The next morning, Priscila rose before dawn. She had classes at the school in the castle's south wing and, despite her sleepiness, she felt strangely light. The crow slept peacefully beside the cat, and Coral helped her get ready before seeing her off with a weary smile.

  When the carriage departed, Coral sighed, looking around the room. After so many days of sudden shocks, the place looked like a battlefield: empty cups, crumpled blankets, open books, and a heavy air that refused to dissipate.

  She began to tidy with patience, folding fabrics, changing the curtains, and airing out the room. Upon lifting one of the pillows, however, she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a dark trace, like ashes.

  She leaned in, frowning. As she ran her fingers over the fabric, a thin gray layer crumbled in her hands, and she noticed a small burn mark on the sheet. Her heart skipped a beat.

  She looked around, as if fearing someone might see her, though she was alone. "Fire? In here?" she thought. There were no candles nearby, no braziers, nor anything that could have caused it. Coral pressed her lips together, and after a moment of hesitation, decided to say nothing. Priscila had suffered enough shocks lately; this would only upset her further. So, she gathered the ashes with a cloth, changed the sheets, and left the bed looking like new.

  When she finished, the room appeared in order again… but in the air persisted a faint, almost imperceptible scent of ancient smoke.

  Though Coral could never have imagined it, what occurred at the following dawn was something that escaped all logic. Priscila woke with a start, gasping, her throat dry and her eyes burning. A thick smell of smoke filled the room, as if something were slowly smoldering inside the walls. She bolted upright, coughing, searching for the source. There was no fire. No embers. Only that heavy air and a strange heat that seemed to emanate from the floor.

  For a moment, she thought she heard a voice —not entirely human— filtering like a whisper through the smoke: —Where the fire shall fall… the south.

  The echo dissolved into the gloom, leaving her trembling. Priscila stood up, opened the windows, and remained still before the darkness of the garden, feeling that the wind was not enough to clear that scent. That night, unable to return to sleep, she decided to leave several candles lit.

  Perhaps the light would protect her. Perhaps she only wanted to convince herself of it.

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  Hours later, when the sun was already touching the palace stained glass, Priscila tried to distract herself in the library. The silent corridors and the smell of old paper usually calmed her, but this time something drew her toward a section she rarely visited.

  The volumes of rituals and incantations were covered in dust, lined up like forbidden relics. One of them, bound in parched leather with yellowed pages, caught her eye. The title was barely distinguishable, but the weight of the book forced her to open it.

  It began with a disordered index, names of authors she had never heard of, a lengthy introduction, and a section that made her frown: "Forgotten Prophecies." Priscila hesitated. That word had always haunted her, and reading it made her blood run cold. Nevertheless, she continued.

  The first lines recounted ancient visions: "The great city that was threatened with being sunk by a god." "Two lovers and the wife of a pharaoh: a common serpent." "The death of kings… a betrayal that shall lead the next queen to perdition."

  Priscila froze. That last sentence hit her in the chest as if the book had called her by name. She read the final prophecy, which said:

  "In the ivory tower, time has stopped. The lineage of the Sun and the Moon, to the fire has been promised. With the eye of the dragon, she shall see the secret that the blood must avenge. In the south, where the lie burns, a glass door shall fall, and the kingdom shall split in two, if the heiress knows not whom to love. The one shall be the mirror of the traitor, the seven that of the truth. The towers burn for the love that was not, and the crown for ambition. Only the heart that refuses to sleep shall be able to save the nation.

  As night fell, Priscila returned to her quarters with an exhausted body and a mind in a state of constant alert. During the afternoon, in a fit of silent desperation, she had ordered the servants to move her heavy bed, shifting it to the opposite end of the room. It was a strange logic, almost superstitious; a part of her knew that rearranging the furniture would not stop the abstract forces haunting her, but she clung to the idea that if she altered the setting, perhaps the events related to the smoke and ashes would lose her trail. "Faith is the last thing one loses," she repeated to herself like a mantra, though her own words sounded like fragile comfort.

  However, the truce was illusory. The next morning, as soon as her eyes opened after a restless sleep, disappointment hit her with the same force as the air she breathed. The smell of burning—that rancid and persistent aroma of old ash—was still floating in the room, permeating the curtains and the new sheets.

  Something inside her began to crack under the pressure. She felt her head was going mad, a whirlwind of pieces that did not fit: the numbers of the prophecy, her grandmother's illness, Amadeo’s gaze, and now that trail of invisible fire that seemed to sprout from her own dreams.

  More than fear, what truly consumed Priscila was irritation. As a future queen and a woman of an analytical mind, she hated uncertainty. It infuriated her to feel like a piece on a board she could not see, and she found it unbearable not to have control over the secrets that her own life —and her own room— were hiding from her.