Page 85

Maia’s gaze drifted to the narrow window cut into the stone wall. Beyond it, the Fracture pulsed faintly against the horizon, still steady. As if it’d always been like that. As if nothing had been taken or bled from it.

“Colwyn?” Julen’s voice sharpened slightly. “We can’t just wander toward the Fracture. The Umbralyn would sense it instantly.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m thinking.”

Her fingers pressed against the cold glass. If the records were gone, if every official trace of him had been stripped away…

Then they were looking in the wrong place. There was a way to know where to look - there had to be.

She just hadn’t found it yet.

***

Later, back in her quarters, Maia lit a single lamp and sat down at her desk. The habit was an old one, something she returned to when her thoughts refused to settle into order. When the world grew too large to hold in her head alone.

She drew a fresh sheet of parchment toward her and hesitated only a moment before writing.

Dearest Father,

I’m still here. Still safe. At the moment.

I miss you.

I’m learning a great deal. Though I no longer know what is true and what is not. The lines are… blurring.

But I am trying, Father. I am trying to do what is right, even if I no longer know whether the same rules apply to everyone.

Her hand slowed. The ink pooled slightly where the quill lingered too long against the page.

She had spent so long chasing answers through official channels, the archives, the records, the structures she had been taught to trust, that she hadn’t stopped to consider what happened when those systems failed.

Or worse, when they lied.

If what they suspected about the Umbralyn was true… then truth itself could be rewritten here or buried so completely that no official trace remained.

Like Caelith.

She sighed as she went back to writing. The last time she had written like this had been weeks ago. Before the wraith. Before the chamber and the glass reaper. Before everything had fractured into something she no longer recognised.

Before he had been taken.

Before she fell for someone she was fairly sure had been lying to her about something enormous, and went looking for him anyway.

When she looked down, the quill had made a mark in the margin without her: the first curve of a C. She didn’t cross it out. Her grip tightened slightly on the quill, her thoughts circling each other.

There had been no record of what happened in that chamber, no record of what Caelith had done for her, no record of what they had seen. Erased, Selinne had called it. Somewhere no one is meant to survive, Julen had said.

And yet, she remembered.

Memory did not disappear when records did. It distorted, faded, changed shape with time. But it could not be rewritten by someone else. Not entirely.

Caelith had never trusted records, or relied on what was written. He had always spoken as though truth lived somewhere else.

Her mind flickered, searching. Not through the Archive, the readings of the fragments or reports, but through moments.

Write more to your father, Caelith had said to her the last night she wrote. It’s dangerous to forget what anchors you.

Her mind went back to when she had stood in his quarters, drawn to him, despite herself. It was one of the first times she had felt that way towards him. But there was something else.