They kept the private archives beneath the estate—not below the library, but under the old observatory, where the stars had long since stopped being charted.
Thalric found it not by suggestion or map, but by remembering the shape of houses built to hide shame. A stairwell behind a crumbling telescope dais, a door with no lock—only pressure and reluctance.
The room below smelled of lime, old parchment, and wax long since frozen. Shelves bowed under the weight of ignored years. Titles in seven languages. Some bound in canvas, some in stitched leather dyed a shade that no longer existed aboveground.
He hadn't meant to stay long.
But something in the air here clung—dry, acidic, familiar. Like a memory once exhaled and now coiled against his ribs.
He moved slowly, cane tapping against cracked tiles, fingers brushing spines and finding nothing.
Until he didn't.
A glass case sat tucked into a niche behind a leaning atlas rack. Simple, square, rimmed in tarnished bronze. Inside: a sphere the size of a closed fist, murky red, streaked with silvery veins that pulsed faintly when Thalric came close.
A plaque beneath it read:
"Emberglass. Retrieved from the ruins of Avar-Dhen before the Dissolution Accord. Highly fragile. Non-reactive. No known magical signature."
Non-reactive.
That was a lie.
Thalric could feel the pressure before he touched the case—a low, sympathetic hum at the base of his skull. Not power. Not spellwork.
Resonance.
Not unlike what he'd once felt in Veymar's Stone Choirs, where acoustics alone shaped emotion, where intent vibrated.
He didn't open the case.
Not yet.
Instead, he sat—slowly, carefully—at the desk nearby. A small lamp, dusty but functional. Paper. Ink. The basics.
He began reading the files beneath the display.
The history was clinical. Collected by a half-dozen minor researchers, all with credentials long buried by political shifts. Most dismissed the Emberglass as geological oddity—aesthetic but inert. Some called it a forgery. None offered to keep it.
But three pages in, he found something else.
A transcript.
"—emitted a low pulse when brought near ceramic tuned to 435 Hz. Subject reported mild vertigo."
"—one attendant noted recurring dreams of flame and language."
"—senior archivist removed the piece from proximity and discontinued testing. Paper trail ends. No formal closure."
Thalric set the report down slowly.
Not sorcery.
Not proof.
But friction.
Something real.
He stared at the glass.
This wasn't a solution. Not yet. But it was evidence—that this world, for all its sterile denial and clipped worship, had not fully buried what it once feared.
And that meant it could still be opened.
He didn't smile.
He didn't even feel satisfaction.
Just… orientation.
The map might be buried, but he'd found the first ink mark in the corner.
He stood. Tucked the transcripts into his coat. Not to hoard. Just to study.
As he turned to leave, the Emberglass pulsed once—faint, like a skipped heartbeat.
He paused.
Pressed two fingers lightly against the case.
And whispered—not aloud, but into the space between breath:
"I'm not here to remember."
"I'm here to leave."
Then the pulse faded.
And silence returned.