The phrase became a drumbeat in my mind. Eastern books. It was either a location or a subject, and my constrained existence left me only one avenue to explore it. The academy library's east wing was a relic from a more austere age, a place of stony silence and forgotten scholarship. It was also, due to its obscurity, the least patrolled area under my new regime of surveillance.
I submitted a written request to Inquisitor Greyford, outlining a proposed research topic: "Ecclesiastical Foundations of Borderland Chapels in the Pre-Imperial Era." It was dry, pious, and perfectly suited to the east wing's holdings. His approval came back the same afternoon, a single, sharp word scrawled at the bottom: "Proceed. Clarity of purpose is paramount." A warning, not a blessing.
The following morning, after the mandated dawn service that left me hollow-eyed, I presented myself at the library's main desk. The librarian, Master Fenwick, peered over his spectacles at my probationary pass and the Inquisitor's note. He sighed, a sound of pure bureaucratic suffering, and inscribed my name, purpose, and time of entry into a heavy logbook with excruciating slowness. "The east wing is not to be treated as a refuge for daydreams, Lady Thorne. The materials are fragile. Your access is logged. You will be observed."
"Understood, Master Fenwick."
The east wing was a different world. The central library was all warm wood and golden lamplight; this was a catacomb of knowledge. Cold, damp air seeped from the stone walls. The only illumination came from intermittent magical sconces that cast a weak, blue-white light, creating pools of visibility amidst long tunnels of shadow. The stacks here were iron, not wood, and they were crammed with massive, leather-bound folios, scroll cases thick with dust, and treatises bound in cracked vellum.
I started with the central catalogue, a monstrous ledger on a stone pedestal. The entries were handwritten in a variety of inks and scripts, some so faded they were ghosts. I looked for anything that might align with Kaelen's warning. Eastern books. I ran my finger down columns: Eastern Trade Routes… Eastern Flora… The Eastern Schism (Theological)… Eastern Border Cartography, 1100-1200…
Border cartography. That could be it. I noted the location: Stack 9, Shelf Theta.
The act of searching was agonisingly slow. Every half-hour, a proctor—a different one each time—would appear at the end of the aisle, note my presence in a small book, and depart without a word. The surveillance was a constant psychological pressure.
In Stack 9, I found the cartography folios. They were enormous, requiring a dedicated reading table. I spread the first one open: a beautifully illustrated map of the empire's eastern border from eight centuries past. The Thorne March was labelled "The Grey Wilder". The Frost Duchy was "The Ice-Scarred Hold". But it was an annotation in the corner, in a tiny, precise script, that caught my eye: "Ley convergence noted at site of old Rift-spawn incursion, sealed by ward-song. Ref: 'Compendium of Seals', E-Wing Vault."
Ward-song. The term resonated in my memory, a faint echo from Selene's studies. It was an archaic form of magic, more music than incantation, used for great bindings and seals. The Church had suppressed most knowledge of it centuries ago, deeming it too close to the primordial forces it sought to contain.
The Compendium of Seals was in the Vault—a restricted annexe within the east wing, requiring authorisation from the Archbishop or the Crown Prince himself. I would never get that.
But the catalogue listed its previous location before being deemed restricted: Stack 7, Shelf Gamma.
I moved deeper into the wing. The air grew colder. Stack 7 was in a corner where the sconce light had failed. I ignited a small, permissible palm crystal from my pocket. Its meagre glow revealed the shelf. The space for the Compendium was empty, a rectangle of darker wood against the dust.
Disappointment was a sharp stone in my throat. Had I hit a dead end?
Something glinted in the weak light. Not on the shelf where the book had been, but behind it, pushed to the very back. A smooth, grey river stone, utterly ordinary yet completely out of place in this temple of vellum and ink.
I reached in, my fingers brushing it.
A jolt, like touching frozen lightning, shot up my arm. My holy power, always simmering just beneath my skin, flared in sympathetic resonance. A soft, golden light—visible only to me—flickered across my fingertips for a terrified second before I clenched my fist, smothering it.
The stone was no ordinary rock. It was a ward stone. A tiny, focused piece of boundary magic, inert to most but humming with dormant power to a sensitive touch. To my touch. It had been left here. Deliberately.
My breath fogged in the cold air. This was Kaelen's signpost. But what was it marking?
I examined the shelf itself. The old iron was scrolled with simple designs. I wiped away centuries of grime with the edge of my sleeve. There, carved into the side of the shelf, nearly invisible, was a symbol: a circle with a single vertical line through its centre. The old sigil for "convergence" or "nexus".
Heart pounding, I placed the ward stone directly over the carved symbol on the shelf.
Nothing.
Frustration bit at me. I leaned my forehead against the cold iron. Think. Why here? What converges?
The answer came not from my mind, but from my blood. The holy power, agitated by the stone and the symbol, reacted to my desperation. It wasn't a conscious release. It was a leak. A tiny thread of gold, no thicker than a hair, escaped my control and connected my skin to the ward-stone.
The effect was instantaneous and overwhelming.
My fate-sight didn't just activate; it detonated.
For three terrifying, glorious seconds, the world dissolved into a tapestry of light. The stone shelves were outlines of grey rock. But superimposed over them were rivers of energy—the silver-blue of my thread to Kaelen, the fragile blue to Lucian, and the sickly yellow of Gavin's fear still clinging to the air. And from this exact spot, I saw a malignant knot of pulsating, venom-green threads. They didn't just run along the floor; they plunged downward, through the stone floor of the library, deep into the foundations of the academy. They converged, like roots drawing poison from soil, on a single, dense point of darkness far below.
The vision shattered. I gasped, staggering back, my palms slamming against the opposite shelf to keep from falling. Nausea rolled through me. The afterimage of those green threads was burnt into my vision.
I looked at the shelf. The ward-stone was no longer grey. It glowed with a soft, internal blue light. And on its surface, words flickered as if written in water, visible only to my magically altered sight:
"Below the heart of learning, the first saint's folly sleeps. He who would break the cycle must wake what heaven keeps."
The message was a riddle wrapped in a threat. The first saint's folly. Erebus. The corruption below—the nexus of those green threads—was connected to him. To the origin of the cycle I was meant to break.
And I had to wake it?
I snatched the now-active ward stone from the shelf. It was warm, humming with a gentle, insistent frequency that seemed to pull toward the floor. A compass pointing to the source of the corruption.
The sound of measured footsteps on stone snapped me back to reality. I shoved the stone deep into the inner pocket of my gown, turned, and began pretending to examine a random folio on a nearby shelf.
Inquisitor Greyford rounded the corner of Stack 7.
He moved silently for a man in heavy robes. His flinty eyes took in the scene: me, visibly pale and breathing too quickly, the disturbed dust on the shelf, and the empty space where the Compendium had been.
"Lady Thorne. Your research seems… physically taxing." His voice was dry as tomb dust.
"The air is very chill here, Inquisitor. And the subject matter is grave." I gestured vaguely at the folio in my hands, a treatise on "Funerary Rites of the Mountain Clans".
"Indeed." He took a step closer. His gaze felt like a physical weight, probing for cracks. "You have been in this section for some time. Have you found the ecclesiastical clarity you sought?"
"I am beginning to understand that foundations are often buried, Inquisitor. One must dig through layers of… accumulation to find the truth." I kept my voice level, meeting his eyes. A challenge.
He held my stare for a long, silent moment. "A perceptive metaphor. But be cautious, child. Some foundations are buried for a reason. Disturbing them can bring the whole structure down upon you." He glanced at the shelf behind me, his eyes lingering on the now-empty spot. "Your reflection is due tomorrow. I will be paying particular attention to your conclusions about… hidden truths."
He turned and walked away, his footsteps fading into the silence.
I stood frozen, the ward-stone a burning secret against my ribs. I had found a terrifying piece of the puzzle. But in doing so, I had confirmed the worst of Greg fords suspicions. He knew I was hunting for something buried.
The race was no longer just about investigation. It was about who would reach the foundation first—me or the Inquisitor sent to bury the truth forever.