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He stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Julen. Maia took it, surprised by the firmness of his grip and the openness of his expression. She wasn’t sure yet whether his boldness was courage or naivety, but either way he was the first person who had spoken to her as though she belonged here.
Before she could offer her own name in return, the steward cleared his throat loudly. “If you are quite finished speculating,” he said, “there is one matter you should understand before tomorrow.”
The apprentices stilled, turning towards him. He clasped both hands behind his back, looking suddenly older in the torchlight.
“Three weeks ago,” he said, “fragments were pulled from the cliffs north of the city. Fresh ones. Broken clean off the Fracture itself.”
A gust rattled the shutters, and someone near the back flinched.
“Crystal?” another asked.
“Glass,” the steward corrected. “Or near enough. And it’s written on— well, I suppose, covered in ancient script. None of our house scribes can read a word of it.”
A script no one could read. Maia’s mind was already turning it over; root sounds, glyph families, the dozen dead tongues she’d catalogued without ever finding a match.
“Has anyone tried reading it aloud?”
She had meant to keep the question in her head. Several apprentices turned to look at her as she felt the heat climb up her neck.
“Some of the older coastal tongues only make sense spoken,” she said, quieter. “The spelling follows the mouth, not the page. If your scribes have been reading it with their eyes, they might have been looking at the wrong thing.”
The steward studied her. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t believe anyone has.”
He looked at her a second longer and then turned back to the group without another word. But she saw him glance down at his list, and she was fairly sure he was checking her name again.
He continued. “This is why each of you received a summons. The Elders requested those with knowledge of dialects and dead languages that have long been overlooked.”
He looked directly at Maia as he said the last word.
“You will begin assisting the senior archivists tomorrow,” the steward said. “Because if the script cannot be translated, we will remain blind to whatever the Fracture is trying to tell us.”
The words settled heavily over the group. Someone shifted, sighing out uneasily.
“And the Umbralyn?” Julen asked again, unable to restrain himself. “What part do they play in this?”
The steward sighed. “They have knowledge of the language used in the earliest records surrounding the Fracture. Knowledge we do not.”
Julen muttered something under his breath, but the steward ignored him.
“You would do well to remember that the peace we live under was not easily won,” he said quietly. “Those who guard the cliffs have kept this city standing for generations.”
He paused, then added: “But the Fracture has begun to stir again.”
Maia shuddered. Outside those narrow windows, the sea wind rose without warning, rattling the shutters. For a moment, she thought she caught the faintest violet flare reflected in the glass.
Eryssan was nothing like the stories she had grown up with. She had come here certain, as she had been her whole life, that there was always something more beneath a story than the story admitted.
2
The Language of Glass
The next morning came clear. Sunlight spilled across Eryssan’s rooftops in pale amber, catching on weathervanes and chimney smoke, turning the harbour below into something that looked, briefly, like a painting.
Gulls wheeled above the fishing boats, their cries carrying up through air that smelled of baking bread and salt. Shutters opened along the lower streets, flower boxes catching the light, and somewhere a cat stretched across a warm doorstep as though the world had always been this gentle.
From the high windows of the Archive, Maia could see it all. And the wrongness threaded through it.
Voices were still hushed and doors opened only halfway. People moved with the particular care of those who had learned not to trust the ground beneath them.
