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“That was yearning,” she interrupted. “Yearning with tools, to be more accurate.”

Caelyn looked horrified as Agatha just squinted at him; they both started walking again, this time in silence.

Eventually he spoke just above a whisper. “She sounds… different.”

A hint of amusement touched Agatha’s features as she huffed a breath out. “Yes. She does.”

Caelyn peered down at the folded letter in his pocket before tugging it out, staring at the violet-blue wax seal. He stroked a thumb over it.

“She used to write about Veylspire like it was the most beautiful place in the world.”

“And now?” Agatha prompted.

He was quiet for a short time before he exhaled a slow breath. “Now she writes like someone trying very hard not to say certain things.”

Agatha looked away toward the dark corridor in which they had ascended.

Yes. She does.

That was how it began.

With silence and fear. With people learning which truths were dangerous to speak aloud or write with quill and ink.

Agatha suddenly felt every single one of her seventy turnings. She knew, somewhere far to the north, beneath towers of observatories and snow-covered bridges, and telescopes so grand—Elowynn Selvicta was beginning to ask questions about things history had buried a long time ago. Questions even Agatha had once wanted answered but never had the courage to ask.

But the young scholar had always been relentless once her curiosity took hold.

To Agatha, there was never a question whether or not Elowynn would uncover these truths.

There was only the question of when.

PART III

“The Dimming didn't arrive all at once.

First the stars vanished.

Then people began vanishing from themselves."

— From The Early Observations

Chapter Seventeen

“Power does not always announce itself through conquest. Sometimes it enters a room with ink on its fingers and waits for everyone else to notice too late.”

— From the teachings of Council Archivist Thorne

Hearthfall, 755 A.V.

Five turnings in Veylspire had passed with astonishing speed. Books had become manuscripts, classmates had become colleagues, and unanswered questions had only multiplied.

Elowynn had earned the respect of scholars she once would have been too intimidated to approach. Some considered her brilliant. Others found her thoroughly exasperating. Nearly everyone agreed she asked far too many questions.

She had also developed an unfortunate appreciation for noble fashion, expensive jewelry, and particularly beautiful crystals—a transformation Sister Agatha would undoubtedly blame on prolonged exposure to a city like Veylspire.

While Elowynn had changed, the letters she received suggested life remained much the same in Lumenshire.

The western sea still battered the cliffs beneath the abbey. Sister Agatha still terrorized young Sisters, acolytes, scholars, and unfortunate kitchen staff with equal conviction. Seralyth still wrote in her elegant, disciplined script upon expensive parchment scented with rosewater and old grief. Her letters were invariably somber, so much so that Elowynn often found herself delayed in reading them.