Elara slid through the narrow opening, the silver key warm in her hand. The stones groaned, then clicked back into place, plunging her into absolute darkness.
The beam of her torch cut a shaky circle through the gloom. She was standing on a dirt floor, surrounded by rough-hewn stone—not the elegant masonry of the tower's exterior, but raw foundation work. The space was small, an inverted cone carved into the base, and intensely cold. The air, thick with the sulfurous scent of ancient chemical work, tasted heavy.
The workshop was sparsely furnished, suggesting Vance had abandoned it in haste two hundred years ago. In one corner stood a skeletal, iron forge, its flue running upward and presumably venting into the tower's structure, hidden by the very gargoyle that cast the clue.
Scattered on a heavy wooden bench were the remnants of Vance's desperate art: blackened glass retorts, pestles stained with strange green residues, and a stack of brittle parchment scrolls, covered not in cipher, but in geometric diagrams and complex mathematical formulas.
Elara carefully examined the scrolls. They detailed attempts at transmutation, not of lead into gold, but of ley lines—the invisible, natural energy currents believed to flow beneath the earth. Vance hadn't been seeking wealth; he had been seeking to control the raw magical energy of Paris itself. This was alchemy applied to physics, not finance.
She moved the torch beam across the largest object in the room: a sealed, metal cabinet built directly into the stone wall. It was nearly seven feet tall, made of dull, non-reflective iron, and secured with two heavy, antique padlocks.
Elara's fingers traced the lower lock. It was medieval, thick, and utterly complex. She glanced at the silver key in her hand—the Hourglass Key.
She inserted the key into the lower lock. It turned with a satisfying, deep thunk, and the lock sprang open. The hourglass symbol was etched into the metal of the lock plate.
But the cabinet remained sealed. The upper lock was still firmly in place, and it did not match her key.
Elara felt a wave of crushing disappointment. She had found the vault, but she couldn't open it entirely. The second lock was far simpler—a standard, high-quality spring lock, but one that required a different, smaller key.
She moved back to the workbench, desperately searching for anything Vance might have left behind. A shallow indentation in the wooden bench caught her eye. It was exactly the size of the journal she held.
Using the faint light, she carefully pried up the section of wood around the indentation. Hidden beneath was a tiny, cloth-wrapped object: a silver locket.
Inside the locket was not a picture, but a perfectly rendered sketch of the second key. Beneath the sketch, Vance had written a single, desperate message in tiny script, finally breaking his cipher code:
"The Second Key is worthless to men of power. They seek the treasure, but they do not seek the loss."
The Loss. The Second Key was intrinsically linked to a concept of sacrifice or sorrow—an idea completely foreign to the Argentum Society's grasping desire for immortality.
Suddenly, a loud, heavy scraping sound echoed from above. It was the sound of metal protesting against stone—the main entrance to the Saint-Jacques Tower was being forced open.
Elara dropped the locket and extinguished her torch. She was trapped. She hadn't been followed to the fountain, but they had clearly traced the cipher's path from the moment the Archduke clue was translated. The Argentum Society was inside the tower, and they were coming for the forge.
She looked around the tiny workshop. There was no back exit, only the single stone door she had used, now jammed shut by the sheer weight of the tower above it.
Then, she remembered the forge. It wasn't just a place for fire; it had a chimney—a vertical shaft leading up. If she could reach the flue, she might have a chance to climb out.
She grabbed a heavy, wooden stool, threw it against the stone door to create a momentary noise distraction, and scrambled onto the cold iron grate of the forge, aiming her gaze toward the narrow, dark opening of the chimney shaft.