Sleep avoided Ian like it owed him money. While the rest of the palace surrendered to exhausted silence, he remained seated at the long oak table in the lower archive chamber, Ethan's guidebook spread open before him, three additional tomes stacked at his elbow, and at least six sheets of parchment ruined by furious revisions. A single lantern burned low beside him, the flame bending each time a draft slipped through the stone corridor, and every flicker seemed to mock the steady, unwavering problem he could not ignore. the bonds fracturing earlier the other day had left a splinter under his thoughts, and Ian had learned not too long ago that splinters left unattended festered into something obscene.
He dragged a hand down his face and reread the same margin note for perhaps the twentieth time, Ethan's handwriting sharp and annoyingly precise even in warning;
"Resonance destabilizes under suppression, not intensity". Ian exhaled slowly.
