“Okay… so… this place. Right.” Alaric cleared his throat, straightened. “We… we got here just before you did,” he said nervously.
The model of composure. Pay no attention to the man internally screaming behind the curtain.
His gaze snapped to the nearest shelf. The universe, generous as ever, sensed when he was on the verge of emotional catastrophe.
Books. Blessed, sanity-restoring books.
“This—this is extraordinary,” he burst. “Do you see it?”
He darted toward a sagging shelf, trailing his fingers carefully along cracked leather spines. “Here—the Iron Verses. An original edition. The ink is still sharp, you can tell by the taper of the letters that this was hand-scribed, not printed. That means it predates the Sundering by at least two generations.”
He was painfully aware that he was rambling as though afraid the words might burn out of him if he didn’t get them all out at once.
Without waiting, he pivoted to a long cabinet. “And this—look here.” He pointed to a wide vellum sheet pinned beneath glass. “The first celestial chart of our system. That’s the sun. Here are the moons—two of them.” His grin flickered, boyish and wild. “Two, not one. Either they imagined it, or one was lost. But if lost, where—”
He glanced up mid-ramble—and caught Evelyne and Vesena exchanging a look. It was brief, a single second, but enough.
Brows slightly raised. As if wonderingwhat, exactly,they were witnessing—and whether to stop it or let it burn itself out. Alaric cleared his throat. Pretended not to notice the way Evelyne’s mouth tugged like she was biting back commentary.
But he was in his element, half scholar, half adventurer, the boy who had spent his childhood breaking into archives and charming tutors into looking the other way. He never showed this part of himself often, never let the raw edges show—the eagerness, the joy. But he couldn’t help himself.
Cedric rolled his eyes but kept pace, muttering, “You sound like a child on the Night of the Lanterns.”
Alaric ignored him. “Cedric, this is history. This is the truth. And it’s been buried here all along,” he gestured widely. “Do you understand what this means? They didn’t—”
Alaric caught Evelyne looking again and cleared his throat, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… get so carried away. It’s just—this is a huge discovery.”
Evelyne pivoted from him, her attention drifting over the chamber instead. Paintings rested half-veiled in linen, statues missing limbs and faces, instruments that might have stepped out of myth. She spoke without meeting his eye. “These are pre-Sundering?”
“I believe so, yes.”
She turned to the nearest cabinet and began pulling out scrolls. “Vesena and I found a letter,” she said. “Buried in Ravik’s office. It mentioned something calleddivine purification. Signed by a scribe of the Celestial Assembly.”
Alaric listened but his gut knotted as he watched her handle the scrolls—like a child daring to steal from a reliquary. His arms jerked forward before he mastered the impulse, forcing them to rest flat against his thighs.
“Purification?”
She met his gaze without flinching. “Yes. The Maroon Slaughter. I need to be certain it wasn’t isolated. There was a similar case in Zharesh a year before.”
He hummed low in his throat. “And one more in Kelvar’s Cross. That means we’re talking mass murder disguised as ritualized cleansing.”
She nodded once. “That’s what it looks like.”
Alaric took scrolls from her hands and placed them on the table nearby, careful not to crush them. “We searched the hidden chapel,” he said quietly. “There’s a room beneath it. A cavern, connected to several tunnels. In the center, an altar, covered in blood.”
Her grip halted on a scroll.
“And that symbol,” he added, observing her expression. “The one carved into Dasmon’s mouth. Three vertical lines inside a circle. Painted on the wall in dried blood.”
The silence that followed shuddered through them both. He saw something in her face fracture—clench of a jaw, deep inhale.
“There was a book,” he went on. “Poetry. Prophecy, maybe. Unfortunately, someone took it.”
And stars, he wanted it back. And also,thiswas the place he had always dreamed of stumbling into. Every inch of him ached to read, to let the world finally uncoil itself at his feet.
But Evelyne wasn’t here for awe or answers. She was here for proof. He dragged in a breath, taming the beast inside, forcing his curiosity back into its cage. Alaric steadied himself and surveyed the shelves before him. He reached for the nearest one.
“We should search the place. There must be something of value here. Thalen didn’t lead us into this ruin for idle talk.”
