Quenya watched him think, her voice hesitant. "I know we talked about it before, but let me ask again. Do you really think we should keep digging into this? You saw what happened in Coriel. That wasn't human."

He turned to her. "That's exactly why I can't stop."

Quenya's gaze dropped. "You should know better what would have happened if I hadn't appeared when that demigod had you on your knees. You got some clues from him. Maybe that's all you were meant to find."

Vencian shook his head. "Those weren't answers. They were fragments. The dead demigod said enough to prove there's more. If not him, then someone else knows what it meant."

"Someone else?"

"The man with the sash. And Jerenir. They acted like they recognized something about me."

Quenya frowned slightly. "Both of them wanted the chalice."

"Which means both had reason to understand it." He looked back at the wall. "If I can find who they worked for, I might learn what the demigod was talking about—'Fallen of the Fateful,' 'Genesis,' 'Espara,' all of it."

Quenya hovered a little nearer, still cautious. "You think the cult is the place to start?"

"It's the only path left," he said. "Every thread leads there. I don't need to catch all of them—just one. From there, everything else unravels."

She stayed quiet for a moment. "Then promise me you'll remember why you're doing this. Curiosity and purpose aren't the same thing."

He met her eyes. "I'm aware. Purpose keeps me alive. Curiosity tells me where to look."

Quenya gave a slow nod, accepting it. "Then this is that somewhere."

Vencian's expression settled. "Yes. It starts here."

She glanced at his hand. "And what about that?"

He lifted his palm. The tattooed teeth marks spread apart as if the skin had drawn a breath, and the sword rose from within, its surface a muted gray under the lamplight.

The mark was not a simple engraving. It had taken him weeks to learn that. What looked like black ink was a passage—a gate, or something close to it. When he first discovered it, he had thought it a trick of their pact, a side effect of the bond with Quenya. But after testing it again and again, he understood it led somewhere else.

He couldn't see that place, but Quenya could. When she entered through the mark, she found only a void filled with drifting red fog, endless and without sound. She called it empty, though not dead.

Through it, he could push or pull anything he wished, so long as it belonged to him. For now, he kept only the sword there. Carrying it at his waist had become irritating, and this was easier.

He turned the blade once in his grip. It dissolved back into the mark, leaving the faint dark teeth across his palm. The skin closed as if nothing had happened.

Quenya hovered beside him. "Have you started to think you're some chosen one yet?"

He looked at his palm. "Should I?"

The curtain swayed behind them. The board waited, full of half-finished lines.

Vencian turned away. "Guess we'll have another busy day tomorrow."

— — —

That night passed without any dream.

By morning, the mansion was quiet again. Vencian sat in the lecture hall at the academy.

Professor Thalverin's lecture hall was silent except for the scrape of chalk against slate. Rows of students filled the benches, heads angled toward the professor as he spoke of preservation ratios in ancient capitals.

Vencian sat near the middle. His notes were precise, but his attention drifted between the carved ridges of the model and Thalverin's voice. The topic was restoration of post-Imperial cathedrals. It cut too close to memory. How many of those ruins still bore names erased by the same sort of cleansing that buried ours?

Thalverin gestured to the model's cracked foundation. "Observe how later builders reinforced faith through repetition. Each arch mirrors another, creating the illusion of permanence where history kept failing."

The professor's tone carried faint irony. Vencian recognized it. So did Roselys, standing beside the desk with her ledger and quill. She wrote quickly, expression calm, though her eyes lifted once, meeting his for an instant before returning to the page.

The lecture ended soon after. Students rose in a rush of parchment and conversation. Thalverin dismissed them with a brief nod and left through the side door.

Vencian gathered his notes. Elias fell into step beside him, half-smiling. "You look like you've been through confession."

"Thalverin likes sermons in disguise."

Elias chuckled. "Let's get something to eat before next—"

Roselys's voice carried from the front. "I need assistance moving the reference models to the archive. Anyone available?"

Several hands went up.

Vencian turned to Elias. "I'll join them. Won't take long."

Elias gave him a puzzled look. "Since when do you volunteer for heavy lifting?"

"Since today."

Elias studied him, then shrugged. "Fine. Try not to disappear this time."

Vencian ignored the remark and moved toward the front. Roselys's brows lifted when he volunteered, though she said nothing. She distributed the smaller pieces among the students, then led the group through the back corridor lined with plaster busts.

Halfway down the stairs, she stopped and turned slightly toward him. "These go to a different section. You can handle those alone, yes?"

He took the heavier crate from her without reply. The others continued down another passage, their footsteps fading.

The air grew cooler near the archive wing. Dust softened the smell of stone and varnish. They worked in silence, setting models onto marked shelves and stacking old survey scrolls.

Each sound—the scrape of wood, the rustle of paper—seemed to test the space between them.

If she meant to talk, she'd have done it already.

Vencian placed another box aside. Roselys adjusted a frame on the next shelf.

"You've been avoiding me," she said finally.

He kept his gaze on the crate. "Observant."

Her hands paused as Vencian continued. "You've been watching me avoid you, which means you wanted to talk but didn't approach. Interesting choice."

"I assumed you'd prefer distance after Coriel."

He straightened and faced her. "You assumed wrong. Distance implies fear. I'm not afraid of you."

Her eyes met his. "Then what are you?"

He stopped at the stairwell landing, crate still in hand. "Curious why I haven't tried to leverage what happened?"

The words hung between them. Her expression shifted, faint but clear; both understood what that meant.

They resumed sorting. The quiet that followed was different. It was no longer a simple absence of speech but the presence of calculation.

Neither raised their voice. He could feel her watching him, measuring whether his composure was armor or ease. She's waiting to see if I'll draw first.

They worked again in silence, rearranging the heavier bound volumes onto higher racks. The quiet felt different, strategic. A field test.

Roselys set the folio aside, eyes drifting to a cracked bust near the wall. "This reminds me of a short story I heard a long time ago," she said, tracing the dust along its base. "Wanna hear it?"

Vencian stacked another ledger before replying. "You may have a thing for short stories. You told me one during our first meeting."

Her mouth curved faintly. "Then here's another."

She rested against the table, hands loosely crossed. "During the first generations of Arkspren, there lived a king named Iseren Calithar."

Her voice was calm, instructional, but with a hint of curiosity beneath it—like she was studying how he'd respond more than the tale itself.

"He wasn't cruel by birth," she went on, "only curious. He was bonded to the Arche of the Black Lotus, the dream-bound Archean that ruled sleep, death, and the space between both. It taught him to walk through other people's minds. At first, he used it to heal. He cured nightmares and eased soldiers before death."

She paused to shift a stack of parchment. "But kindness isn't an anchor. His Archean told him he could do more, that if he aligned his dreams with others, the world could be peaceful."

Vencian leaned slightly on the crate, silent.

"So he began his reign of sleep. Each night, he entered his subjects' dreams. He gave them visions of harmony and devotion. When they woke, they believed he was righteous. Priests dreamed of his approval and called it revelation."

Roselys looked at the ceiling as if reading invisible lines there. "In time, all of Calithar dreamed as one. His dream."

She shifted tone slightly. "But the Black Lotus fed on contradiction. The more he synchronized them, the more he lost himself. Until one night, he met something that wasn't his creation—a Banshee. It spoke through a blind girl's mouth. It said, 'You sought certainty, Dreamwright, but trust born from control is rot in disguise.'"

— — —

Author's note: I'm aware the story is progressing slowly. Just want to reassure you that it's going to pick up pace soon.

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