Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

The House of Wind was in one of its moods again.

Nesta could always tell. She had lived there long enough to recognise the signs: the stairwell creaking a fraction too loudly, the windows sharpening her reflection, the doors requiring just a little more force than usual.

But this morning, pre-dawn, during the cold, quiet hour she preferred for clearing her mind and avoiding the more sociable ghosts haunting the library’s upper stacks, the House had abandoned subtlety altogether.

Her first warning was breakfast. Or rather, the lack of it.

No toast. No tea. Not even a bowl of porridge.

It was hardly a disaster. She had survived on stale bread before and could survive a morning without warm food. But the House only withheld breakfast when it wanted her attention, and Nesta was in no mood to give it. She, also, ignored the unnatural chill in her bedroom, dressed in her usual black training leggings and an old tunic, she braided her hair already in the mood of someone preparing for battle. By the time she reached the landing, the corridor lights had dimmed to a sulking grey. The staircase, the one that enjoyed tripping those who got cocky, was icy beneath her bare feet…. but Nesta refused to shiver where the House could see her.

She descended, skipping every third step, and headed towards the library’s eastern entrance. She was not searching for sanctuary. Not today. She simply wanted a stack of books, several hours of silence, and perhaps a romance indecent enough to shut down her thoughts…. Deep down inside, it irritated her how much she had come to need such things.

---

Halfway down the windowless passage separating the Valkyries’ training area from the archives, someone whispered her name.

Not Nesta.

Not Archeron.

Not even Lady Death, which some of the priestesses still called her when they thought she couldn’t hear.

The voice, female, rich and low, said, “Nesta Archeron,” as though reading it from the opening page of a story.

Nesta paused mid-stride. The wall beside her was rough stone, ancient even by the House’s standards, its cracks packed with pale mortar that left chalky dust on anyone careless enough to touch it. She pressed her hand to the surface anyway, palm flat and fingers splayed. The stone was colder than the stairs, the cold radiating up her arm in a slow, measured pulse.

“What do you want?” she asked. Quietly. There was no reason to encourage hallucinations. Or hungry echoes.

Silence followed, but it was not empty. Nesta knew the difference. She had spent enough sleepless nights listening to the machinery of her own mind to recognise when silence was preparing to strike. Someone was watching her…. And it wasn’t the House.

“You survived the promise,” the voice said. Closer now. As though the stone between them had thinned. Then, she felt the magic. A cool thread slipped from the wall into her palm, wound around her wrist, and travelled into her chest, settling precisely where her own power liked to sleep.

Nesta held herself still.

She had spent the past week helping Emerie sort testimony and reorganising the priestesses’ records. Every night, she had collapsed into bed too exhausted to dream. It was less like sleeping and more like shutting down. She was overworked, tired, and not in the mood for one more battle… and she, certainly, did not have the patience for ancient riddles. All she wanted was the library. She wanted her books. She wanted, for a few quiet hours, to stop thinking.

Yet, the wall pulsed again. Her power rose to meet it. Not violently. Those days were over. Mostly. Still, the sudden pull of magic stole her breath. Nesta tightened her control around her core before it could answer. Her power belonged to her now, after years of rage, refusal, and miserable half-measures, but it continued to have its own opinions about what deserved attention, so there was always intense negotiation before she could use it, even to defend herself.

She looked around. Nothing else in the corridor had changed. The lamps still gave off their feeble grey light. The only sound was her breathing, which she had made very, very quiet. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to find Cassian leaning against the wall and wearing innocence badly. Or Gwyn and Emerie waiting to unveil another of their so-called creative interventions.

No one.

Nothing.

Only the wall, the cold, and the memory of a voice that had not needed air to speak.

Nesta removed her hand. Frost blossomed beneath her palm, preserving the exact shape of her touch. She examined it. “Subtle,” she murmured. “A little desperate, but subtle.”

---

That was when she noticed what the House had done to the corridor.

It was shorter. Where once the wall ran unbroken to the library’s entryway, now…. now there was a door. Or something like a door: an oblong outline cut into the stone, no handle, no hinges, only a faint seam visible if one looked directly at it.

Nesta did not look at it, though. She had, painfully learned by now, that sort of thing never helped. She kept walking, slow and deliberate, until she stood before the new threshold. She did not touch it. Experience had taught her that ancient, whispering doors rarely improved with encouragement.

“You survived the promise,” the voice repeated.

This time, it did not come through the stone. It curled around her ear like breath on a winter morning.

She waited for fear.

It did not come.

Curiosity arrived instead, followed closely by annoyance at whatever force believed a hidden door and a disembodied whisper would be enough to command her. Nesta knew old magic when she encountered it. She also knew an order disguised as an invitation, and she was in no mood to start trouble. 

The cold remained inside her arm, shimmering beneath her skin. She flexed her fingers and watched silver light trace the veins across the back of her hand before fading as her power settled.

The door remained closed.

But something had begun leaking through the seam beneath it.

Ash.

Or dust. Perhaps the remains of a fire that had never burned? It spilled in a thin silver line, darkening the stone before pooling slowly around her bare feet.

She stared down at it.

The door expected her to open it.

That decided the matter. Nesta Archeron did not obey doors, voices, Houses, or ancient powers simply because they knew how to speak her name.

She stepped over the ash and continued towards the library.

Whatever waited behind that wall could wait until she chose to return. If she did…

Behind her, the silver ash continued to spread, curving across the floor with the slow precision of an unseen hand.

By the time the library doors closed behind Nesta, it had begun to write.

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