Page 107 of Cursed Dreams
“It won’t help,” Cellen said, his voice suddenly serious in a way that made Thalia’s stomach twist. “If this is true and after hearing all that, I believe it is, then we’re talking about power none of us fully understand. Vaelith isn’t just a lesser fae noble or a General. He’s a dragon fae… and that means if he is hiding something, manipulating something, no one in the temple could stop him.”
Marand paled. “Not even the High Priestess?”
“He fought in a war that wiped an entire people from history,” Cellen said, quietly. “He’s been here for years and no one even suspected him. If he’s capable of that, do you really think he’ll blink if someone like Elara confronts him? What do you think he will do to Thalia is he suspects she’s exposed him, Dragons are insanely powerful.”
The silence that followed was thick. Heavy with the weight of Cellen’s words.
Nyla leaned forward, her voice firm. “Then we don’t go to her. Not yet.”
Thalia met her gaze, grateful.
“We do what we can,” Nyla continued. “Caelum is high fae, he’s our only shot. If what you said is true, Thal… he’s the only one who can go up against Vaelith.”
Thalia nodded, a knot in her throat. “But I need to find him. Really find him not just in the dream world. To get him out, I need to find the Temple of Kek. And the Forgotten Forest. Caelum said the answers were hidden there.”
“So we start digging,” Cellen said, flexing his fingers. “We hunt for clues. Temple maps. Lost cities. Anything that mentions old magic or forgotten gods.”
“I’ll check the restricted texts in the medical archives,” Marand added. “They have older volumes on places of healing, if the Temple of Kek was destroyed it might have been referenced.”
Nyla turned to Thalia. “And you? Are you okay with us doing this?”
Thalia looked around at the three of them, each of them clearly still in shock, but no one backing down from the task ahead. For the first time in what felt like forever she felt like she could breathe. She wasn’t hiding from them anymore, she didn’t have to lie to them.
“I want your help,” she said. “More than anything.”
Then she added, voice barely above a whisper: “I think the gods sent me the right people, we can do this.”
Cellen snorted. “Well, if that’s the case, they clearly have a twisted sense of humour.”
The scent of old parchment clung to Thalia’s hair, to her robes, to her fingertips. It had become as familiar as the smellof brewed tea and healing salves. Weeks had passed since that first desperate conversation in the library, and though their lives continued with their daily classes, rotations, temple rites every free moment had been poured into this search. And still, they had found nothing.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this and not sleeping like normal people?” Cellen asked, stretched dramatically across a low couch in their corner of the library.
Thalia didn’t look up from the brittle book in her lap. “Because normal people aren’t trying to locate a temple wiped from existence by dragons.”
Marand smirked over the edge of her notes. “You really need a better answer if anyone ever overhears us.”
“Right?” Cellen said, straightening. “Like… maybe we’re trying to win a particularly obscure scholarship.”
“You’re the obscure one,” Nyla muttered, elbowing him gently.
Thalia smiled faintly, her gaze scanning another page. The banter helped. It made the waiting bearable. The silence between failures less oppressive. Their friendship had changed. Deepened. There were shared looks now, a quiet understanding in Nyla’s raised brow, unspoken support in Marand’s lingering glances. Cellen, despite his endless sarcasm, had become someone Thalia knew she could lean on. Trust. They studied together late into the night, not just about temples and gods, but also anatomy charts, medical etchings, and magical convergence theory. Their hospital rounds had only gotten more demanding, and they each juggled exhaustion with grim determination.
Thalia’s fingers paused on a line etched into the old page. She leaned closer, heart quickening.“…the shadows remember even what the world forgets.”
Her pulse fluttered.
“Guys,” she said quietly.
Three heads turned immediately.
She read the line aloud. “It’s from a poem on an old shrine in the southern wilds. It doesn’t name the shrine, but it says it was dedicated to a god of shadow and silence. That could be Kek.”
Marand leaned in beside her. “Does it mention a location?”
“No,” Thalia said, deflating. “Just something called the ‘Grief Stone’—and a warning not to speak names aloud beneath it.”
“That’s cheery,” Cellen muttered. “A stone that cries when you say names?”
