the heart desired.
But this was more than a vault for simple books—it was a reliquary of memory. Maps inked in languages older than kingdoms, scrolls charting the ruin of empires, tomes bound in dusk-colored leather, each one thrumming faintly with its own enchantment. It was the oldest library in all of Anamcroí.
My steps slowed over marble inlaid with spiraling runes.
The deeper I went, the heavier the air grew, as though the library was listening, waiting for me to take what I sought.
The problem was, I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to be seeking, the Oracle made it seem like there was somehow a book I hadn't read in this dreaded temple.
But, I had nothing better to do before my evening dream-walk with the Shaman, so I would humor the cryptic old bat. Just this once.
I let my Sight slip, reaching for the threads that tied to the library’s own mind—because yes, it had one.
Mortals who entered—priests, acolytes, the curious—needed the Sgàthánwings to guide them.
Mirror-feathered birds with glassy heads flitted from shelf to shelf, carrying slips of parchment, their voices chiming like falling crystal.
They moved as if the library were their body, and in truth, it sort of was.
One darted above me, scattering light across the marble. It didn’t pause—it knew better. I required no guide. My gift was enough, and they had learned not to get on the wrong side of my temper a long time ago.
But as the silver threads of my Sight stretched ahead, something stirred. The air shifted. A shadow moved.
The Sgàthánwing Elder.
Its wings were broader, feathers opaque like moonstone instead of glass, each motion sending a shiver of magic through the hall. It descended in silence, alighting on the balcony rail above. Its eyes were steady pools of silver and fixed on me.
“You continue to walk without asking,” it said in the Common Tongue, its voice rasping like chimes over stone.
The others never spoke this way. Their language was the shatter of unseen bells, but the Elder could speak in every tongue. I sighed. Not this shit again.
“I have no need to ask,” I replied, keeping respectful but firm. The Elder was an ancient being, it deserved reverence, regardless of how irritating the damned thing was.
It tilted its small head, weighing me on some unseen scale. “And yet, even those who do not ask may still be lost.”
The words settled like dust from the rafters. The Elder never wasted time with niceties, and I had to admit, that was a good one. I tucked it away in my mental bank.
The Elder turned then, beating its broad wings once before vanishing into the shadows above.
The silver threads of my Sight pulled me deeper into the stacks.
The shelves narrowed into a passage barely wide enough to slip through, lined with spines worn smooth by centuries of hands.
I had walked these rows countless times, certain I had devoured every page.
Yet my instincts led me to a corner I didn’t know, a small alcove shadowed beneath an ancient arch.
On a pedestal of dark stone waited a tome bound in hide too old to name. The cover shimmered faintly, etched with seven interlocked circles that shifted when I tried to hold them in focus.
“What in the realms is this?” I whispered.
I stepped closer, brushing my fingers across the worn stone. I knew this library, I’d read more books here than I could count, but never one like this.
The air suddenly felt different, as if the library was holding its breath. A faint chime drifted from somewhere far above, but when I looked up, nothing stirred.
Seven circles. Seven Realms.
The Weave inside me pulsed once, and the book opened.
Pages turned on their own, whispering like soft rain. Ink and gold leaf shimmered, shapes curling and breathing until the parchment dissolved.
The world shifted, and I was no longer in the alcove.
I stood at the roots of a vast tree, its trunk so wide it could have held cities. Its crown vanished in a sky of starlit mist, each branch heavy with runes. The scent of green earth and wild rain filled my lungs.
The first branch to my right unfurled, spilling light through emerald leaves. I saw Aeos Sítheann—the Fae Realm, where silver rivers danced through endless groves, and moonlight wove gowns for queens older than history.
The next branch was forged of dark stone and iron banners, ringing with the oaths of Cindraloch, realm of the half-born, where mortal ambition and divine blood clashed in bone-carved halls.
Beneath me, the roots split to reveal the warm soil of Morhaven—the mortal realm. Fields were gold with harvest, seas restless beneath the wind, cities lit with the fragile glow of hope.
The roots deepened, and a heatless darkness rose from below. There lay Karthmor—the Underworld, an endless cavern of black glass and obsidian rivers, where the dead walked beneath an ashen sky. The air thrummed with forgotten names.
Above Karthmor shimmered Anamcroí, the Land of Souls—a realm of quiet light where threads of every bond shimmered between spirits, the World Tree’s heart beating at its center. I knew this place well.
My gaze lifted higher, past dawn-fire clouds, to a realm crowned in gold. Caerthannas—Seat of the Godhead, a citadel spun from starlight. Its walls were etched with the first language ever spoken, the one that shaped every other realm.
The vision darkened.
A cold wind slid between the branches, and with it came the shadow.
Beyond the World Tree’s light, I saw the final realm.
Jagged and broken, a black reflection of the others.
Mountains hunched like predators, dark waters churned with unseen shapes.
Dorchadas—the shadow realm, the Citadel of the Tainted, where every mistake the realms had ever made took form, and the monsters they birthed walked freely.
Whispers rose from its borders. This was not a place one stumbled into. This was a place that found you, and gods help you if it ever did.
The vision trembled. The branches swayed. And then the pages slammed shut with the sound of a dying star’s last heartbeat.
“What…” I started. I had never been given a vision from a tome before. Things were starting to feel very wrong in the Seventh Realm.
Gooseflesh crept up my arms as I thought back on the Oracle’s warning:
You do not know all there is to know. And the path ahead will require you to walk where even the gods go blind.