Vesena coughed.
“That’s what worries me,” Evelyne replied.
They advanced toward the racks, wary of stirring whatever lingered in the dust. Alaric brushed his palm along the shelf’s edge and cast her a brief look.
“What are we looking for?” Evelyne asked in a hushed voice.
“Something about symbols,” he murmured. “Rituals. Old magic. Anything that wasn’t supposed to survive.”
She gave a single nod and turned toward the nearest stack. With all the delicacy of someone raised in a castle but tempered by wariness, she reached out—and promptly snatched a scroll from the center of the pile.
Alaric choked. Actually choked. He was beside her in an instant.
“Be careful with these,” he cautioned. “Some are older than the realms we’re trying to keep standing.”
He saw her restraining an eye-roll by sheer will.
“May I?” he asked, his tone low.
She hesitated, then lifted her palm—an unspoken yes.
His fingers didn’t fully close around her hand. Just enough to guide the angle of her wrist, the pressure of her thumb on the wax.“Like that,” he murmured.
She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, her eyes never leaving his face.
Then the moment folded into motion. Evelyne bent slightly over the scrolls, brushing her gloves over the brittle ribbon, tracing the faint impressions of seals.
Nearby, Cedric crouched beside a cracked chest of stone tablets, muttering under his breath as he sifted through them. His brow furrowed as he held one up to the light and then promptly sneezed on the dust.
“Bless the past,” he grumbled.
Vesena approached a row of shelves lined with glass bottles, most clouded by time, their labels ghosted into near-erasure. Beside them, slim daggers rested in velvet-lined trays, the hilts polished smooth by long-vanished owners. She bent closer, examining each relic with reverent focus.
And through it all, Alaric and Evelyne worked side by side. Not speaking much. Not needing to. He moved like a man returned to some lost cathedral of his boyhood. Every discovery sent a thrill up his spine. A scroll on the forging of Umashi Blades, describing how the Soulsteel was tattooed into the wielders’ skin, bonding weapon and warrior until death. A brittle manuscript on the Glass Masters of Korrhynt, their cathedral-temples crafted from molten sand and whispered enchantments.
Alaric wanted to live there forever.
At some point, Evelyne drifted toward the paintings. She began lifting the covers one by one, fingers precise. Then—
A gasp echoed through the vault.
He turned just as she covered her mouth with her palm.
“Is everything alright?”
Evelyne didn’t look at him right away. Her hand still hovered near her mouth, as if afraid the sound might escape again.
“Yes,” she said at last. Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with something he couldn’t place. “It’s just… beautiful.”
Alaric watched her a moment longer, the torchlight gilding the curve of her cheek, the awe in her eyes unmistakable. Then he smiled and turned back to his own searching, the scroll still open in his hands.
He kept scanning books, until a faint glint caught his eye from the far corner. A pedestal stood there, not dusted which meant touched recently, a glass dome capping what looked like nothing more than a rolled piece of parchment.
His pulse jumped. No one hid a single scroll beneath glass unless it was meant to outlast centuries.
Alaric brushed his sleeve across the dome. He bent low, breath misting the glass, then lifted the glass and put it away.
“Here,” he called out.
