Thomson picks up the glyph, handling it now with a reverence that borders on fear. He doesn't offer it to me again. He just studies it, then looks at me, his expression a complex tapestry of intrigue, alarm, and a grim sort of validation.
"A focal point," he murmurs, more to himself than to me. "A key. Maxwell was right. He just didn't have the right locksmith." He looks at me, and in the dim candlelight, his eyes seem ancient. "The Gloom is a vast, diffuse consciousness. A sea of negativity. But this... this is a specific note. A specific thought. A command, maybe."
"I don't think so." I say, the words tumbling out of me, my mind still reeling from the psychic backlash. "It didn't feel like a command. It felt... like a place. A source."
Footsteps, light heels, break through the sound of my voice. Amelia stands at the entrance to the chamber. I see her for a flash, her face all worry in her nightgown, before she stops dead. Her eyes go from me to Thomson, then to the glyph in his hand.
"What's going on?" she asks, her voice a near-whisper. "Caden, you look... you're white as a sheet."
"Go back to bed, Amelia," Thomson says, his tone sharp and dismissive. But she doesn't move.
"I heard a shout." Her gaze is fixed on me, wide with concern. "I thought... I thought something had happened."
"Nothing you need to be concerned with." Thomson's patience is wearing thin. This is Order business. Not student business.
She ignores him and moves over to kneel at my side, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead. "You're ice cold."
"It's fine," I manage to say, pushing her hand away. I'm not angry. I'm... ashamed. I don't want her to see me like this. Shaken. Vulnerable. A monster who got burned by his own toy.
Her green eyes search my face, and she sees more than I want her to. She sees the fear. The lingering echo of that infinite despair. She doesn't understand what it is, but she understands that it's bad.
"What did you do to him?" she demands, turning on Thomson, her illusionist's bravado a flimsy shield for her genuine fear.
"I did nothing to him," Thomson says, his voice dangerously quiet. "Do you believe me foolish enough to attack the one thing we have to defend ourselves if these wards were to fail?" He gestures with the glyph. "I simply tested a hypothesis. And Caden... provided an answer."
The crypt fills with a third presence. Flynn. He stands at the archway, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He looks rumpled and grumpy, but his gaze is sharp. "What's all the yelling about? Some of us are trying to not be zombies tomorrow."
Thomson glances over to Flynn, then back to us.
There's an expression I can't quite decipher in the dim light, before he turns his back to us.
"It is late. All three of you must rest. I do not yet know what tomorrow will bring, but we must sleep while we can. Go." He walks away toward the wall and starts examining something else on the table.
It's not a dismissal of our question. It is an order. A command for us to leave.
"Come on," Flynn says, putting a hand on my shoulder. "He's right. Whatever this is, it'll keep. You need to lie down before you fall down." He tries to pull me to my feet, but my legs are shaky.
Amelia supports me from the other side, her arm linked through mine. "Lean on me," she says softly. Her touch is warm, a stark contrast to the cold that still lingers in my bones.
We walk out of the main chamber and back into the silent corridor of barracks. Flynn doesn't ask what happened. He just walks on my other side, a solid, silent presence. For once, his easy-going confidence is a comfort, not an irritation.
Back in our room, Flynn shoves me gently toward my cot. "Sit." He disappears for a moment, then returns with a rough wool blanket from the dusty chest at the foot of one of the bunks. He drapes it over my shoulders. It's scratchy and smells of mothballs and ancient stone, but it's warm.
Amelia sits on the edge of my cot, her expression still etched with worry. "Caden, you have to tell us. What happened back there?"
I shake my head. "I can't."
"Was it the glyph?" Flynn asks, leaning against the bunk bed frame. He's not being nosy. He's being practical. "You touched it, and you freaked out. Simple as that."
"It wasn't... simple," I manage, my voice raspy. "It was... like touching a live wire, but the wire was made of... all the bad things that have ever happened."
"All the bad things that have happened...?"
"I saw - I felt - your father's accident and the death...of Flynn's fish." I have...no memory of this. I don't. Yet it just. Comes out, as if I had. I'm as stunned to hear it as they are. My mind is a chaotic mess.
Flynn's face twists in a complicated expression, half confusion, half old grief. "My... my fish? The one from when I was seven? What in the blazes are you talking about?"
I stare at my own hands, as if they belong to someone else. "I don't know."
Amelia's breath hitches. She reaches out and takes my trembling hand. Her fingers are warm, grounding. "Caden, that's not possible. That's... not how anything works."
"I know," I say, my mind reeling from the implications.
And I shake my head. "I don't. Know."
I don't.
I don't understand what just happened at all. What I said about Flynn's fish...that's not my memory. I've never even heard about Flynn's fish. So why did I say it?
And the feeling I got from the glyph...
It wasn't a memory.
It was the raw emotion of the event.
The disappointment, the childish, all-consuming grief of losing a beloved pet.
For a moment, I can feel it - but it's a distant memory, slipping away from my mind like oil dripping from my hands. The only thing that sticks is the vague understanding that...it was an emotion from the event.
A raw emotion of someone else's. And I'm the only one who can feel it.
What did that glyph do to me?
"It's late," Flynn says, breaking the tense silence. He runs a hand through his messy blonde hair, his expression a mixture of concern and deep-seated exhaustion. "We're all running on fumes and terror. Caden's exhausted, we're exhausted. This doesn't have to make sense right now."
He's trying to defuse the situation, to push the impossible into a corner to be dealt with later. It's a Flynn solution, simple and direct. And right now, it's the only one I have the energy for.
"Flynn's right," Amelia says softly, though she doesn't let go of my hand. "Whatever happened... you need rest, Caden. We all do."
I want to argue. I want to demand answers, to understand the horrifying new dimension of my curse. But I'm too tired. My mind is a shattered mirror, reflecting a thousand fractured images I can't piece together. The only thing I have the strength to do is what they say.
I nod, a jerky, uncertain motion. "Okay."
Amelia finally lets go of my hand and stands up. She hesitates for a moment, her green eyes full of a fierce, protective light. "Get some sleep, Caden. We'll figure this out in the morning. Together."
She says the word 'together' like a promise. Like a vow.
She plants her hands on her hips and gives a short breath. "I'll take the spare bed-"
"What?!" Flynn chokes. "You can't do that! This is a boy's room!" He's already turning a shade of red.
"Flynn, we just survived the apocalypse," Amelia says, her tone dangerously calm. "I don't think propriety is our biggest concern right now. Besides," she glares at him, "I'm not leaving him alone."
"And you think I will?" Flynn shoots back, puffing out his chest.
"Then you can both stay," I say, my voice flat and dead. The absurdity of their bickering is a welcome distraction from the abyss that's opened up inside me. "But if either of you snores, I'm throwing you into the hall."
Amelia's lips twitch, almost a smile. Flynn just rolls his eyes and climbs onto the top bunk of the set. "Fine. But you're taking the bottom bunk, Amelia."
"Excuse me-?" She starts.
"You heard me," Flynn says, from above. "I'm not having you sneak out in the middle of the night to go check on Caden and falling off the top bunk. You take the bottom. I'll keep watch from up here."
"Just how clumsy do you think I am-?!"
I try to say...something to argue and tell the both of them to stop their bickering.
But before I can, I realize I've fallen asleep.