He took the journal carefully, aware of its age and fragility. The pages opened to reveal Charlotte’s handwriting, notes about reflection theory and the way bloodline resonance could stabilize forces that resisted external control. Bloodline resonance. That meant Delphine really could help.
Charlotte had built systems designed to work across generations, preparation for threats she’d known would outlast her mortal span. She’d written this knowing Delphine would find it, trusting her descendant to understand instructions that looked like historical curiosity to anyone else.
“What does it say?” Delphine’s voice pulled him back to present concerns.
“That geometric networks need emotional anchors as well as physical ones.” He scanned the text, parsing Charlotte’s deliberately obscure phrasing. “The physical sigils provide structure, but they’re vulnerable to corruption unless someone with bloodline resonance stabilizes them from within.”
“Someone like me.”
“Yes.”
She absorbed this without visible reaction. “All right. What do I need to do?”
The question should have prompted immediate refusal. Should have triggered every protective instinct that made himmaintain distance between danger and the people he cared about. But he was tired, and the network was failing, and Charlotte’s journal made clear that bloodline anchoring wasn’t optional—it was the only method that would work.
“First, we catalog everything properly,” he said. “All the sites, their current status, the geometric relationships between them. Then we test whether your presence stabilizes the inverted nodes.”
“And if it does?”
“Then we build you into the network structure. Make you a deliberate anchor instead of an accidental one.”
She nodded slowly. “That sounds like it might be dangerous.”
“It is.”
“But necessary.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” She pulled out her laptop. “Then let’s get organized. You look like you’re about to fall over, so I’ll handle data entry. You tell me what I need to record.”
They worked through dawn and into morning, coffee going cold while they mapped the lattice’s geometry and tracked its deterioration. Delphine asked questions that cut straight to core mechanics. Made intuitive leaps that saved hours of explanation. Organized information with the efficiency that made her exceptional at her actual job.
Around seven-thirty, her laptop chimed with a reminder. She glanced at the notification and grimaced.
“I’m supposed to open the Archive in an hour.”
“Go.” The word came harder than it should. “This can wait.”
“Can it?” She looked at the map where inverted sites showed in red, failed sites in gray, stable sites in dwindling blue. “Because it looks like we’re running out of time.”
“We are. But you can’t help if you lose your job for repeated absence.”
“Fair point.” She closed the laptop and stood. “I’ll come back tonight after closing. We can test the anchor theory then.”
“Delphine—”
“Save the protective argument.” But her tone carried affection rather than irritation. “I’m already involved. You admitted that yourself. Either we do this together with proper planning, or I stumble into it alone without understanding the risks. Which would you prefer?”
She was right. Again. He nodded.
Delphine gathered her things and moved toward the door, then paused with her hand on the knob. “Get some sleep. You’re no good to anyone if you collapse from exhaustion.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She almost smiled. “I’m serious, Bastien. Whatever this is, it’s not going to resolve in the next eight hours. Take care of yourself.”
The concern in her voice. He looked at her fully. “You too.”
