Elka traced the brittle edge of the parchment. Dust motes danced in the single shaft of light slicing the gloom of the archive. Each fragment felt less like paper, more like sun-warmed bone. She wasn’t *searching* for anything specific, not exactly. Old Man Tiber, the archive’s keeper, simply said, “Some things…find *you*.”
“These ripple with heat.” Rhawn’s voice, a low thrum, echoed off the stone walls. He didn’t touch the fragments, merely scanned them with eyes the color of storm clouds. Veils of light swirled within the crystals hanging above, responding to something within the aged materials. “Touching…awakens what slept. Creation unwinds, threads entering us.”
Elka glanced up. Rhawn rarely spoke in pronouncements. He preferred silence, a sculptor shaping stone, not words.
“They throb. Like a pulse beneath skin.” She laid a second piece alongside the first, attempting to bridge the gaps in the faded script. The symbols weren’t any language she knew—not Draconic, not Old Terran, not even the swirling glyphs of the Star-Eaters.
“Powers bind…” Darvis gripped the edge of a stone table, knuckles whitening. He hadn’t even touched a fragment. His eyes, normally sharp and assessing, clouded over, then snapped back to focus. He blinked, shaking his head. “Gone. Just… a flash.” He pressed a palm to his forehead. “Revealing fate has a cost. Even whispers ripple.”
Elka frowned. Darvis, the pragmatic warrior, rarely spoke of ‘cost’ or ‘fate’. His concerns were always blades, strategy, logistics.
She traced a line of symbols, the parchment almost burning against her fingertips. Images flickered at the edge of her vision—vast, crumbling cities built of obsidian, deserts shifting like liquid night, figures cloaked in starlight.
“Ancient battles echo on the wind.” Rhawn’s gaze lifted, focusing on a point beyond the walls. “Temples… shadows lengthening. Dynasties broken, then rebuilt. Woven into the fabric.”
The air grew heavy, charged. Elka felt a prickling sensation on her arms. She glanced at Rhawn, then at Darvis, who stared into the distance, jaw tight.
“Something watches.” Rhawn’s voice dropped, barely audible. “Beyond the fractured memories.”
Elka pressed her palm flat against the fragment. A vision slammed into her—not a scene, but a feeling. A longing. A grief so profound it stole her breath. It wasn’t a memory, but a…resonance.
“Share the truth within the echoes,” she murmured, the words escaping her lips before she realized she’d spoken. “Where the paths intertwine?”
Rhawn turned, his gaze piercing. “You feel it, then?”
“I… I don’t know what ‘it’ is.” Elka’s fingers trembled. The heat from the parchment intensified, spreading up her arm. “But it feels… familiar. Like a part of me, lost for an age.”
Darvis stepped forward, his hand hovering over the fragments. “Careful, Elka. Some things are best left buried.”
Elka lifted her chin, the vision receding, leaving a hollow ache in its wake. “Maybe. Or maybe they’re meant to be reclaimed.”
She didn’t understand what she’d stumbled upon, but she knew, with a certainty that resonated deep within her bones, that her life would never be the same. The past wasn’t just history. It was a living thing, and it was reaching for her.
