Page 17 of Eternal Thorns

“My grandmother. She knew something like this would happen.”

“That's not making me feel better about the situation.”

“I need to understand what happened here.” Silas started for the door. “What my family did that was so terrible it earned us the forest's hatred.”

“Okay, counter proposal.” Kai stepped in front of him. “We pack our shit, ride south, and never speak of this again. Maybe become merchants in some nice, forest-free coastal town.”

But Silas was already moving past him, following the key's warmth and the light's guidance. The manor felt different in morning sunlight - less threatening, more like it was trying to reveal something. Even the dust motes dancing in the air seemed to be creating patterns, if he could just figure out how to read them.

“You're not even listening to me, are you?” Kai hurried to catch up. “This is exactly how people die in ghost stories. Following mysterious lights, ignoring their completely reasonable friends who suggest maybe not doing that.”

“You don't have to stay.”

“Don't be an idiot.” Kai's voice held equal parts affection and exasperation. “Of course I'm staying. Someone has to make sure you don't get yourself killed by angry tree spirits.”

The library doors stood open, light spilling across the threshold. Inside, dust motes danced in shafts of colored light from the stained glass windows, painting the room in jewel tones that seemed to shift and move of their own accord. The massive space felt different in daylight. Towering shelves stretched up two stories, their carved wooden faces depicting scenes of forests and creatures that seemed to ripple in Silas's peripheral vision.

“There's something here,” he muttered, pressing what felt like a carved leaf. A soft click rewarded him, and a narrow panel slid back, revealing a stack of yellowed letters.

“More secret compartments?” Kai peered over his shoulder. “Your family really needs to invest in some normal furniture.”

Silas carefully extracted the letters. The paper felt delicate but thrummed with a strange energy, similar to the key's warmth. His hands shook slightly as he unfolded the first one.

“These are from my great-great-grandmother.” The elegant handwriting was unmistakable - he'd seen it in family records. But the person she wrote to signed only with a symbol that made the key grow hot against his chest. The same mark was etched into its surface.

“My dearest friend,” he read aloud, “The bargain cannot be undone, but perhaps it can be amended. What was meant as sacred trust has become poison in the wrong hands. Both realms suffer for our family's pride...”

“Both realms?” Kai asked. “What does that mean?”

But Silas had found something else among the letters.

His breath caught as he opened it. There on the yellowed pages was Thorne, rendered in exquisite detail. The same otherworldly features, the same shifting markings across his skin. But these drawings showed someone entirely different from the vengeful spirit who'd appeared in his bedroom.

Here was Thorne smiling, teaching what appeared to be forest magic to a young woman in Ashworth dress. Another sketch showed him helping to forge something that looked suspiciously like Silas's key, power flowing between human and fey hands. Page after page revealed a different story than the one Thorne had told last night.

“That's him? But he looks so... different compared to what you described him as.” Kai observed.

“Happy,” Silas said quietly. “He looks happy.”

The key pulsed warmly, as if confirming something. Silas spread the letters across a nearby table, trying to piece together their story. References to a bargain, a betrayal, something that “cost both realms dearly” repeated throughout the correspondence.

“I'm going to check the foundations,” Kai said after a while, restless from sitting still too long. “Make sure your haunted house isn't about to collapse on us. You good here?”

Silas nodded, already absorbed in another letter. Kai's footsteps faded down the corridor, leaving him alone with the ghostly remnants of a relationship that had somehow gone terribly wrong.

He'd barely made it through two more pages when Kai's voice echoed up from below. “Silas! You need to see this!”

Setting aside the letters, he followed his friend's voice to find him at the cellar stairs, practically vibrating with nervous energy. “So I was checking the foundation, you know, making sure your haunted house isn't about to collapse on us, and I found something weird.”

“Weirder than everything else this morning?”

“Maybe?” Kai led the way down stone steps that looked oddly new compared to the rest of the manor. “Look at this door.”

The cellar door matched the unusual one in the library exactly - the same foreign style, the same strange construction that seemed to defy normal architecture. As they approached, the key grew almost painfully hot.

“It's his magic,” Silas realized, recognizing the sensation from last night. “Thorne's power is worked into this somehow.”

“Okay, pause.” Kai held up a hand. “How are you so calm about all this? Magic isn't supposed to be real, yet here you are acting like it's perfectly normal.”

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