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There were no word-breaks, no stops. Only the same four shapes recurring, turned, inverted, doubled back.

She tilted her head and let her eyes go soft, the way her father used to make her do with a damaged page.

Don’t read it. Listen to it. Where does the hand slow down?

There. A third of the way along, where the shapes crowded then opened out. It wasn’t a sentence, it was a sound, repeated. The same note struck over and over, and at intervals, a longer one.

She heard herself make a small noise.

“What is it?” Julen asked.

“It’s a notation.” Her mouth had gone dry. “A held note. Someone wrote down a held note and then wrote it again and again along a hundred feet of wall.”

“Why would anyone—”

“There’s a break in it.” She followed the line with her finger to where the pattern faltered and resumed differently. “Here, it changes. It doesn’t stop. It just goes… flat.”

And suddenly she was on the cliff road again between Eryssan and Meridon, with the light going and the horses refusing to walk straight, and Caelith speaking across the fire.

It was not a sound, exactly. More like a held note going flat. Something true, going slightly wrong.

“Maia.” Julen was watching her face. “You’ve gone white.”

“It’s a warning.” She looked back at the wall and the cold in the corridor seemed to arrive all at once. “Someone stood here and wrote down the sound of the world before it tears. This is it. Over and over, the whole length of the passage, so that anyone walking this way would know it when they heard it.”

“Know it when they—” Julen stopped. “You mean anyone walking in.”

“Yes.”

“So it’s not a warning to keep people out.” He had lowered his voice without seeming to notice. “It’s for whoever’s already inside.”

Maia looked at the marks again, at the way each stroke had been cut - the same depth, same angle, a hand that did not hesitate once in a hundred feet. Whoever had done this had done it before and knew exactly what they were writing down.

“And it’s old,” she said. “Older than anything in the Archive. I’ve never seen these shapes in my life, and I’ve read most of the Archive now.”

Julen nodded, his gaze lingering on the walls. “Maia.” His voice had weakened. “Whatever else is down there, it’s down there with him. We—we need to move.”

The corridor opened without warning, with steep stairs going down into some kind of chamber.

There was no door at the bottom, but a gloomy archway and the sound of dripping from the damp along the ceiling. They walked further down, their eyes just managing to see through in the flat, colourless light that seeped from the stone itself.

When they got to the bottom, Maia stopped.

For a moment, the world didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t exist.

Because he was there.

There.

She had not let herself plan this. Not on the road, not on the glass, not on the stairs. Planning it would have meant believing it might happen.

So she had nothing ready. No speech. Not even a first word.

Caelith stood in the corner, leaning on a vertical slab of stone. His surroundings were minimal, a small alcove with a cot bolted to the stone. A small wooden rocking chair and a broken chest of drawers, with bone inlay in a delicate pattern. Ornate for such a desolate place.

Maia stared at him. He didn’t look as she remembered. He looked diminished. His posture was upright, but not by choice. His shoulders were tighter than she remembered, his stillness too much, even for him. The faint glow along his markings was dimmer, uneven in places.

But he was alive.