The Five Realms

Chapter 15: Kat I

Chapter 15: The Weight of Secrets

Katherine didn't sit. She stood at the edge of the shadows, watching her siblings like ghosts in reverse—children she had once cradled, now strangers with dragons at their heels.

The room felt colder than it should've. Maybe it was the polished stone, or maybe it was memory. The same basement where their father had taught her to read the Old Script—where she'd whispered her oath before a bowl of salt and light, six years old and trembling. "You will guard them," he had said, his voice heavy with sorrow. "Even from themselves."

Now, Chyna looked at her like a stranger. And Joey... Joey wouldn't even meet her eyes.

The table between them held remnants of revelation: worn books, the map of Alagaësia etched in silver leaf, candle stubs burned to nubs. Their dragons curled close—five living artifacts of a truth Kat had carried alone for far too long.

"Since summer is over," Murtagh was saying, his voice even, "we will begin your training before your dragons are old enough to handle the trip cross-realm."

His words fell like iron weights in her stomach. We. Not you. She wasn't part of the plan. Not really.

She touched the pendant at her throat—a disc of old silver, engraved with a symbol no one remembered. Isendorn's parting gift, given just before the fire that stole him away and sealed her silence. Sometimes it felt warm against her skin for no reason. Tonight, it was ice.

Kat looked around the room. Steven cracked his knuckles out of nervous habit. Fate stood with arms crossed, her golden dragon draped across her shoulders like a fur stole. Beanca kept sneaking glances at Joey when she thought no one noticed. Chyna just stared—unmoving, untouchable.

Kat had memorized these children's cries, their allergies, their first words. She had kissed scraped knees, doctored nightmares, lied and lied and lied to protect their peace. And now they looked at her like she was the enemy.

Murtagh snapped the book shut. "We're done for today."

The silence that followed said everything.

Kat turned without a word and started up the stairs, her footsteps echoing off ancient stone. Behind her, no one called out. Not even Maria. Not even once.

The door closed behind her with a soft click, but it might as well have been the clang of a vault sealing shut. Kat leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed, willing the noise inside her head to fade.

Her room hadn't changed in years. Same clean lines, same obsidian candle holders on the windowsill, same narrow mirror with its nicked edge from when Carly had accidentally knocked it over chasing a balloon. But it all felt off now—like the room belonged to someone else.

She sat at her desk and pulled her father's journal from the drawer beneath the false-bottom shelf. The cover was cracked leather, ink-stained, wrapped once in twine as if that might somehow bind the truths within.

The moment her fingers touched the spine, a flicker of warmth pulsed against her palm. Not heat, but memory. **Isendorn's voice—**stern but not unkind—echoed from a day long buried:
"If you're reading this without me... then the choice has come. And the price."

She swallowed the lump forming in her throat and opened it to the last marked page. It was covered in sketches of unfamiliar symbols, one resembling a door wrapped in vines, another like a star swallowed by shadow.

Six months ago, she could've lied to herself. She could've said they were still kids—still safe. But William had vanished, like a stone dropped through water. Joey had aged a decade in the span of weeks. And Chyna—Chyna no longer looked through her. She looked past her.