Page 168
That dissimilarity sent a chill down her spine. People had worked here for many turnings, perhaps even generations. The evidence surrounded her in the careful arrangement of tools, the stacked recording slates, the sealed containers arranged according to systems she didn't recognize. Only the dust prevented the illusion that whoever had used the room might step back inside at any moment and resume whatever work had been left unfinished.
“Stars,” Lora whispered in awe.
Everyone held an expression that shared that sentiment, their faces staring with wide eyes and parted lips. Even Alyra seemed reluctant to disturb the silence.
It reminded Elowynn of a tomb.
Stepping farther into the room, her lantern cast moving shadows across shelves crowded with cracked instruments and sealed canisters. Several labels had faded beyond recognition, though enough remained to reveal a pattern that made the back of her neck prickle.
Resonance flow. Current stability. Harmonic pressure. Containment fluctuations.
The words appeared again and again, written in a steady hand and etched into metal tags that had survived longer than their makers.
Her pulse sped up as she moved from one shelf to the next.
The same terminology followed her.
Containment. Regulation. Stability.
It was everywhere.
The room felt less like an observatory and more like a monitoring station, a place dedicated not to watching the stars above but to measuring pressure beneath their feet. Elowynn had studied enough resonance theory to understand the difference between observation and maintenance. Observatories gathered information. This room had tracked changes, recorded irregularities, and likely responded when those irregularities became dangerous.
“What did they do here?” Alyra asked, her voice breathless.
Elowynn ran her fingers along the edge of a dust-covered table and studied the instruments arranged upon it. They were mostly unfamiliar, but she recognized pieces of modern resonance measuring devices hidden within their design. Though these versions appeared older and, in some ways, far more sophisticated.
It should have been impossible.
Progress and advancement were not supposed to work this way, and yet every object in this room suggested the people who had worked here understood things modern scholars had only begun to rediscover.
“I think they were tracking something,” she said.
The engineer shuffled behind her. “Tracking what?”
A loud clatter rang through the chamber, and everyone spun around.
Lora froze beside a shelf of ancient instruments, one hand still hovering in the air while a bronze cylinder rolled lazily across the floor.
“I uh… can explain.”
Alyra pinched the bridge of her nose. “Can you?”
“Probably not.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of Korvel’s mouth before he looked away.
Elowynn shook her head. It was only then that she realized one person hadn’t reacted at all.
Caelyn stood at the far side of the chamber.
Somehow, while everyone else's attention had been on Lora, he had drifted across the room without anyone noticing—not even himself.
He stood beside one of the floor channels where it disappeared beneath a row of damaged sigils. His fingers hovered over the stone but never quite touched it.
“Caelyn?”
He blinked. For a moment he looked genuinely disoriented. Then his gaze dropped to the floor between them, and Elowynn saw the exact moment he comprehended he had crossed the room.
