Forty-Seven: The Past

Lilith took the crystal from Elasha’s hand. The dark-red shard sat heavy, like a cooled ember, in the Little White Dragon’s palm—heavier even than her Broken Sword.

It was the kind of massive crystal the Vampire Princess could lean her whole body against. Even cut down to fit two small palms, it still carried mountain weight.

A hush settled in her chest first. Lilith guessed what lived inside it; the Little White Dragon remembered that surging red she’d seen before, though last time the red hadn’t been so dull.

It was blood.

No—more precise, it was memory about blood.

Elasha had made a trade with the Keeper of Secrets. The Vampire girl had asked the forest for a boon; as payment, she poured a segment of her past into this crystal.

Lilith had offered something far lighter once, or so the Little White Dragon thought. She gave a minute and thirty seconds: a riverside afternoon with Vera, washing clothes, sunlight on wet fabric—no earthshaking secret, just warmth.

The Keeper of Secrets hadn’t treated it as precious. It extended one slender vine; that memory was pumped down as nourishment into the soft soil under the young dragon’s feet, turned into part of every crystal standing in this forest.

But Elasha’s gift was different. If Lilith’s memory was fodder, Elasha’s was fruit.

The forest set her recollection inside one great crystal, then laid it sideways across the path as a gift to passing travelers.

What request had Her Highness made, to make the Keeper take so much at once?

“If you want the answer, look for yourself.” Lilith remembered Elasha saying that as she pressed the crystal into her hands. The Vampire Princess wanted her to know that past; the answer hid inside it.

Maybe the secret the Keeper spoke of was this, Lilith thought for no good reason.

A tremor touched her first. The Little White Dragon lifted her right hand and placed it on the dark-red crystal.

Magic surged like a spring breaking through stone. Fine threads of power happily burrowed into the White Dragon’s right hand, prickling her arm with a tingling numbness—unpleasant, but bearable.

She stood still and let the current seep into her mind, drop by drop.

It began as droplets. Dense magical scent was the vessel for thought; pure, without any grit, the tiny drops were the trailblazers of this memory, rushing into Lilith’s head to carve out a space to hold it.

Then came a stream. Lingering power could now carry life’s roughest and most direct mark—emotion. Before shape formed, before sound arrived, before color sharpened, feeling was the only melody in that clearing. From the crystal came waves that slammed into Lilith: resentment, doubt, weariness, vexation, and… resolve. It wasn’t a lovely recollection; before she could peer at the past’s face, the Little White Dragon got stung hard by dense, negative heat.

Blotches followed emotion like moss after rain. If Lilith hadn’t noticed her own cool blue magic being swept through a contrary flood of scarlet, she might’ve missed how the space around her had been dyed into a dim crimson.

Before edges were clean, the memory unfurled only a horizon of red. Dried blood spattered its freckles across Lilith’s mind.

Color stepped in once the blurs couldn’t fill the widening stream. The Little White Dragon saw red and black weaving. Dark red and lacquer-black tangled into bars that made the frame of it, caging Lilith like an ink-black aviary. Yet on that soil of shadow stood a sliver of moonlight—one stark silver-white line, planted at the exact center.

Lilith knew it at once. That was Elasha inside the memory; in a world wrapped in blood, only her silver hair still burned with bright radiance.

When power flooded half her mind, the scene shifted again.

Lines appeared next, new guests entering her skull. Fine, rough, orderly, chaotic—lacquer-black lines rose and locked the colors in a rigid frame. Lilith didn’t have to parse anything; the writhing strokes told the tale themselves, bringing every past etched into this memory.

The Little White Dragon stood beside Elasha. Those lines traced the silver shape into a face Lilith knew—no, not quite. Elasha here was younger than the one she had met, several years peeled back, a smaller figure wearing the same moonlight.

Lilith lowered her eyes to the crimson under her feet. It was a pool of blood. She felt she’d seen this exact shade before, but color alone wouldn’t pull the place up from the fog.

The lines made the link snap tight. She remembered where she had glimpsed it.

Morris’s underground. The first sight when she walked into the land buried by the past.

The blood pool where an infant floated.

The Little White Dragon wasn’t surprised. If Elasha had traded the secret of Vampire survival as payment to the Keeper of Secrets, what scale of favor had she asked for in return?

Lilith couldn’t guess it. She didn’t need to. The slow stream etched every secret she wanted to know.

Elasha spoke beside her.

Sound.

With the last drop of power slipping into Lilith’s mind, the final piece clicked into place.

A voice younger than now—Elasha’s—came soft to the Little White Dragon’s ear. Sound stepped across the silent air; on Lilith’s shoulders, magic wove a net, and memory fell like a tide.

Lilith stood blank as a statue, letting the surge wrap her.

“Blood.”

She heard the child Elasha say it, just before the memory swallowed thought.

Before the Little White Dragon could break the word apart, clarity fled like birds.

Her foot slipped at the edge, and she fell into the memory.