Date: April 7, 541, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
The morning in Ligra dawned clear, but for the inhabitants of the cubbyhole above the tannery, it was filled with invisible tension. Maël, contrary to yesterday's fright, woke up with a disarming smile on his face. He hummed some frivolous port song under his breath, deftly brewing herbal tea on a tiny spirit stove. His optimism seemed almost inappropriate to Dur, given that professional trackers from the "Inner Circle" were tailing them.
"Why are you so cheerful?" Dur asked, checking the sharpness of his knife. "We're surrounded, and you're acting like tomorrow is the Harvest Festival."
Maël turned, his brown eyes gleaming with slyness. He handed Dur a mug from which a sharp steam rose.
"That's exactly why I'm cheerful, my forest friend! If I walk around with the face of a beaten dog, the trackers will know I'm scared. But if I'm cheerful and carefree, they'll start to doubt. Maybe I'm not a fugitive? Maybe I'm just a fool? And catching fools is boring, remember your own words?"
"Listen to the plan," Maël perched on the edge of the table, his voice dropping but not losing its energy. "We can't just wait for them to figure us out. We need to understand *what* exactly they know. In Ligra, every sneeze is recorded. Taxes, patrol reports, arrival lists—it all flows into the archives. The Main Archive in the Estate is out of the question, the security is so tight a fly couldn't get through without a pass. But there's the Peripheral Archive of the Northern Sector. They keep 'second-order' records there: informer reports from Whisperers, reports on market scuffles, and lists of freelance employees, like you."
Dur narrowed his eyes. He was far from stupid and immediately understood where Maël was heading.
"You want to break into the scribes' den?"
"Exactly!" Maël snapped his fingers. "They're currently changing shifts because of the quarterly report. Chaos, mountains of paper, and sleepy clerks. With your 'Shadow of the Eagle' token, you'll breeze through the first checkpoint. And I… I'll be your 'assistant registrar.' We'll check if there's any record of a 'suspicious youth with aristocratic manners' after our visit to the Worn Cauldron."
***
The building of the Peripheral Archive was a squat, gloomy structure of gray stone, almost windowless. To Dur, it seemed like a giant crypt, where instead of corpses, dead words lay on yellowed parchment. The air here was still and heavy, saturated with the smell of book dust, old ink, and dampness.
At the entrance, Dur silently presented his copper token. The guard, bored by the massive door, barely glanced at the eagle.
"To the duty registrar, on Horn's business," Dur said curtly, as Maël had instructed.
"Pass through, Shadow. Sector B-4 is cluttered with crates, don't trip," the guard yawned, letting them in.
Maël followed, head humbly bowed, clutching a folder of blank sheets to his chest. But Dur saw how quickly and keenly his friend scanned the corridors. Maël navigated this bureaucratic citadel with surprising confidence. He knew where to turn, which staircases led to the repositories, and which to the administrative offices.
When they reached a deep basement hall lined with endless rows of shelves, Dur felt a chill run over his skin. The stone vaults pressed down on his shoulders. Here, his forest senses were almost useless—no wind, no smells of living nature. Only the stifling spirit of the chancellery.
"Stand watch by the entrance to this aisle," Maël whispered, his optimism replaced by intense focus. "If you hear steps with a metallic jingle—it's a patrol. If just shuffling—it's a clerk, you can ignore them."
Maël dove into the section labeled "Operational Reports: Northern Market." His fingers flew over the spines of folders with incredible speed. Dur stood in the shadow of a shelf, his hand resting on his knife hilt. He thought about how strangely his life had changed. A week ago, he was hunting a saber-toothed cat in the forest. That cat was an honest enemy—strong, fast, dangerous. Dur knew that against magical beasts possessing a Spirit, he had almost no chance. If he were to encounter a being of Chelaya's level, endowed with nature's power, he could only sell his life dearly, inflicting a few wounds before being torn apart.
But here, in the archive, the enemy was different. It was made of paper, faceless, and omnipresent. And you couldn't defend against it with an arrow.
About an hour passed. Dur listened nervously to every rustle. Once, an old clerk shuffled past with a candle, muttering something about a "shortage of alums in the ledger." Dur froze, merging with the shadows, and the old man rasped past without noticing him.
"Found it…" Maël breathed, emerging from the darkness. His face was pale and serious. He held a thin sheet in his hands. "Look."
Dur glanced at the paper. There, in uneven handwriting, was written: *"Object No. 12-B. Sighted in the Worn Cauldron tavern. Dressed as a commoner, but movements betray training in Agrim etiquette. Connection to Horn's new tracker. 'Second Circle' observation recommended. Signed: Shadow-3."*
"'Shadow-3'—that's the woman in the corner," Maël whispered. "But look at the date. This report was made this morning. They don't know who I am yet, Dur. They only *suspect*. But see this little mark in the corner?"
Maël pointed to a tiny image of an eye inside a triangle.
"That's a system tracking mark. It means the information has already been sent to Sarim's central apparatus. Dur, this system… it's too perfect. Ligra isn't just a city, it's a web. You touch one strand, and the spider at the other end of the city already knows where you are."
Dur looked at the endless rows of shelves. Millions of sheets, millions of fates, filed and numbered.
"Can't we do anything?" he asked.
"We can buy time," Maël quickly returned the folder to its place. "They're looking for a man with Agrim manners. So I need to become even 'dirtier.' And we both need to be so useful to Horn that he'll shield us with his broad back from the 'Inner Circle.'"
As they left the archive, Maël was again smiling at the guard at the entrance and even cracked a joke about "dust rats that will soon eat all the reports." The guard chuckled lazily.
But outside, once they were at a safe distance, Maël suddenly stopped and looked at his hands.
"Dur, Ligra is just a small town on the outskirts, isn't it?" he said in a quiet, uncharacteristically serious voice. "The outskirts of the Family's lands. If the system is like this here, imagine what it's like in the Capital or the central cities. We're trying to hide in a sandbox while mountains are being built around us."
Dur looked east, towards where other Agrim cities, huge and powerful, lay hidden beyond the hills.
"We'll become stronger, Maël," Dur said, and there was steel in his voice. "In the forest, I learned that even the smallest animal can survive if it knows paths the predator doesn't. We'll find our paths in this stone."
Maël nodded, his usual optimism returning, but now tempered by cold knowledge. They walked along Grumbler's Street, two friends who had just realized: their game with the Agrim system was no longer just hide-and-seek. Now it was a war for the right to remain unnoticed in a world that forgets not a single word.
Dur adjusted the bow on his back. He didn't yet know his own dream, he hadn't yet told his friend what gnawed at his soul at night, but today he understood one thing: to reach his goal, he would have to learn to be not only a shadow in the forest, but also a ghost in these dusty archives. And Maël, clever, smiling Maël, was his best ally in this. For now.