The air in the library parlor was not merely still; it was a curated sanctuary of silence, designed to filter out the chaotic hum of the harbor a dozen miles away. The room occupied a secondary petal of the manor’s eastern wing, shielded by sinuous curves of living sablewood that followed the organic arcs of a rose in mid-bloom. Unlike the rigid, glass-like stone of the Omnium in Vespyr, Rosethorn breathed. The sweeping wooden supports swallowed the household sounds, reducing the estate’s activity to a low, rhythmic thrum that allowed the shandaryn mind the deep concentration it craved. To Krysaalis, this parlor was the only place where her academic poise felt like a choice rather than a uniform.

Sharing a birth-Circle in Arc 103, Krysaalis and Malyndriel Lyris were peers who had pursued disparate paths through the world’s design. While Krysaalis investigated the weaponized history of the shandaryn through ancient scrolls, Malyndriel had mastered the physical physics of weight and momentum with the blade. The Sentinel stood near the hearth, her blonde hair—the "whispered anomaly" of the Lyris line—catching the amber glow of the harmonium sconces. Even in the quiet, Malyndriel held herself with a grounded, stabilizing presence, a counterpoint to the restless energy of the twins. She was the daughter of one of Valgarion’s sisters, and while she was no Cantor, her presence was like an anchor to Krysaalis’s drifting thoughts.

"And so," Krysaalis said, her voice carrying the unsettling resonance of a woman interrogating her own history, "we look to the sky not as a void, but as a living composition. When the Great Father, Elos, completes his arc to rest within the Citadel of Light, he does not abandon us to the Silence. He leaves behind the Echo."

She gestured toward the wide windows. Outside, the golden disc of Elos (the sun) was dipping toward the horizon, painting the grasslands in the burning violets of the evening’s Retreat. The light caught the dust motes in the air, turning the parlor into a chamber of suspended amber. 

Ashterah Torryaenen, the elder twin by a margin of minutes, was sprawled on a plush couch nearby. She was the mirror of her father, Valgarion—bookish and sharp-eyed—but today her expression was one of profound, intellectual dissatisfaction. She chewed absentmindedly on the end of a silver-capped quill, her gaze fixed on a star-chart that no longer seemed to satisfy her curiosity. Krysaalis watched the girl closely; she knew that Ashterah had been reading the forbidden Anguish of the Heart in secret. The girl wasn't just learning; she was testing the limits of the "Good Lie."

"The Echo," Ashterah repeated, her voice skeptical. "You mean Aurelia, don't you, Krys? The Galactic Ring."

"I do," Krysaalis replied, her heart stuttering over the forbidden "Ninth Scroll" she had recently analyzed in the lightless depths of the Repository. The revelation was jarring; every time she spoke the word 'Cathedral,' she felt the cold, astronomical reality of a 'galaxy' pulling at the seams of her lecture. To the public, Aurelia was a holy fortress of the Sisters, but Krysaalis was beginning to see the "lacunae"—the holes in the story she was paid to tell.

"The priests say Aurelia is a physical fortress," Ashterah continued, closing her tome with a soft clack. "But if the Mother is dead, how does her Citadel remain so bright? Why does the light look like a swirling vortex rather than stone? Father says straight lines don’t resonate, but that looks like a storm of fire."

Krysaalis felt a sharp spike of heat behind her ears—her shandaryn Mask threatening to flush a faint strawberry pink against her rosemilk hair. Until her meeting with Valgarion, she would have answered with absolute conviction. Now, the official scripture felt like ash on her tongue. She was realizing that the A’nira—the sanitized truth woven into the very fabric of Vesprian life—was a shield that had become a shroud.

"The eyes of the flesh often fail to perceive the spirit, Ashterah," Krysaalis said, leaning on a dogma she no longer trusted even as she saw the girl’s eyes sharpen with the realization that her tutor was hedging. "Aurelia appears as a vortex because the Mother's Light bends the very fabric of the sky. What you see as a storm, the heart perceives as a sanctuary."

A sharp, percussive crack of wood on leather interrupted the theology. In the center of the parlor, Torryaen Torryaenen lunged—a kinetic blur on the polished floor. She moved with a fluid, lethal grace, her practice sword whistling in a sequence of strikes Krysaalis felt as a shift in the air pressure around her.

"Sanctuaries are for people who can't hold a blade," Torryaen smirked. She pivoted, balancing her weight with the instinctive precision of an elite Bladedancer. She didn't want the A’nira; she wanted the tangible truth of strike and resistance. Her practice sword was a blunt instrument of the Symphony of Elements, but she handled it with a dancer's rhythm.

Krysaalis turned her gaze to Malyndriel. The Sentinel's presence was grounding, absorbing the frantic energy of the room. Malyndriel stood as she always did—a silent, armored presence whose blonde hair glowed like starmetal in the twilight. The Sentinel’s eyes flickered to the Acolyte, a brief flash of recognition that they were both guardians of secrets the world was not yet ready to hear.

"Sentinel Malyndriel is teaching you the physics of survival," Krysaalis said softly. "I am teaching you the narrative of the soul. Both are required for the Grand Composition."

Torryaen stopped, her blade held at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. "The air feels heavy today, Krys. It smells like iron... like the tension of a string before it snaps."

Krysaalis paused. She closed her eyes, deliberately seeking the threads of the world. In her mind’s eye, the room dissolved into the chained network of lightning arcs—geometric webs of violet and blue threads connecting the twins to the stone and the trees to the wind. The threads were vibrating with an unsettling tension, the patterns fraying at the edges. The harmonium crystals hummed in response, and the sconces flickered in sympathy with the shift in intensity.

"The sea breeze is changing," Krysaalis suggested, though she felt the same visceral dread. She looked out at the stargrass beginning to twinkle in the fields—a sea of bioluminescent light that usually brought her peace. Now, the dim blue-white tufts looked like thousands of eyes waiting for a note that would never come.

"Let us return to the text," Krysaalis said, though her internal Soul-Song sounded out of tune. "Ashterah, read the passage concerning Selyne’s Silent Watch."

Ashterah sighed, her finger finding the place in the book. "The Sisters placed Selyne at the threshold of the Twilight, granting her the moon as a lens to watch the things seen only in the corner of the eye..."

Ashterah’s melodic lilt began to fill the room, but the study was drawing to a close. Krysaalis watched the girl and wondered if the "Good Lie" was the Twins' salvation or their cage. The idea of the A'nira was heretical hearsay to the masses, and seeing Ashterah's testing gaze, Krysaalis knew the girl was already beginning to see through the "beautiful shield" of their nation. The amber light pulsed once more before the door opened, and the arrival of the page shattered the silence.

The heavy, sinuous door at the end of the library parlor swung open with the soft sound of displaced air. Krysaalis felt the breach before she saw it. She was still Attuned to the lightning arcs, and the messenger cut through the geometric web like a jagged, discordant line. The page was a young shandaryn in the navy and silver of the court, standing with a stillness unusual for his age.

"A missive, my lady," the boy said, his voice flat and precise. “From a Therysian Lord-Admiral. It bears an official Torryaenen Seal.”

The combination of words—Therysian, Admiral, Torryaenen—sent a visceral jolt through Krysaalis. She felt her Mask flush a deep strawberry pink as her academic poise frayed. She felt a sudden, sharp pressure in her chest, the weight of a century of silence suddenly pressing in.

“Who is it from?” Ashterah asked, her voice rising from the couch with a note of genuine suspicion.

Beside her, Torryaen didn't mirror her sister’s pose, but her breathing hitched in a subtle, biological cadence—a sympathetic vibration of the birthbond they shared. It was a silent tremor of alarm that Krysaalis could feel through the floorboards, the physical mass of the manor carrying the girl’s tension.

Krysaalis reached out and took the letter. As her fingers brushed the heavy, cream-colored parchment, she didn't just feel the texture of the paper; she felt the weight of its intent. She looked into the boy’s eyes, engaging the deep perception she had honed through her Arcs of study. She looked for the unsteady notes of a rehearsal or the jagged lines of a deception.

She found only clarity. The boy was a clear bell, ringing true. He was exactly what he claimed to be: a vessel for a message he did not understand.

“You may go,” she said, her voice sounding small in the vast, hushed silence of the parlor.

The page bowed and turned on his heel, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone as he departed. The sound faded, leaving the room heavy with the weight of the unopened letter.

Krysaalis turned the parchment over in her hands. The seal was the Triptych of Rond—the gold, silver, and black of the city-state of Reimes.

Reimes, she thought, the name bringing the scent of resinous pines, damp stone, and the distant, briny communal woodsmoke of the Old City. The City of Spectacle.

She knew the history of the Gold Seat—how it had become a symbolic post held by Princyn Ealonde Torryaenen, the elder birthbond of Qyen Ariel. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that threatened to break her concentration. With steady, deliberate fingers, she snapped the seal.

The letter was written in Shandri, the high Vesprian tongue, in a script so elegant it was almost a form of art. The author possessed an intimate command of the quill, a fluid precision that marked them as high-born shandaryn. On the surface, it was a mundane request for academic services.

But Krysaalis did not read the surface.

She looked at the structure of the ink, the way the pen had been pressed into the paper. She looked for the subtext beneath the words. As an Acolyte, she was trained to find the truth hidden in plain sight, the dangerous reality buried within the written word.

And then she saw it.

Hidden within a mundane sentence about the seasonal weather patterns stood a phrase like a sudden scream in a lullaby.

The tides of Tessorin are rising.

The world seemed to stop. Krysaalis felt her mind involuntarily Attune, the lightning arcs of her vision flaring into a blinding, violent violet.

Tessorin.

Krysaalis felt a cold shiver trace her spine. Tessorin was a key and a ghost. It was the harbor of the help that never came—the place where Vespria watched Aille burn and then withdrew. In the secret language she shared with Lirynel, 'Tessorin' was the note of abandonment, the metaphorical bruise of a seventeen-Arc debt.

The letter was from Lirynel—the woman who was like an older sister to her, a companion from the Academy and a fellow survivor of the ash. Krysaalis gripped the parchment until it crinkled. The harmonium sconces flared into a fierce brilliance, reacting to her internal storm. The "Good Lie" was over. The Sea Wolf was coming.

“But why to Princyn Ealonde?” she mumbled.

“Princyn Ealonde?” Ashterah’s voice was sharp now, cutting through the heavy silence of the room.

Krysaalis turned to face her pupils. She felt the heat of her Mask fully now, the strawberry flush staining her temples and neck as her sky-blue eyes widened. She was no longer the tutor; she was a girl from a fallen city, holding a shard of her own past in her trembling hands.

“Is everything alright, Krys?” Ashterah asked, her voice edged with a sincerity that pricked at Krysaalis’s conscience.

Krysaalis looked at the letter, and then at the stargrass rippling outside the window. The bluish-white "ghost-light" of the fields seemed to pulse in time with the tides of Tessorin in her mind.

“No,” Krysaalis whispered, her voice finally finding its edge. She felt Malyndriel’s gaze on her, a slightly hoisted eyebrow asking for the truth. She withered under the Sentinel’s watchful eye. She was with the three people she could trust most since the Passing of Qyen Carielyn. “No, I… yes, thank you, Ash. It is from your grandmother’s sister, Princyn Lirynel.”

The increased excitement from the twins washed over her like a warm ocean wave. Krysaalis felt her own smile broaden despite her anxiety. Lirynel was a ghost of a different sort—a survivor who had spent her life bridging the gap between the Elowyn and the Vesprian court. She had been a fixture of Krysaalis’s life since their shared Arcs within the gilded halls of the Torryaenen Palace and had walked beside her through the corridors of knowledge, an older sister in spirit who understood that some truths were meant to be discovered in the dark.

“At least now we know it is not a love letter from uncle Ealonde,” smirked Torryaen, stopping her practice blade a hair’s breadth from Krysaalis’s chest. Krysaalis chuckled, though Ealonde’s name brought the decadent shadows of Reimes into the parlor—shadows of the Golden Prince Ploy and the 'Porcelain Courtier,' Nylyn.

“Such comments are rude, Initiate,” Malyndriel said, using the master’s tone for new trainees. “Have more respect.”

Torryaen naturally changed into a defensive posture, positioning her wooden sword as if expecting her cousin to carry out her threat. Malyndriel stood by the hearth. She was roughly of an age with Krysaalis, but where the Acolyte was ink and anxiety, the Sentinel was polished armor and navy-silver accessories.

To Krysaalis, Malyndriel was a puzzle of "Stillness." She had observed how the Sentinel held back any indication of her feelings when she was not being serious. But when Malyndriel became serious, the mask didn't just slip; it vanished, replaced by a fierce, grounding presence.

“You can assume it is not a love letter unless the rumors are true, Torry,” Krysaalis said, diffusing the heat. “Besides, if the rumors aren't true, what does that mean for the rumors about Nylyn?”

“If he had only liked the prick of a sword, where would my mother have come from?” Torryaen shot back. “My grandmother is birthbonded to Ealonde. My mother’s father was intimate with them both. He had an interest in the person, not the plumbing.”

Ashterah turned away from her star-chart to look at her sister. “Seriously, Torry? Does it even really matter? A family passes from mother to daughter. What difference does it make who the mother chooses to make her daughter?”

Krysaalis knew it mattered a great deal. She had seen the scorn directed at the shin’misal (half-bloods) and the Council of Nine’s obsession with blood purity. She saw the weaponized exclusion everywhere—the shandaryn who suffered the indignity of having the points of their ears removed for sport.

“Lirynel wants me to come see her,” Krysaalis said, grounding the room.

“Where?” Torryaen asked, her body punctuating each sentence with a delicate, deadly movement.

“In the Eleysian Islands. Her Therysian friend, Cedrik Dawntreader, is taking me aboard the Sea Wolf.”

The Acolyte moved closer to the Sentinel. The Twins went back to their banter, but Malyndriel’s face took on her practiced look of veteran seriousness. She knew the players in this morass. She had spent time with Lirynel beyond the bounds of Vespria—in the gritty streets of Averos and the spectacle of Reimes.

“I need to leave,” Krysaalis suddenly blurted.

“The Sea Wolf?” Torryaen repeated, her voice hushed for once.

Malyndriel seized Krysaalis’s arm, her voice steady and hard. “It was the ship that brought me and Liryn back from Averos. The captain... Cedrik. He became someone of note.”

“Valgarion and I knew this was coming eventually. He already spoke to Illiryssa and the Qyen. If I simply disappear into the ether... Ryssa will notice. If she notices, so will her mother. Better to get in front of it. He already arranged for my sabbatical to conduct field work.”

“Our father knows many things that aren't proper,” Torryaen jabbed.

“Not being proper is not the same thing as not being right, Torry.”

“Are you sure it is wise to seek the Qyen’s counsel, Krys?” Malyndriel asked. The Sentinel’s gaze was sharp, weighing the political cost of bringing the throne into a private shandaryn matter. "Once the Qyen is involved, the 'Good Lie' becomes a state matter. There is no turning back."

Krysaalis looked down at the cream-colored parchment, the ink of 'Tessorin' still burning in her mind. "I don't have the luxury of caution, Mally. If I leave without a sanctioned writ, I am a fugitive. If I leave with one, I am an envoy of the Aula. Valgarion has already begun the composition; I am merely playing the final notes."

“The Qyen loves a good performance,” Torryaen chirped, her wooden blade tracing a slow, mocking arc through the air. “Especially when the lead actress is her favorite tutor. Just don't forget your lines, Krys.”

“Enough,” Malyndriel said in a voice that brooked no rebuke, dampening the room's energy until only the soft crackle of the hearth remained. “The Acolyte is needed for deliberation. This does not concern you.”

“Thank you, Mally,” Krysaalis whispered.

“Sentinel Malyndriel, if you please,” she corrected, a twinkle in her eyes. Krysaalis bowed, and Malyndriel returned it with a twitch of her mouth. The room felt warm, but the graveyard was calling.

Malyndriel nodded to the twins. "Come. The Tutor has work to do."

As they reached the heavy oak door, Malyndriel paused. She turned back to Krysaalis, her hand resting on the latch. For a moment, she wasn't the Sentinel or the Lyris anomaly. She was a woman who remembered the sound of the Sea Wolf's rigging. She knew that ship was a rare beast, carrying Aeolian Rigging that allowed it to sing against the wind.

"The Sea Wolf does not carry passengers, Krysaalis," Malyndriel said quietly. "Only crew. Find your footing early, or the sea will find it for you."

She opened the door and ushered the twins out.

The energy of the room vanished with the twins, leaving Krysaalis in a sudden, profound silence—the weight of the Rosethorn walls pressing in on her like a physical hand. Malyndriel’s final look had been one of warning, a heavy silence that lingered in the air long after the door shut. Alone, the library parlor felt too large, the sinuous arcs of the sablewood no longer a sanctuary, but a cage of sanitized lies.

Krysaalis moved to her personal room, a smaller petal of the manor’s architecture where the scent of old ink and dried moonflowers was most concentrated. She sat at an ornate desk of polished root, its surface reflecting her own pale, determined face and the rosemilk hair that seemed to glow in the dimming light. Beneath her fingers, the grain of the sablewood desk felt cool and smooth, its organic curves reflecting the Splendor of Maryna. She reached out with her mind, sensing the familiar network of lightning arcs that defined her world, but the threads were frayed. The investigation of knowledge she had spent her life studying felt like a broken melody.

She had to formalize her departure. She had to write the request for the sabbatical that Valgarion had so cleverly arranged as her cover. It was the ultimate A’nira—a scholarly petition to study "Eleysian Elowyn history" when her true intent was to walk among the ghosts of a graveyard.

She dipped her quill, the scratching sound loud in the quiet room. But as the nib touched the parchment, the ink seemed to bleed into the grain, darkening until it was no longer liquid, but a pool of shadow.

The memory was not a story. It was a fracture in the glass of her soul.

She was back at the Alabaster Gate. She was not yet a full Arc old, a small, petite weight lost in a sea of screaming bodies. She didn't see lightning arcs then; she saw only the smoke and the fire.

She saw the beast. It was a vast, flying nightmare on wings of darkness, descending upon the heart of the vale. It was a Vessel of Silence, an envoy of Oblivion. It didn't breathe fire; it exhaled Shadow-pitch, a liquid dissonance that consumed the light. And then, her father was there.

He was a defiant spark against the gloom. He didn't just fight; he was performing a final, desperate act of casting. His blade of silver was a searing line of Starmetal "cold light" aimed at the creature's neck. Krysaalis remembered the flash—the moment her father leaped from the rooftop, his final cry a scream of defiance against the shadow.

In that same instant, she felt the hands on her back. The violent, saving shove of Princyn Illiryssa.

She fell through the portal, the vertigo of translocation ripping the air from her lungs. She landed on the cool stones of Vespyr and turned, watching the gate as it began to collapse. Through the thinned window of the translocation, she saw the beast crash downward. She saw her mother, Avaaya, a silhouette of duty and love, swallowed by the falling dark. And then, the Alabaster Gate—the harbor of the help that never came—shattered.

The window to her world slammed shut. The song ended in a scream of stone.

Krysaalis sat back at her desk, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Tears streamed down her face, splashing onto the unfinished sabbatical request. She felt the heat of her Mask returning, a deep, bruised crimson of grief that she had pushed aside for far too many Circles. The pain didn't break her; it acted as a visceral hook in her memory, striking a note of absolute, unyielding resolve.

I am the legacy of that melody, she thought, her fingers tightening around the quill. I have my father’s parting gift of hope and the stories of the wolves shared by my mother. Ciermanuinn is the place of my birth. The home of my ancestors. The tomb of my parents. It is carved into me as surely as waves cut cliffs. I wish only to know the land they fought to preserve.

She finished the letter with a steady hand, the Vesprian script flowing with an intent that felt like a vow. She sealed it with blood-red wax, the Torryaenen emblem a heavy weight against the pale paper. It was her writ of passage, her ticket onto the Sea Wolf.

She moved to a heavy wooden chest in the corner of the room. From within, she retrieved a worn sea chart, its edges frayed and salt-stained. She spread it across the desk, the coastlines of the Eleysian Islands appearing as a faint, spidery script in the amber light of the harmonium.

She ignored the vibrant, populated maps of Vespria and Reimes. Instead, her finger, steady now, traced the "lost" coastline of Aille. She passed over the spot labeled Tessorin—the gate of abandonment—and moved south into the depths of the mountains.

There, in a space the Vesprian maps marked as "Unoccupied," she found it.

Ciermanuinn.

The name didn't look like ink on paper; it felt like a bruise on her memory, a physical hook in her chest. It was a tomb, a graveyard, and a secret all at once. Valgarion had promised her she would find more than ruins. Lirynel had promised her the Sea Wolf would take her there.

Krysaalis stood up, pulling a traveling cloak of heavy wool around her petite frame. She looked at her reflection in the darkened window—the sky-blue eyes, the rosemilk hair, and the Mask that was finally fading to a pale, determined pink.

The tide was rising. The help that never came in her childhood was finally arriving, and this time, she was the one leading the charge.

"Tomorrow," she whispered to the empty room. "I will be ready."