Months passed. Not quickly, but they passed all the same.
Vell sat alone in one of the upper archive rooms, bathed in darkness, though it must have been mid-day.
He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, staring at the notes spread across the table like fallen leaves.
He had to finally admit that there was nothing. Or close enough to it.
Hundreds of hours and dozens of theories, and still he hadn't found anything solid.
Nothing that screamed, or even whispered, 'This is how the Kalandir queen died.'
But he had ideas.
Ways it maybe could be done, if one were clever enough, or cruel enough, or both.
None of them could be proven. Not without resources he didn't have, or didn't exist yet. Or worse, a Kalandir to test them on.
And that was something Vell would not do.
There were days when he felt he was close. Just one layer to peel away so it would all fit into place. But then, it slipped away again.
It didn't make him angry, but disappointed.
Of course there shouldn't have been a way, but coming close without actually crossing over to the possibility of it was an infuriating process.
Still, the past few months hadn't been a complete loss.
Sonder, at least, had grown.
He noticed the subtle changes in her magic.
How it responded to her faster now, with more clarity. Her focus had sharpened. Her control improved. She spent more time in the workshops on her own. Her golem design becoming less like a school project and more like art. She was becoming a proficient craftswoman; her mechanisms becoming more graceful and elegant.
But she still preferred the first one she made, that followed her like a cat, or sometimes she just carried it.
He'd commented on it once, in passing. She'd only nodded, brushing chalk dust from her fingers.
She was… quiet lately.
Not in a way that worried him. Just less prone to comment on things.
Sometimes, in class or in the halls, she would pause and looked over her shoulder, like she'd forgotten something or was looking for someone.
As if waiting for something unexpected.
But if something was bothering her, she hadn't said.
And Vell trusted that she would, if she needed to.
He was many things, but not blind. And not unkind. He hadn't look too deeply into it, as he had been too busy.
Maybe she was simply lost in a world too heavy for a girl to carry.
Still… he made a note to check in with her.
Not now. Not directly. Just a small nudge, in case she needed it.
He stood and stretched his back, bones cracking faintly.
Maybe it was time, he thought.
To return. To stand before the Kalandir court and tell them what they likely already suspected:
That the Magnus Halls held no answers.
That their knowledge, vast as it was, could not solve everything.
That whatever killed their queen… was not in any book.
He would go. Speak plainly. Let them see the failure in his eyes.
He just hoped that they found anything by themselves in the meanwhile.
Vell rubbed a smudge of ink from his palm, and reached for a blank page to write down anything of note that he found relevant.