Chapter 27 – The Weight of Questions**
Tuesday, August 17, 2027 – After school**
I wait until the halls are empty and the janitor's keys are the only sound.
Rowan Vale's classroom door is cracked open.
The silver travel mug is still steaming.
I step inside and shut the door behind me.
He doesn't look up from the stack of fake quizzes.
**Rowan (dry):**
"Took you twenty-four hours. I expected nineteen."
I drop my backpack but keep both hands in my hoodie pocket (no blood symbols today). My thoughts.
"The twenty percent I've mastered is older than anything the Monastery has ever catalogued, and I'm not giving them away yet."
**Celeste (quiet, careful):**
"I have eleven pieces.
The Forty-Eighth is already moving.
You knew the shard would act as a key.
You're four hundred years old and you're stuck pretending to teach juniors about the Louisiana Purchase."
I meet his eyes.
**Celeste:**
"I'm not here to hand you anything.
I'm here to ask what someone like you (someone who isn't the heir) can actually do for me that I can't do myself."
"How can someone who isn't the heir, who isn't even Dacian, help me stop what's coming?
Because I'm not stupid. You're not just a substitute teacher.
You're here for the crown.
So tell me how you can possibly help before I have to kill you to find out."
The room goes still.
Rowan sets down his pen.
For the first time since I've known him, he looks tired.
**Rowan:**
"Fair question."
"I was born in 1638, in a village that doesn't exist anymore.
I watched the first seven sorcerers try to break the crown and become the Severed Circle.
I was there the night they failed."
He rolls up his left sleeve.
The scars are there (white, raised, ancient), but they're not Vinča.
They're something different, harsher, like claw marks from a language that never had a name.
**Rowan:**
"I can't teach you the tongue you're learning.
The Monastery lost those syllables before Rome burned the first time.
What I can give you is time, shielding, and four centuries of knowing exactly how the Severed Circle thinks."
He leans forward.He meets my eyes.
"I'm not here to take the crown, Celeste.
I'm here to make sure the Forty-Eighth never wears it."
He taps the scars.
"We're stronger than you right now.
Not forever.
But right now, yes.
And strength can buy you years you don't have to spare. "Rowan (dead serious):
"I'm the only living person who has ever fought the Forty-Eighth and walked away.
And I've been waiting four hundred years for the heir strong enough (and stupid enough) to let me try again."
I tilt my head.
**Celeste:**
"The Monastery.
You said it's in Shambhala."
Rowan's mouth twitches (almost a smile).
**Rowan:**
"It is."
**Celeste:**
"So the stories are true?
All the lost cities (Agartha, Shambhala, Paititi, El Dorado); they're real and that's where the Monasteries are?"
He exhales through his nose.
**Rowan:**
"Some of them.
Shambhala is the oldest.
Agartha is… complicated.
Paititi belongs to different people now.
El Dorado was never a city; it was a warning.
But yes.
The places the world decided were myths are where the ones who stayed behind keep watch."
He stands, walks to the window, and looks out at the football field like it's an alien planet.
**Rowan (soft):**
"We didn't abandon the world, Celeste.
We just moved to the parts of it that mortals agreed to forget.
Someone had to keep the lights on until the next heir was stupid enough to pick up the crown."
He turns back to me.
**Rowan:**
"I can't stop the Forty-Eighth.
Only you can.
But I can keep the Severed Circle from dragging you through a mirror before you're ready.
I can teach you how to hide in reflections, how to break a binding circle from the inside, how to make the Monastery itself flinch if it ever comes for you."
He offers his hand (not for a shake, just open).
**Rowan:**
"Deal?"
I study the scars, the dying-galaxy eyes, the man who has been waiting four centuries for a sixteen-year-old girl to be angry enough to ask the right questions.
I don't take his hand yet.
**Celeste:**
"When I'm ready for the next twenty percent, I'll let you know.
Until then, you keep the Circle off my back.
We'll call it a trial period."
Rowan actually smiles (small, tired, real).
**Rowan:**
"Trial period accepted."
He drops his hand.
**Rowan:**
"One more thing.
When you hit thirty pieces, the Monastery will send someone who isn't me.
Someone who thinks the crown should be locked away forever (with or without its heir).
When that day comes… choose carefully who you trust."
The five-o'clock bell chimes somewhere far away.
I shoulder my bag.
Rowan:
"Until then, little queen…
try not to look in too many mirrors."
The bell tower chimes five.
He's already turning back to his fake papers.
**Celeste:**
"Noted."
I'm at the door when he speaks again, almost too quiet to hear.
**Rowan:**
"Shambhala isn't the only city that's watching, little queen.
Some of the others are rooting for the Forty-Eighth."
I don't look back.
I just walk out into the hallway that suddenly feels way too much like a hallway between worlds.
Eleven pieces.
Twenty percent of a language older than mountains.
One ally who lives in a lost city and isn't sure whose side time is on.
Junior year is officially no longer about grades.And for the first time since the mirror appeared, I'm not sure if I'm the hunter or the bait
It's about how many ancient secrets I can collect before the girl in the mirror collects me.
*The Price of Reflection**
Friday, August 20, 2027 – 11:47 p.m.**
I'm in the skatepark bowl alone, trying to outrun the feeling that something is breathing down my neck.
The floodlights are off.
The only light is the bloodstone glowing soft crimson under my bangs and the moon reflecting in every puddle from yesterday's rain.
I drop in, grind the coping, pop a heelflip—
and land wrong because the reflection in the puddle lands half a second late.
I stumble, catch myself on my board, and stare.
The Celeste in the water is still crouched, smiling up at me with my own face, only her eyes are wrong (too bright, too hungry).
**Not-Celeste (voice bubbling up from the puddle):**
"You're getting faster, little storm.
But not fast enough."
The water ripples.
She stands up inside the puddle—impossible—and steps out.
Same height.
Same outfit.
Same pink Vans.
But the crown on her head is complete.
Forty-seven pieces blazing like molten rubies.
She tilts her head.
**Not-Celeste:**
"Eleven down.
You're making excellent time."
I back up until my spine hits the chain-link fence.
**Celeste (hoarse):**
"You're not supposed to be able to do that yet."
**Not-Celeste (laughing with my laugh, only crueler):**
"Rules are for heirs who haven't figured out the cheat codes."
She raises one hand.
Every reflective surface in the park—puddles, the chrome on the rails, the lenses of the broken security camera—lights up crimson.
**Not-Celeste:**
"Rowan Vale thinks he can buy you time.
He's wrong.
Time isn't on your side.
It's on mine."
She takes one step closer.
The bloodstone on my forehead burns cold.
**Celeste (through my teeth):**
"Get away from me."
**Not-Celeste (soft, almost gentle):**
"I'm not here to hurt you, Celeste.
I'm here to remind you what you're becoming."
She reaches out and touches the crack in my bloodstone with one finger.
The pain is instant—like lightning turned inside out.
My knees buckle.
Vision fractures.
I see flashes:
- Remy with broken antlers, kneeling.
- Seras burning alive from the inside out.
- Kayo's tails wrapped around my throat.
- Rowan Vale on his knees, scars bleeding starlight.
- The entire valley on fire while I wear the full crown and smile.
The visions vanish as fast as they came.
I'm on my knees in the bowl, gasping.
Not-Celeste crouches in front of me, exactly at eye level.
**Not-Celeste (whisper):**
"Every piece you claim makes me stronger too.
Every symbol you master is another step I get to take toward you.
Keep going, little storm.
I want you perfect when I finally wear your skin."
She leans in until our foreheads almost touch.
**Not-Celeste:**
"Tell Rowan his trial period just got shorter."
Then she's gone.
The puddles go dark.
The bloodstone stops burning.
I'm alone in the bowl with the taste of ozone and the absolute certainty that junior year just became a race against the girl I'm terrified I'm destined to become.
My phone buzzes.
**Remy:**
where are you
something just felt wrong
I stare at the screen until the letters blur.
I type back with shaking fingers.
**me:**
skatepark
come get me
i think i just met the final boss
I hit send.
And for the first time since I put on the crown, I'm not sure who I'm more afraid of:
The Forty-Eighth…
or the fact that part of me recognized her smile.