2025-05-21 07:02:44
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Season 2-Chp 36
He didn’t speak as he stepped out of the forest. The wind caught the edge of his coat and curled it around his legs, but he didn’t notice. The trees at his back were silent, no longer whispering. Even the sky had shifted slightly — still overcast, but heavier somehow, like it hung lower than before. The light filtering through the clouds felt wrong, bleached and watery, as if the sun was afraid to show its face.Jerome’s footsteps were quiet, deliberate. His body moved the same way it always had, but something in his posture had changed — his shoulders squared, not in pride, but readiness. His eyes had lost their flicker. The chain no longer peeked from his collar, but its presence was unmistakable. It clung to him now, not as a relic or burden — but as a choice.He saw them before they saw him.Margareth sat on a moss-covered rock near the trail, arms wrapped around herself, lips tight, her eyes on the dirt. Selene stood a few paces away, blade unsheathed, but not drawn — simply rest
Season 2-Chp 35
The circle of stone didn’t hum. It didn’t glow. It simply waited.The water in the shallow pool at its center no longer reflected Jerome’s face. It had settled into an unnatural stillness, like glass formed over an ancient eye. The reflection it showed him now — the older version of himself, with the cold smile and hollow eyes — had not moved, not blinked, not vanished. It remained, as patient as death.Behind him, the woman stood silent, her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t speak. She didn’t guide. She had already brought him as far as she could. This was not her memory to walk.Jerome crouched by the water’s edge, staring at the image, his breath uneven.“You’re not me,” he said quietly.The reflection tilted its head.“I was.”The voice didn’t come from the pool.It came from the trees.Jerome stood sharply, turning, eyes narrowing.And from the edge of the stone circle stepped a man — not a ghost, not an illusion, but flesh. His hair was shorter, darker. His posture regal,
Season 2-Chp 34
The walk back to the edge of the forest was slow, and not because of the terrain. None of them spoke. Selene moved with trained purpose, her gaze cutting between trees, one hand always on the hilt of her blade. Margareth kept near Jerome but didn’t reach for him, not even once. There was something between them now — not resentment, not fear, but distance. A separation that hadn’t been there before.And Jerome?He didn’t walk so much as drift.His body was present, but his mind was elsewhere — sliding between moments that didn’t belong to the world aboveground. Memory had become fluid. He could no longer tell whether the visions came from the woman’s presence, the seal on his arm, or something older, crawling up from the buried places where roots and broken oaths had twisted together.The forest had changed.The branches leaned subtly inward, as though trying to listen. The wind didn’t blow — it circled, brushing past their ears like whispers in a language none of them remembered learn
Season 2-Chp 33
The air in the chamber had changed. Not in temperature, not in scent — but in direction. Before, the space had felt suspended, like time held its breath. Now it moved. The faint breeze that brushed past Jerome’s neck didn’t feel like wind. It felt like intention.The woman — no longer fused to the stone but still surrounded by it — sat quietly, her back straight, her gaze fixed on the far wall of the chamber. Her name still hadn’t returned to him. She hadn’t offered it, and he hadn’t asked. It didn’t matter. There was no sense of strangers between them. Only silence. Only unfinished sentences.Jerome knelt across from her, arms resting on his knees, head down. His thoughts were full. But more than that — they were crowded. The deeper truth wasn’t just memory. It was pressure. Like there were voices beneath his ribs that hadn’t spoken in generations, now waking and stretching, remembering the shape of his body like it was a room they used to live in.Margareth stayed near the tunnel, h
Season 2-Chp 32
Jerome had always believed the worst pain came from wounds that didn’t bleed. The kind you couldn’t name — a memory half-lost, a dream you couldn’t quite hold onto. But now, kneeling in that chamber beneath the world, watching the woman stir beneath the skin of the earth, he realized he’d been wrong.The worst pain came from recognition.Because when she looked at him — truly looked — it was like he was being seen for the first time. Not as Jerome, not as the heir, not even as the bearer of the Crown. But as someone he didn’t yet remember being. Someone older. Someone capable of the kind of betrayal no one survived.“You knew me,” he said at last, his voice thin with awe, not denial.She nodded, her movements slow, her expression unreadable. “You were the only one who ever did.”Margareth stood behind them, arms crossed, weight shifting from one foot to the other as her eyes darted between the two. “Jerome,” she said softly, “what is this?”He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.The woman — s
Season 2-Chp 31
Dawn didn’t come gradually. It simply arrived, as if someone had flipped a switch somewhere in the sky. The sun remained hidden behind the clouds, casting only a sickly, pale light over the broken stone pillars and half-dug earth where Jerome sat alone beside the slab. Dew had formed along the cracked stone during the night, and now it glistened faintly, highlighting the sharp, deliberate carvings around the slab’s edge—symbols older than language, spirals interrupted by branching roots, loops that bled into each other like vines choking one another for air.Margareth and Selene stirred behind him, both slowly waking, though neither one said anything at first. The campfire had burned down to embers, and a light wind had scattered half of the ash across their packs and jackets. They didn’t complain. They barely moved. They both knew Jerome hadn’t slept.He’d been sitting there all night. Listening.And though he hadn’t told them, he’d heard her again. Not with his ears. Not even in a d
Season 2-Chp 30
The road to Larkedge cut through the trees like a scar that hadn’t healed right. Jerome sat in the back seat, head tilted against the window, watching the forest blur past. The rain hadn’t returned, but the storm hadn’t left either. Thunder still rolled in distant waves, too far to be seen, but too close to ignore. The sky hadn’t cleared since the vision. Every breath Jerome took felt thick with pressure, like the air was trying to warn him of something it couldn’t say out loud.Margareth drove. Selene sat beside her, map in her lap, folded to reveal a handwritten sketch from decades ago — notes from a Watcher vault detailing the rumored location of a “burial enclave” tied to the early Crown cult. The ink was faded, but Selene’s fingers moved over it with confidence, like she’d memorized it long ago and was only pretending to read.They hadn’t spoken much since Jerome showed them the dirt.The silence was practical at first — focused. But by the second hour of driving, it had curdled
Season 2-Chp 29
All through the night, the sky remained heavy, bloated with thunder, but it never broke. It hovered instead, swollen and grey, leaking low, ambient light into Elden Reach like the ceiling of an enormous cathedral. The clouds didn’t roll. They stood still. They watched. And below them, inside a room that had grown colder since their return, Jerome sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at the motel floor like he could see through it.He hadn’t spoken since the vision.Not really.Margareth had asked him questions. Selene had offered answers. But Jerome had only nodded or blinked or responded with small movements of his fingers, always tracing the same spiral into his palm. Again and again. It wasn’t the original spiral anymore. It had changed after the Crypt — sharpened at the edges, more intricate, almost alive.Now he sat at the desk, the journal spread open before him, drawing.Margareth stood nearby, watching him in silence.“You haven’t slept,” she said.He didn’t look
Season 2-Chp 28
The road into Elden Reach had not changed. It curved around the same pale hills, through the same patchwork of pine and dirt, until it fed into the silent town like a scar back into wounded skin. But everything else — the air, the color of the clouds, the feel of the asphalt under Jerome’s boots — felt like a replica. Like they had returned not to the town they left, but to a memory of it, preserved for their benefit. It was too quiet. Too clean. There were no birds. No footsteps. And when they reached the edge of the main street, not a single person looked surprised to see them.A man sweeping the steps of the general store nodded politely to Jerome as he passed. An old woman adjusting flowers at her window gave a faint wave to Margareth. Two children on bicycles rolled past without hesitation, their faces still and strangely empty.“No one’s reacting,” Selene said under her breath.“They’re acting like we never left,” Margareth added, scanning the sidewalks.Jerome kept walking.He
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