The whisper still echoed in my mind as I knelt before the ancient shrine. "The pact is broken." Four simple words that carried the weight of centuries. I traced my fingers over the weathered stone, feeling the same sorrowful vibration humming beneath my touch.
"What pact?" I murmured, studying the faded carvings more carefully in the dappled sunlight filtering through the ancient trees.
I'd returned at dawn, drawn back to this forgotten place by an urgency I couldn't explain. I'd brought with me the oldest journals I could find from the family archives—dusty leather-bound volumes that chronicled the earliest days of House Thorne.
The shrine looked different in morning light—less ominous but somehow more profound. The carvings I'd barely noticed yesterday revealed themselves more clearly: figures with hands clasped in agreement, trees bearing impossible fruit, rivers flowing with what appeared to be light rather than water.
