Page 4

She hadn’t slept properly.

Her assigned chamber was narrow and high-ceilinged, with a single arched window overlooking a sliver of sea. The bed was smaller than the one in her father’s cottage, its straw mattress rustling each time she turned. And she had turned often, watching the lantern thin and swell with every draught beneath the door.

But the room was hers. She had never had a door she could close and know no one would open it without asking.

In the morning, she unpacked what little she’d brought and lingered longest over the thin stack of her father’s annotated texts, their margins dense with his precise hand. The bookshelf above her desk was nearly bare. She ran her fingers along the empty wood, imagining the weight of the volumes she had yet to earn, if she was permitted to stay long enough to earn them.

She had left little behind. Only her father, who had pressed his hand to her cheek before she departed and told her to write. There had been no mother to speak of, not for years now. Her father, who filled the gap with books instead of another wife, never seemed to think they needed anything else and Maia had agreed with him.

Many women in the village had chosen to start families and tend their homes, and at twenty-two, people had long since started to wonder why she had not done the same. But her father raised her to read, to explore, to want a world beyond rearing children.

Maia descended the narrow spiral stair from the apprentices’ quarters as she made her way towards the Archive’s great hall for her first day of work.

The Great Hall opened before her like the inside of a cathedral given over to ink. Rows of oak desks stretched beneath high stone arches, their surfaces scarred by decades of quills and careless elbows. Light filtered through tall windows in pale bands, catching dust motes that drifted like slow snow between the shelves. The shelves themselves climbed three storeys, connected by narrow ladders and iron-railed galleries, the books’ spines cracked and faded, some leaning against each other - too tired to stand alone. Somewhere above, a pigeon had found its way in and was cooing softly from the rafters.

No one looked up.

A different steward directed her to a narrow desk along the east wall. “You’ll begin with indexing,” he said briskly. “And transcription. The Elders will assign translation work when appropriate.”

When appropriate. Maia dipped her head, wondering if that day would ever come. “Yes, of course.”

She set her satchel down and looked around. The other apprentices had satchels of tooled leather. Hers was her father’s, the strap restitched twice, and she had been proud of it until this morning.

Her hands suddenly felt too small for the room. She traced the calluses along her thumb and forefinger: the proof she needed that she belonged here. At least, she hoped so.

Around her, the hall breathed with quiet intensity. Quills scratched and pages turned. Occasionally, someone muttered in irritation at a stubborn line of script. But none of the scribes actually spoke of the Fracture.

She bent over her assigned texts, working through manifests first, then a damaged ledger, then fragments of commentary copied decades ago. Nothing remarkable or forbidden.

She caught some of the whispers drifting between desks when supervisors passed.

“…the tremors reached the temple district…”

“…glass in the mortar, they say…”

“…Elders met past midnight…”

Maia kept her head down. Her father had taught her that the first thing you do in a new room is listen. Not to what people say, but to what they avoid saying. The gaps tell you more than the words, he’d told her once. She had carried that habit into every room since, and she carried it here now.

The word Umbralyn surfaced once, hushed, clipped, swallowed almost immediately. Her quill stilled, her head tilted curiously. As a child, she had once climbed the dunes at dusk hoping to glimpse one, but she had seen only fog. But she told herself she felt nothing about that.

Hours passed in more silence, as she thumbed through the commentaries. Her eyes grew weary as the light shifted from white to honey-gold. But as she braced herself to return to her quarters, a sealed bundle was placed upon her desk.

“Newly recovered,” the steward said. “I am told you may understand. Handle carefully.”

Julen, the outspoken apprentice from her first day, glanced over from his own desk as the steward set the bundle down.

“Already?” he muttered, eyebrows lifting. He gave her a look that was equal parts envy and grudging respect. “Try not to translate the whole Fracture before supper, Colwyn.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, not looking at him. “I’ll leave you the hard bits.”

She unwrapped the bundle and her eyes widened. What seemed like a jagged stone she’d been handed was brittle, edges flecked faintly with something that shimmered when it caught the light. Her breath slowed as she realised it was the glass the steward had spoken about the night before.

This was why she had been brought here. This was what her father had spent his life preparing her for without knowing it.

She leaned closer.

“…when the glass shall bleed again…”