Chapter 1 

Isador

The Great Archives of Kario swallow sound like a tomb swallows the living. My scales scrape against ancient stone as I coil through the preparation chamber, lighting candles with methodical precision. Each flame blooms to life with a whispered prayer to the ancestors, casting dancing shadows across walls lined with countless scrolls. The death records of this past year wait in neat stacks beside the ritual altar—every naga who drew their last breath, their names recorded in my careful script.

Winter solstice. The longest night. The time when the veil grows thin and souls wander if not properly bound to memory.

I've performed this ceremony seven times now, ever since accepting the role of chronicler. Seven winters of reading names aloud in this echoing chamber, ensuring the dead find peace and the living find protection from their restless spirits. The responsibility weighs on my shoulders like ceremonial robes, heavy but familiar.

My voice carries through the vaulted ceiling as I begin. "Nyth Saleris, taken by fever in the third month." The name reverberates off stone columns older than the current royal line. "Vex Malorin, lost to a hunting accident in the seventh month." Each syllable must be pronounced perfectly, each pause measured. The ritual demands precision.

The familiar routine calms my nerves, though tonight feels different somehow. Heavier. The very air seems to press against my skin like water, thick and expectant. I shake off the sensation—seven years of solitude in these archives has made me prone to flights of imagination. Nothing more.

Halfway through the second scroll, an unnatural cold seeps through the chamber. My breath fogs as the temperature plummets, and several candles gutter as if blown by an impossibly strong wind. Yet the air remains still as death.

I pause, my voice dying in the sudden silence. The quiet feels wrong—too complete, too absolute. Even the mice that nest in the lower archives have gone silent. I listen for long moments, my heartbeat thundering in my ears like drums.

When I relight the extinguished candles, my hands shake slightly. Professional irritation wars with something deeper—a primal unease that makes all my scales ripple and shift. I return to the altar where my carefully organized records wait, and freeze.

A new manuscript rests among my scrolls. One I've never seen before.

The parchment looks ancient, yellowed with age, but the ink appears fresh enough to still glisten in the candlelight. The handwriting is elegant, feminine, completely unfamiliar despite my encyclopedic knowledge of every scribe who's worked these archives in the past century.

My fingers tremble as I lift the manuscript. The pages feel cold as winter stone, and for a moment I swear I smell something impossible—lavender and sorrow, mixed with the metallic tang of old blood.

The Festival of Winter's Heart began as all such celebrations do—with laughter that would soon turn to screaming. 

I begin to read faster, drawn despite my growing horror. The account describes a winter solstice celebration three centuries past, when the noble families of Kythera gathered for their traditional feast. But the wine was poisoned, the doors barred from outside, and by dawn every soul lay dead in pools of their own blood.

The details are visceral, precise—the way Lady Myria's fingernails scraped stone as she clawed at the locked doors, how Lord Theron's children huddled beneath the feast table as madness consumed the adults above.

These events never happened. I would know—I've memorized every historical record in these archives. Yet the writing carries the weight of truth, as if the author witnessed each horrifying moment firsthand.

Shadows shift at the edge of my vision. I look up sharply, but see only empty air and dancing candlelight. The feeling of being watched intensifies until my skin crawls. Every instinct screams that I'm no longer alone in my sanctuary, though logic insists otherwise.

I set the manuscript aside with careful hands, but my eyes keep drifting back to those elegant lines of script. The ritual must continue—the dead grow restless when left unbound—yet dread settles in my chest like a stone.

Something has entered my ordered world. Something that wants me to keep reading.

And despite every rational thought screaming warnings, I know I will.