The throne room had been cold for three generations. Not the cold of winter, which the great hearths could chase away, but a deeper chill that seemed to rise from the very stones—as if the castle itself remembered what had been lost, and mourned.

Sera Ashvane stood at the edge of the gathered crowd, her fingers wrapped tight around the worn leather of her father's journal. She was not supposed to be here. Daughters of disgraced scholars did not attend royal namings, did not stand beneath the ancient banners that hung like faded ghosts from the vaulted ceiling. And yet here she was, drawn by something she could not name.

The High Keeper raised his staff, and the murmuring fell away like leaves before a storm. In the silence that followed, Sera could hear her own heartbeat—too fast, too loud. She pressed deeper into the shadows of a marble pillar.

"We gather in the sight of the Eternal Flame," the Keeper intoned, his voice echoing off stone that had witnessed a thousand such ceremonies, "to bestow upon this child the name that shall be his burden and his blessing."

The infant prince lay silent in his cradle of ancient oak, swaddled in cloth of deepest crimson. He did not cry, did not stir. His eyes, open and aware in a way that seemed impossible for one so young, reflected the torchlight like captured stars.

Something stirred in Sera's chest. A warmth, spreading outward from her heart, flowing down through her arms to her fingertips. The journal in her hands grew hot—no, not the journal. Her hands themselves, glowing faintly with an amber light that she frantically tried to hide within the folds of her cloak.

But the High Keeper had seen. Across the crowded hall, through the press of noble bodies and silk-clad courtiers, his ancient eyes found hers. And in that moment, everything changed.