The dead were loud tonight.
Elara Vey knelt in the Archives' lowest vault, her quill poised above a constellation etched into vellum as thin as a soul. The memory was simple—a baker's final confession, his hands trembling as he gifted a poisoned loaf to a rival. She'd redacted a hundred like it. But tonight, the lumen-ink refused to flow.
It knew.
"Later," she whispered, though the vaults drank sound like a grave. Her glove creaked as she flexed her hand, the joints stiff from hours of erasing truths the Archivists deemed unworthy.
Above her, the Atrium's dome groaned. Starlight bled through its fractures, painting the vault in jagged silver. Elara tilted her head, listening.
Liora.
Her sister's name was a hook in her ribs. The lumen-ink shivered in its well, sensing her weakness.
"Patience," hissed The Quill.
It lay beside her, bone-white and brooding. She'd stolen it three years ago from Kaelis's sanctum, though some nights she wondered if it had stolen her.
The vault door shuddered.
Elara froze. Archivists didn't work this late. They preferred daylight for their butchery, when the stars slept.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.
She snatched The Quill and blew out her lantern. Darkness swallowed her, thick and sweet as congealed ink.
"Elara."
Kaelis.
He stood silhouetted in the doorway, his Archivist robes swallowing what little light dared follow. She'd never seen him without the crow-feather mantle, not even in the plague riots when the lower wards burned.
"You missed supper." His voice was a scalpel. "Again."
"The baker's confession required… delicacy."
"Ah. And does delicacy explain this?"
He tossed a scrap of vellum. It landed at her knees, glowing faintly.
Her stomach dropped.
A star-chart. Her star-chart, stolen from the rebel markets. She'd paid a smuggler half her rations for it—a map to the Atrium's oldest fractures, the ones that hummed with her sister's voice.
"You disappoint me." Kaelis knelt, his breath reeking of myrrh and rot. "I've tolerated your little habits. The sleepless nights. The starlight fever. But treason?"
The Quill twitched in her grip.
"What do the fractures matter?" She forced steadiness into her voice. "The dome's decay is public record."
"Not these." His finger tapped the chart. "These fractures… they're growing. Spreading like veins toward a single point. Tell me, Elara—what lies at the center?"
She didn't need to look. She'd memorized the chart in the trembling hours before dawn.
Her sister's constellation.
"I don't know."
Kaelis sighed. When he cupped her face, his gloves were warm. "We've walked this path before, you and I. Must I remind you how it ends?"
He pressed his thumb to her left eyelid.
No.
But the memory came anyway—her first lesson at ten years old. Kaelis making her watch as he unraveled a thief's mind, strand by glowing strand, until the man forgot his own daughter's name.
"Truth is a disease," he'd said. "We are the cure."
The Quill bit her palm, drawing blood.
"The fractures," Kaelis murmured, "or your little project in the north vault. Choose."
Her breath hitched. He knows.
She'd hidden Liora's constellation behind a false wall, its light dampened by stolen nullcloth. She visited every night, pressing her ear to the glass, begging the stars to repeat her sister's final words.
"The dome isn't breaking—it's hatching!"
"I'll fix the chart," she lied.
Kaelis studied her. For a heartbeat, she saw it—the hollows beneath his eyes, the skin stretched too tight over bone. He's afraid.
"See that you do." He rose, his shadow swallowing the room. "Oh, and Elara?"
She looked up.
He smiled. "Happy birthday."
---
The north vault was colder than a grave.
Elara pressed her palm to the hidden panel, whispering the code-phrase she'd carved into her thigh. The wall slid open.
Liora's constellation hung suspended in a glass orb, its light the gray of half-remembered laughter. Elara's chest ached. Seven years, and still she expected her sister's voice.
"You're late."
She whirled.
The vault was empty.
"Sloppy, little scribe."
The voice came from The Quill. It thrummed in her hand, its bone tip scoring the air.
"Don't," she warned.
"He knows. You reek of fear and lumen-ink. Let me help."
"No."
"Liar." It lunged.
Pain exploded behind her eyes as The Quill stabbed the orb. Cracks spiderwebbed across the glass.
"Stop!" She grabbed it, but the artifact was molten, singing her flesh.
Liora's constellation flared—a supernova in miniature. Shadows writhed on the walls, resolving into words:
THE CAGE HAS A FALSE FLOOR.
FIND ME.
The orb shattered.
Elara fell to her knees, clutching a shard of glass. Reflected in it, just for an instant, was a face she didn't recognize—a woman with Liora's eyes and a crown of bleeding stars.
"Hurry," the reflection mouthed.
Then the vault door screamed.
---