This revelation was set down by my own hand in the year of our Lord 1777, though I remember it not.
What she could not claim in Heaven, she sought through blood.
A mortal line, forged to swell her might, so long as it endured.
Silver was shaped, a fragment of her divine essence sealed within.
Protection for those she named her kin, given not from love, but greed.
Yet in her reach for dominion, the seed of her undoing was sown.
By the cruelty she wrought, her end shall be fashioned.
Power unlocked by the blood of her progeny.
Fates entwined through the touching of blood.
The curse shall return to its maker.
A reckoning bound to sacrifice.
For no mortal may touch the divine and live.
- E.V.
Ezra’s revelation has been here all along, recorded on the back of the portrait. I reread every line, trying to make sense of the words.
What she could not claim in heaven, she sought through blood. A mortal line to swell her might.
The subject is clearly Seraphina. It matches the information from the scroll we found in Ezra’s crypt, translated by Ezra himself. Unwilling to be bested by Dante, she forged a mortal line to increaseher power.
Silver was shaped, a fragment of her divine essence sealed within.
My attention darts to the middle drawer of my writing desk. I haven’t touched the locket since the hammer incident. But now, I open the drawer and weigh the locket in my palm, unsure if the faint pulse is a figment of my imagination, or a fragment of Seraphina’s divine essence.
Power unlocked by the blood of her progeny …
The words jump off the page. They reverberate through my mind like a plucked bowstring.
Unlocked.
Blood.
Progeny.
My heart thuds—a heavyglug-glug-glugin my ears.
Seraphina created a bloodline.
Silver was forged, her essence preserved inside. And that power can only be unlocked by the blood of her descendants.
According to Ezekiel Cotton, those descendants would have a strong connection to the spiritual realm. So strong, perhaps, they’d be able to see doorways others couldn’t.
I pick up the razor blade and prick my finger. A droplet of crimson pools on the tip. I touch it to the locket’s clasp, and like ink blooming on paper, my blood spreads through the silver.
Slowly, it fades.
For a moment, nothing happens.
