Chapter 1438: The First Witch and Genesis Prophecy!

Clara had been moving quickly enough that the heavy midnight-blue skirts of her gown scarcely had time to settle between one hurried stride when a sound from beyond the following gallery brought her to such an abrupt halt that Evelyn nearly ran straight into her back. Clara lifted one gloved hand at once, catching her companion across the sleeve before silk, lace and several extremely unhelpful layers of petticoat could become an aristocratic collision, while Evelyn stumbled to a stop with a breathless little gasp and instinctively seized Clara’s arm for balance.

Neither woman spoke.

Beyond a massive pair of double doors carved from immaculate white marble and bound in pale gold, several voices were rising and falling in an argument far too animated for the sacred stillness of inner halls.

The doors themselves looked worthy of whatever forbidden chamber they guarded.

They stood nearly three times Clara’s height, their surfaces carved with intertwined lilies, crescent moons and thorned vines whose stone petals possessed such delicate translucence that light appeared trapped beneath them. Pale-gold bands crossed the marble in graceful arcs, disappearing beneath ancient hinges too beautifully worked to look mechanical at all—

—yet even such impossible thickness failed to swallow the clipped aristocratic voices beyond.

Clara’s expression sharpened immediately.

She caught Evelyn by the sleeve before the poor woman had properly recovered from their sprint and whispered: "Hold your breath."

Evelyn stared at her, cheeks still pink from exertion. "Clara, holding one’s breath does not make one’s petticoats silent."

"Then persuade yours to behave."

"How very useful."

Despite the muttered complaint, Evelyn immediately gathered several folds of lavender silk against her legs and followed. The two young women crept along the gilded edge of the doorway with all the stealth reasonably available to Victorian ladies wearing enough satin, lace, whalebone and petticoats to furnish a modest drawing room.

Their skirts of course whispered treacherously against the mirror-bright marble while corsets made every deliberately quiet breath more difficult than it had any right to be. Clara finally pressed one ear against the cold white stone, and Evelyn leaned beside her until their bonnets almost touched.

A woman’s voice came clearly through the narrow seam—

It was crisp, patrician and every syllable carried the polished severity: "I tell you I am positive. Can you truly not feel it? ’Tis World Essence! World Essence, here, where scarcely any of us have sensed so much as a thread of it in generations. Look here."

CLICK!!

A heavy metallic click answered her.

CLICK!!!

And another before several more followed in deliberate succession, each was deeper than the last, carrying the immense weight of ancient locks withdrawing after generations of obedience. Clara’s eyes widened as the sounds continued somewhere beyond the marble. A final mechanism released with a low grinding note, and something extraordinarily heavy settled upon stone with a hollow thump powerful enough to send a faint tremor through the door beneath Clara’s cheek.

Evelyn’s eyes grew round. She mouthed, ’What was that?’

Clara shook her head slowly and leaned harder toward the seam.

The doors moved— only half an inch, perhaps less, but the tiny opening was enough.

Clara looked through.

Her breath escaped before she could stop it; she immediately clapped one white-gloved hand across her mouth and felt Evelyn tense beside her.

Beyond the opening lay one of sacred gathering halls, a chamber Clara was told never to enter without summons a truly exceptional desire to discover exactly how unpleasant the older women of the family could become when disobeyed.

The hall possessed the same immaculate serenity as the castle’s hidden interior, though something older and weightier lived here. White marble curved into a perfect circle beneath a domed ceiling where opalescent lights floated through pale haze like captive moons.

Fine veins of gold ran through the floor from every wall toward a long central table, converging beneath it in patterns too elegant to resemble any ordinary formation.

Around that table sat several women.

They wore elaborate Victorian silk, velvet and lace, gowns in cream, pale silver, white, wine-red, soft lavender and winter blue, with high collars framing straight necks and gloves covering nearly every hand resting upon the marble. Yet it was their faces that transformed the gathering from an aristocratic council into something resembling an old sacred congregation.

Every woman was veiled!

Some wore white veils fine enough that the faint shape of eyes could be glimpsed beneath them. Others wore pale silver, ivory or lavender. The cloth hid their expressions but leaving suggestions of lips and gazes beneath translucent layers, and the effect made Clara think less of mourning than of women whose faces had become too closely tied to whatever rites occurred in this chamber to be shown carelessly.

At the head of the table sat the High Sorceress.

Even seated, she dominated the hall!

Her gown was black— a startling wound of darkness against endless alabaster purity. Silver embroidery climbed the fitted bodice and long sleeves in intricate flowering patterns, thorns opening into lilies before disappearing beneath the folds of her skirts. A long white veil fell from an elaborate headdress and concealed nearly every feature, leaving only the suggestion of a pale face beneath.

Both of her gloved hands rested upon an enormous book lying open before her.

Clara’s heartbeat stumbled.

The Ancient Grimoire!

She had seen it only in paintings.

She had grown up hearing stories whispered about it by these very women who became suddenly less talkative whenever children drew too close. She had heard that entire families of the oldest of the Witches and their sorcery existed nowhere else upon Earth because their last surviving rites slept inside its pages.

Clara had never imagined standing near enough to discover that the great leather cover had once been pale brown before centuries faded it toward a strange ash-grey, nor that its corners were reinforced with tarnished silver shaped into intertwined roots. Thick yellowed pages rested beneath the High Sorceress’s hands, their outer edges darkened almost black by age, while writing in several different inks shimmered faintly whenever the drifting lights above crossed the parchment.

The High Sorceress lowered one pale finger toward a passage near the center of the page.

Every voice died— even Clara forgot her lungs required attention.

When the High Sorceress began reading, her measured cadence transformed the old words into something that felt less like a passage being recited and more like a voice crossing centuries to reach the room:

{"When the World Essence suffocateth all creation, the Calamity Lotus shall bloom upon that distant unreachable Isle, a realm devoid of bounds and held only beneath its Three Ancient Beings. There shall the Cosmic turn Genesis, whilst Corruption, the End, the Beginning Void and Nothingness dance upon all-encompassing his draconic wings— are they?"}

Clara’s fingers tightened slowly around the edge of the marble door.

Inside the gathering hall, not one woman moved.

The High Sorceress continued, her gloved finger travelled beneath words written long before any person in the room had been born: {"The World shall rejoice as an Angel Progenitor marketh the awakening of Genesis Angel and meeteth their ultimate demise, whilst SHE sitteth upon the altar beneath the gripping paws of Fenris, the Wolf of Beginning. Willingly and unknowing, she shall yield up her Soul unto the material plane, whilst her first and only companion attendeth the very rites that seal her doom, himself oblivious to her plight and the crouching demise of her Soul!"}

A cold crept down Clara’s spine despite the warmth hidden within the white halls.

Evelyn’s hand found hers.

Neither woman looked away.

The High Sorceress’s finger descended to the final passage, and her voice lowered until the entire chamber seemed to lean toward her: {"Oh, how tragically late shall they comprehend their mutual loss, as the final echo of her life and Soul falleth silent from her lips!"}

The words lingered long after her voice faded.

The Ancient Grimoire closed.

The sound struck through the gathering hall with the weight of a tomb sealing shut.

Clara flinched despite herself, and several veiled women around the table shifted just as sharply. Nothing disturbed the chamber beyond the immense book resting beneath the High Sorceress’s palms and the soft movement of silk whenever someone adjusted uneasily in her chair.

At last, the High Sorceress raised her veiled face:

{"’Tis the First Witch and Genesis!"}