The lower halls of the Directorate were never meant for people to linger.
They were meant for holding.
The kind of holding that implied safety — from what, no one really knows.
Alen Varic stood at post outside Observation Room Seven, one hand resting on the butt of his holstered baton, the other clutching a cup of lukewarm coffee he no longer wanted. The air down here was dry, humming faintly with the sound of filtered vents. The lights buzzed in a steady rhythm overhead, the only clock they had — each flicker another reminder of how long he'd been standing still.
Inside the observation chamber, a woman sat motionless behind the reinforced glass.
Master Leslie, the file said.
Former Resonant of the Arcanum.
Echoed.
The first time he'd seen her, she'd looked asleep. Peaceful, even. That had been three days ago.
Now she didn't look asleep.
She didn't look awake, either.
Her eyes were open, fixed on something not in the room. They reflected light like frost. Sometimes — not often, but enough to make the hair rise on the back of his neck — her pupils would catch the ceiling's glow and scatter it in thin, branching lines, like cracks spreading across the surface of glass.
They said it wasn't contagious.
They said she was stable.
They said a lot of things, and none of them stopped the reflection from moving a heartbeat after she did.
Varic sipped from the cup, forcing himself not to look too long.
He'd been briefed — "Maintain visual. Report deviations. Do not engage."
But how did one not engage when the air in the room felt heavier every hour?
Through the observation slit, faint motes drifted in the stale air — dust, he told himself — though they caught light wrong, shimmering like bits of fractured mirror. Sometimes they moved against the current of the vent. Sometimes they pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
He checked his watch.
02:47.
Only two more hours.
He shifted his stance, but the floor seemed to hum beneath his boots. Not noise exactly — more like vibration. He frowned, kneeling to touch the tile. Cold. Perfectly still. The hum was in his bones.
From the room, a faint tap.
He looked up.
Leslie's head had turned toward the glass. Slowly. Deliberately.
Their eyes met through the reinforced panel.
He froze.
She didn't move again, but the faint reflection of her in the window — her mirrored outline — didn't stop moving.
It lagged a breath behind, then tilted its head, ever so slightly, the wrong way.
The lights overhead dimmed — not out, just softened, like the air itself was folding around the moment.
Varic backed a half-step away. His pulse pounded.
He wanted to call for the overseer, but his throat was dry.
Then — a voice, faint as a whisper between panes:
> "You shouldn't be here."
He dropped the cup. It shattered across the floor — a clean sound that somehow didn't echo.
When he looked again, Leslie's head was straight. Still.
Her reflection, too.
Only the dust — or whatever it was — continued to move, drawn toward her like filings to a magnet.
Varic stood for a long time before radioing upstairs. His hand trembled once before he forced it still.
"Observation Seven," he said quietly into the receiver. "No change in vitals. Subject remains stationary."
He didn't mention the reflection.
He didn't mention the voice.
He knew better.
The hum of the Directorate's lights still lingered in his ears.
Ryneth leaned over the desk, eyes tracing the edges of scattered pages that smelled faintly of ozone and oil. Leslie's handwriting curled in precise lines across the parchment — notes in Vesric, fragments of formulae, half-formed diagrams that didn't seem to fit any known framework.
He had already spent an hour sorting the pages by subject, though none of it made sense yet.
Something about the arrangement — margins slightly off, spacing deliberate — suggested purpose. But he couldn't see it. Not yet.
The light flickered. Just once. Enough to make his pen pause.
He looked up — and froze.
Someone stood in the doorway.
A boy — no, a young man — maybe a year younger than him, with ink-stained cuffs and a nervous posture, clutching a ledger like a shield.
When he saw Ryneth, he blinked hard, as if recalibrating what he was looking at.
"Ryneth Calder?" His tone was wary, caught between surprise and reprimand. "What are you doing in here?"
Ryneth straightened, carefully tucking a loose parchment under the nearest stack. "I might ask the same of you."
The boy hesitated, caught off guard by the quick return. "I—I'm Heran. Transcriber's division. I worked under Master Leslie."
"Then we're in similar company," Ryneth replied smoothly. He offered a mild, almost disarming smile — the kind that said I belong here even if he didn't. "I was asked to review her records. For the Directorate."
Heran frowned. "You? But the Directorate—"
"Doesn't share everything," Ryneth interrupted gently, turning back to the papers as if the conversation were already over. "You said you worked under her. Then maybe you can help."
Heran lingered at the threshold, uncertain whether to step inside. His gaze darted across the desk, to the organized chaos of notes and sketches. "You shouldn't be touching that," he murmured. "They said… they said her notes might still carry traces."
Ryneth stilled. "Traces?"
Heran swallowed, lowering his voice. "Of the resonance. The thing that—" He gestured vaguely, as if saying it out loud might make it real. "—that got to her."
Ryneth met his eyes. "If it's traces of perception, then it's not her we should be afraid of," he said quietly. "It's what she was trying to see."
Heran blinked, uncertain whether that was a joke or a warning.
The chamber had fallen into silence again.
Only the scratching of Ryneth's pen, the faint hum of the lamps, and the distant creak of wood against wind broke the stillness.
He had gone through half the stacks by now — transcripts, copied notes, fragments of half-burnt diagrams. The logic of them all seemed almost deliberate in their incompleteness, as if Leslie had been trying to translate something she only half understood.
Heran stood nearby, pretending to glance over and assist, though Ryneth knew the younger man barely understood a word of Vesric. His hands fidgeted more than they worked, tracing the edges of pages he couldn't quite read.
Nothing seemed unusual.
Not until he found the journal.
It was smaller than the others — bound in deep blue leather, the corners frayed from constant handling. The first page bore her name in tight script and a date: Eight days ago.
Ryneth hesitated before opening it. Heran's green eyes flicked toward the page, a faint spark of recognition in them — finally something he could read. The ink was still sharp, the strokes restless.
> Day One. I have begun the Climb again. My alignment remains stable, though the resonance flickers during deep cycles. Focus through repetition. The threshold is near — I can feel it.
He turned the page.
> Day Three. The noise is growing louder. When I close my eyes, it hums in rhythm with my pulse. It's as though the world breathes through me. But when I reach for it, it shatters. The feedback leaves me shaking. I can't tell if I am improving or dissolving.
Ryneth's eyes narrowed. The handwriting grew less stable as the entries continued, slanting downward, the lines uneven.
> Day Five. Headaches. Flickers in the lamps. Shapes when I blink — reflections that aren't mine. I dream of glass corridors stretching forever, and every surface shows a different sky.
> Day Seven. No sleep. The echoes whisper backwards now — my own thoughts returning wrong. Every attempt at Climbing slips further from coherence. I keep thinking I see movement in the margins of the diagrams.
> Day Eight. I fell asleep at the desk. They said I was unconscious, but I remember standing. The sound was everywhere — like the universe exhaling through broken glass. If I can stabilize it, I can Harmonize. I know I can. I have to.
The rest of the page trailed off, the ink blotched mid-sentence, as though she had dropped the pen.
Ryneth exhaled slowly. The lamplight seemed to waver over the words.
He turned the journal over and found a folded report tucked into the back cover — stamped with the seal of the Crown's Directorate.
The testimony of the night guard.
> Subject collapsed at her post, unresponsive. Pulse erratic. Upon approach, subject's eyes were open and fixed on an unseen point. Whispering in Vesric. Surrounding surfaces reflected inconsistent lighting — hallway lanterns dimmed though oil levels full. Possible perception breach. Notified superiors.
It was dated the previous night.
Ryneth sat back, the quiet pressing against his ears.
Heran spoke first, his voice barely above a whisper.
"That must be agonizing… trapped in your own mind while your thoughts turn against you."
But the words hardly reached him.
"So they took her under custody based on the guard's testimony," Ryneth murmured.
His gaze lingered on the uneven scrawl of Leslie's final entry.
He closed the journal slowly, the sound of parchment folding like a sigh.
Whatever this Climb was, she had been chasing something beyond the limits of reason — and now she was gone because of it.
A faint tremor of thought flickered through his mind.
> If curiosity is what broke her… then perhaps it can mend what she saw.