[POV: Ilhera]
Location: The Fossil Library of Nine Veils – 117 miles beneath the skyplate
The light here moved like fog—slow, soft, and old.
Shelves carved from dragonbone formed a cathedral of silence. Fossilized nerves of extinct sky-beasts pulsed along the ceiling in pale gold threads. Each book here was written in a language that had never once been spoken aloud.
Ilhera stood before the flesh map.
It rippled faintly as her finger traced the shape of the Quinsley Empire's lowest spire.
The place where the boy had been kept.
Where he had chosen.
Where the knife and key had awakened.
A voice spoke behind her, wrapped in the tones of a woman, but none she had ever met.
> "The Vessel has moved."
Ilhera didn't turn.
> "He hasn't moved far."
> "You went too soon."
Ilhera shrugged.
> "I went when the mirror cracked."
Silence.
Then:
> "Do you believe it's Azrael?"
Ilhera stared at the map.
At the echo of movement.
At the pulse left behind when he touched the shard.
> "I don't know if it's Azrael," she said softly.
"But I know what I saw."
> "A boy?" the voice mocked.
> "No," Ilhera said.
"I saw an edit."
---
She turned finally.
Faced the woman.
A mask made of polished obsidian hid the agent's face, but not her eyes—one was blue.
The other?
Gone.
In its place: a spinning glass orb, filled with fog that spelled nothing and everything.
The mark of the Scriptwatchers.
The silent archivists of the world before voice was born.
Ilhera stepped forward.
Laid a small cube of folded mirror-ink on the table.
"Look at this," she said.
The woman took it.
It hissed in her hand.
"Concept-bound?" the woman whispered.
Ilhera nodded.
> "The dagger lit up when he took the shard."
"The key sang."
"The palace bled light through the walls for six full seconds."
"Even the birds forgot to fly."
---
> "And what do you think he is?" the woman asked.
"A god?"
Ilhera's voice was quiet now.
Almost reverent.
> "No. Not yet."
"But he is something worse than a god."
---
The woman stilled.
> "What's worse than a god?"
Ilhera looked upward.
Through the fossil ceiling.
Toward the world above.
Where the sky was cracked.
And something behind it had just started watching again.
> "A boy with a reason not to speak."