Three months after the duel, Sylvia knocked on his cave door at an unusual hour — the late afternoon, when most students were in their second cultivation session. He opened the door and found her with a careful expression and a small book in her hands that she held slightly away from her body, the way you hold something you've decided to share but haven't quite decided to give.
"Can I come in?" she said.
He stepped aside.
She sat on the edge of the cultivation alcove and set the book on the stone ledge beside her. She looked at it for a moment, then at Aaron, then made a decision and picked it up.
"I need to tell you something," she said. "And I need you to not say anything until I'm done, because if you interrupt me I'll lose the momentum and I'll stop before the important part."
"All right," Aaron said.
"The Caen family," Sylvia said. "What happened to us." She looked at the book. "I told you my family name lapsed — that the last person who could afford the tax seal let it lapse. That's true. What I didn't say is why we couldn't afford it."
She opened the book. It was a ledger — old pages, official marks on the margins.
"My uncle was a mage. Seventh rank. He was one of the three highest-ranked mages in Vallen City's region, which made him — significant. He had access to the city's mage association archives." She paused. "Three years ago, he found something in those archives. Something old. He showed it to my father, who showed it to me. I was eight, and I understood maybe a third of it. I understood enough."
"What did they find?" Aaron asked.
"A transcript," she said. "Of a formal academy hearing, dated approximately two hundred and sixty years ago. It was filed under a classification that shouldn't have existed — the academy doesn't have classified files, officially. Everything is open. But there were files that the classification system acknowledged the existence of while denying access to them." She turned the ledger to show him a page. "My uncle made a copy before the file was sealed again."
Aaron leaned over to look at the page.
It was a transcript — question and answer format, the way formal hearings were recorded. The questions were from an unnamed panel. The answering party was identified only as V.M. — Vallen Mage, Aaron guessed, which was a formal designation for a mage connected to Vallen City.
He read.
The transcript described a spatial mage who had, during an extreme cultivation state, experienced what the transcript called 'anomalous perceptual events' — visions of places that didn't correspond to any known geography. The questioning panel was clearly trying to determine whether these experiences were a sign of mental degradation or a genuine phenomenon.
The mage answering had been trying to explain the concept of Shard boundaries.
The panel had classified the testimony under 'unstable practitioner testimony — unreliable' and recommended the mage receive a six-month cultivation restriction.
"He was trying to tell them," Aaron said. He'd stopped remembering the instruction not to interrupt — Sylvia didn't stop him.
"He knew," she said. "He'd been experiencing spatial layer bleeding for two years. He'd made contact with an adjacent Shard at least twice. He was trying to give the mage association an official record." She paused. "The panel dismissed him. His career didn't recover." She paused again. "He was my grandmother's grandfather."
Aaron was quiet.
"My uncle," Sylvia continued, "when he found this transcript, started looking for related records. He found three more, from different regions, different time periods. All classified the same way. Spatial mages who had reported adjacent Shard contact, all formally dismissed, all with careers that subsequently failed." She looked at the ledger. "He started writing to the Five Elements Academy. Asking if there were historical records related to spatial phenomena of this kind."
"And?" Aaron said.
"He disappeared," she said. "Four months after he started the correspondence. My father disappeared two weeks later. My mother moved us to a different district and told me never to use the Caen name if I could avoid it." She met Aaron's eyes steadily. "I'm here because I'm the only person left who knows what my uncle found, and I'm a spatial mage, and I intend to find out what happened to him."
Aaron sat with the weight of that for a moment.
"You don't know if they're dead," he said carefully.
"No," she said. "I don't. I know they're gone." She picked up the ledger. "I know my uncle was corresponding with someone in this academy, and then he was gone, and the correspondence stopped."
"Who was he writing to?"
"He didn't tell me specifically." She paused. "He was careful. He knew there was a risk." She looked at Aaron steadily. "The things I've seen here — the formation arrays under the paths, the things you and Ryan discuss when you think I'm not fully following. I'm fully following." She set the ledger on the ledge between them. "I want to know if my uncle's disappearance is connected to the network. To the Shattering. To whatever it is you're actually trying to do."
"Why are you asking me this now?" Aaron said.
"Because of the duel," she said.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Not the duel itself," she said. "What you said to Blake before it. Ryan told me — about you telling Blake that his technique gap was a correctible problem, and that he should match his own ceiling and push it." She paused. "You are careful about what you say and what you don't. But what you said to him was genuinely useful and genuinely honest, and you said it when it would have been more strategic to say nothing." She looked at him. "I've been deciding whether to trust you for three months. That was the thing that moved it."
Aaron looked at her for a long moment.
"I'll tell you what I know," he said. "Which is more than most people in this academy know, but not complete. There are things I've been told to wait before sharing." He paused. "And there are things you know that I want to understand better."
"The transcript," she said. "You want to see it."
"I want to know who at this academy your uncle was corresponding with," Aaron said. "And whether that person is still here."
Sylvia looked at him. Then she opened the ledger to a different page — tucked inside the back cover, a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it.
A letter. In handwriting he recognised immediately, because he'd been reading books in the same hand for months.
"Dear Dr. Caen, your inquiry is of considerable interest. I have been at this academy for eight years, maintaining certain historical records that relate directly to the phenomena you describe. I urge the utmost discretion in our further communication. If you are able to visit the academy in person, I can share materials that are not appropriate for correspondence."
The signature: "Instructor A. Lysander."
Aaron stared at the letter for a long moment.
"He wrote to Lysander," Sylvia said. "And then disappeared."
"Lysander has been at the academy for eleven years," Aaron said. "He told me that himself, at the beginning of the semester." He thought. "Your uncle would have written to him three years ago. The timing fits."
"Did my uncle visit the academy?"
"I don't know." Aaron thought. "I need to ask Lysander directly."
"When?"
"Now," Aaron said. He stood up.
Sylvia looked at him. "You're going to ask him right now."
"You've been carrying this for three months," Aaron said. "And the question is one that has a direct answer, which Lysander either knows or doesn't." He picked up his bag. "The worst case is that he tells me he doesn't know what happened. That's still more information than we have."
Sylvia stood. She picked up the ledger. "I'm coming."
"I assumed," Aaron said.
They went down the mountain together. The late afternoon light was going amber, the campus quiet around them.
"Lysander will not have wanted this conversation," Sirath said.
"I know," Aaron said.
"He may have information that is difficult to give."
"I know that too."
"You are going to ask anyway," Sirath said.
"Yes," Aaron said. "Because she's been asking the question alone for three years. She deserves to not be alone with it anymore."
A pause.
"You do sound like her," Sirath said quietly. "In the way that matters."
Aaron said nothing. They crossed the campus in the amber light, and he thought about what Aela Voss had written at the end of her book: "I did not ask which he meant. I assumed the first because I wanted to believe it."
He was not going to make that mistake.
He knocked on Lysander's door.
The instructor opened it. He looked at Aaron. He looked at Sylvia. He looked at the ledger in her hands.
His expression told Aaron everything before either of them said a word.
"Come in," Lysander said. His voice was very quiet. "Shut the door."
He had been expecting this conversation.
Aaron understood, in that moment, that Lysander had been hoping it would come, and dreading it.
He sat down and listened.