Chapter Three: Visions Beneath the Ice

From the Journal of Ellien, Clayr-in-Waiting

I wasn't supposed to See anything.

Not on my own.
Not without the Circle.
Not without one of the Sight-mistresses nearby to catch me if I fell too far into a waking trance.

But the dream came anyway.

It was sharp. Cold. Older than the ice beneath our mountain.

In it, I stood beside the Mirror Lake—not the real one, but the one that comes in powerful visions. The stars hung low above it, flickering in strange, wrong colors. There were bells—distant, muffled, but not the kind an Abhorsen would ring.

They pulsed. Groaned. Like something ancient, stirring from sleep.

And then I saw them.

A boy, maybe ten. Pale and thoughtful, eyes wide with wonder and something like grief. He held a strange toy—no, a charm, carved in the shape of a dog, Charter Marks dancing faintly across it.

Beside him stood a man, his face worn and quiet, like he’d walked too close to Death’s Gates more than once and decided never to talk about it.

They were watching something rise from the mist.

Not a building.
Not a creature, exactly.
A structure of bones and stone, bound by twisted Charter remnants and laced with Free Magic threads.

It slithered up from under the lake and coiled into the sky like a Wurm-Cairn, one of the Lost Constructs—creatures of ancient spell-craft, meant to guard and contain but long since corrupted.

I heard its voice in the dream:

“Let me guard again. Let me feed. Let me serve.”

And then I woke, heart pounding, my skin damp with mist that shouldn't have been real.

I was still in the Reading Cavern. Candles flickered, pages rustled. No one had noticed me fall asleep over the ancient copy of Gatework and Deep Charter Mechanics.

I rubbed my eyes and stood. My knees were shaking.

The Wurm-Cairns were supposed to be extinct—abandoned during the Breaking of the Charter. Only mentioned in theory. Only referenced in warning.

And yet, I had Seen one. And worse, I had Seen it awaken.

Later, I crept into the Mirror Hall, even though I wasn’t supposed to be there unsupervised.

I lit the basin with a whisper of fire and pressed my hand to the mirrored ice. Slowly, the Sight gathered. The marks shimmered.

A boy.
A man.
A valley beneath moonlight, strange sigils burned into the soil.

And then… me?

Not quite. An older version of myself? A Clayr archivist, holding a Charter-compass and speaking to a raven.

She said only one thing, which echoed through the chamber like truth:

“It is not Death that rises. It is memory twisted by Free Magic.”

I backed away from the mirror as a cold presence stirred behind me.

I turned—Aunt Serah, one of the Clayr mentors, was standing at the archway with a lantern.

“You weren’t supposed to be in here, Ellien.”

“I know,” I said. “But I had a vision. One that felt like it mattered.”

Serah walked slowly into the chamber and peered into the still-glowing mirror.

“Tell me what you Saw.”

So I did.

About the boy and his dog-shaped charm. The quiet man who knew Death. And the creature—the Wurm-Cairn—that wasn’t dead but should have been.

Serah listened. Her face did not change, but I saw the worry in her eyes.

When I finished, she whispered, “That construct was buried before the Charter was fully written.”

“Then why is it waking?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

That night, I was summoned to the Council Hollow.

The oldest Clayr were gathered, shawls tight around their shoulders, eyes bright with concern. They had Seen it too.

A call had gone out—to the Abhorsen, to the Royal House, to any Charter Mage north of the Ratterlin.

But something was blocking the flow of vision. A barrier of distorted magic. A fog not of weather, but of will.

And so they turned to me.

“Ellien,” said the Sight-Mother, “you have Seen clearly. More clearly than most. You are to carry word to the Abhorsen’s emissaries at Nestowe. You will travel with a small Guard and a message.”

“To stop the construct?” I asked.

“To find the boy,” she said. “He is at the center of this. And if we lose him, we lose the future.”

And so, with a Charter-blade newly tied to my back, and a raven named Inkwing fluttering beside me, I stepped from the ice halls of the Clayr and into the waiting north.

Not yet a seer.
Not yet a hero.
But I was on my way.