The rain had started by the time Elias reached Marise's hut. Fat, heavy drops that hit the earth like a warning. The sky trembled with thunder, and the drums from the ceremony two nights past still echoed in his bones.
Marise lay curled on a straw mat inside, her body shivering, face pale and sickled with sweat.
"Poison," she said before Elias could speak. "Not Lucien's. Something older. Crept into my cup like a serpent."
He knelt beside her. "I can try to help."
Marise laughed, a thin, wheezing thing. "No, boy. Not this time. The spirits already called my name. But I can give you what you came for. Sit. Listen."
She reached into the folds of her garments with trembling hands and pulled out a leather-bound journal, burned at the edges. Elias knew it instantly.
Papa Louvier's diary.
Or rather the original Papa Louvier's. Not him. Not Elias.
"You're not the first to wear his skin," Marise whispered. "He was chosen too, long before you were ever born. This place calls to certain souls, through time, through blood."
She coughed hard, and blood stained her teeth.
Elias opened the diary, flipping through pages of scrawled notes, symbols, sketches of stars and fire. Some pages had been written in two hands, one steady and tight, the other loose, trembling, as though possessed. One entry stood out:
"The mirror speaks, but not in words. It knows me. Or it knows what I carry. I bleed, and it answers. I burn, and it reveals. There is a pattern in the madness. A cipher of time."
A mirror symbol, etched at the corner, matched the markings on the relic.
Marise's eyes fluttered open again, glassy.
"They think it's about freedom," she said. "But it's older than that. This war, this fire, it's just one spark in a chain of them. Every era has its Elias. It's firestarter."
Elias's voice broke. "What do you mean?"
She grabbed his wrist, surprisingly strong. "The ones who pull the strings… never had hands."
She smiled then, peaceful.
And died.
The hut filled with silence.
No wind. No rain. No breath.
Elias closed her eyes gently. He burned the journal, just as she asked, though he copied the pages he needed. Let the original die with her, and with the ghost of Papa Louvier.
Outside, the relic pulsed once more.
A new symbol etched itself along its edge.
A ring of eyes, open, watching, always watching.
The Watcher had seen all of this.
Elias stepped into the storm.