Night had settled over Fenrir with the patient weight of a lid.
Not silence—Fenrir didn't do silence. It did restraint. It taught sound to behave. The market's daytime noise had been shaved down into a few late calls, the soft knock of doors closing, the occasional cart wheel complaining in the distance before remembering it wasn't allowed to.
Cecilus's house sat beyond the busiest terraces, where streets widened a fraction and lanterns were spaced for walking, not watching. The path there climbed gently through stone steps worn smooth by people who still believed in arriving home.
The house itself didn't loom. It didn't need to.
A low boundary wall traced the property—dark stone fitted so cleanly moonlight couldn't find cracks to catch in. A gate of lacquered wood stood shut without a chain, not because it was trusting, but because the latch had been made by someone who respected the idea of doors. The hinges didn't complain when Cecilus let them in. They moved like they'd been taught.
Inside the wall, the grounds were kept with a kind of quiet discipline: gravel raked into shallow lines, shrubs pruned into shapes that looked accidental until you watched them long enough. The walkway was stone, wide enough for two people to pass without touching, each slab leveled so precisely that a bowl of water would sit steady without trembling.
Nothing screamed wealth.
Everything whispered maintenance.
The house was two floors, broad rather than tall. Pale plaster, timber beams darkened with age and oil, roof tiles laid in careful overlapping rows. The eaves were trimmed, not ornate—clean lines, minimal carving, as if decoration had been considered and then rejected as a liability.
Beyond the back of the property, the land dipped into a small lake.
Not a pond. A real body of water, long enough that the far bank disappeared into reeds and night. The surface held lanternlight in thin, broken pieces. Somewhere out there, something moved—fish, perhaps, or wind—just enough to draw a slow line across the reflection and then erase it.
The entrance room opened into a wide main hall—mat floors, low tables, shelves built into the walls, paper screens set in frames that actually fit. There was a sitting area near a brazier, a writing desk tucked under a lantern nook, and an alcove that held a small shrine with no incense burning—just clean stone and a bowl of water that reflected nothing.
Upper-middle comfort, without softness.
The kind of place where you could live well as long as you did not attract the wrong kind of attention.
Cecilus had prepared it the way a servant prepared a guest room, except he wasn't a servant. The cushions were set with too much symmetry. A folded blanket lay on one mat as if the mat had been assigned to sleep. Nothing was out. Nothing was messy. Nothing admitted a human lived here.
Weaver sat at the writing desk, where a single lantern burned low behind a paper shade.
A book lay open in front of him.
Not scripture. Not doctrine.
Geography.
He had found it on the shelf without asking.
He had been reading for hours anyway—because his body refused to demand rest in the way bodies were meant to. No hunger cramps, no eyelids getting heavy, no dull ache behind the eyes that told you to stop thinking.
Only the mind, still human enough to keep reaching for ordinary anchors.
So he had eaten earlier, slowly, almost ceremonially—rice and salted fish—less for nourishment than to silence an old reflex that insisted days were divided by meals.
Now the book held him in that late-night attention that didn't feel like focus so much as refusal to look away.
The world contained eight continents.
Eight sects.
And the centre—
Weaver's eyes paused, not on a name, but on the blankness around it. The pages didn't treat the middle as missing. They treated it as something you walked around politely.
There was a term written there in small, careful characters.
Sanctum March.
A march was a borderland. A place that belonged to no one by agreement—or by failure.
Weaver's thumb rested on the margin as if he could hold the idea still.
NW: Skycut Plateau — Storm Kite Sect
• N: Paleshard Coast — Glass Crane Sect
• NE: Kitsore — Paper Fox Sect
• E: Selenic Basin — Mirror Mantis Sect
• SE: Orchid Hollow — Jade Cicada Sect
• S: Cindergirdle — Iron Ox Sect
• SW: Duskbar Chain — Nocturne Bat Sect
• W: Duewind Plains — Tally Crow Sect
Eight. Clean. Balanced.
And the centre—an absence described as a place.
Weaver reread the phrase Sanctum March and felt something in him tighten, like the word was a door that didn't open.
He turned a page.
The paper made a soft sound.
Behind him, the house remained still.
And then—
A presence in the doorway.
Weaver didn't look up immediately. He didn't need to. He'd learned the weight of Cecilus's silence already: controlled, careful, the silence of a man who had been taught that speaking at the wrong time was a kind of self-harm.
When Weaver did lift his eyes, Cecilus was standing just inside the entry frame, hands lowered, posture straight, face set into that disciplined neutrality that wasn't peace—it was obedience painted over something much sharper.
His gaze met Weaver's for a heartbeat.
Not hatred, exactly.
Something colder: an old contempt held very still, like a blade kept sheathed because drawing it would get you killed.
Weaver closed the book with one hand. Slowly. Deliberately. As if closing it too fast would look… human.
"You're awake," he said.
Cecilus's throat moved before his voice did. "Yes, my lord."
He didn't step further in until Weaver gestured—barely a tilt of fingers. Only then did Cecilus cross the mat floor, careful with his feet, as if he wasn't sure which part of the house belonged to him anymore.
Weaver watched him and kept his expression composed.
He'd worn fear for years in his first life—seen it in men who bowed too deep, smiled too quickly, agreed too eagerly.
Cecilus had that same shape.
Except Cecilus had already tried to kill him.
And survived.
That made the fear stranger. More complicated. Like terror arguing with pride.
Weaver leaned back in the chair, letting the lantern paint his face with authority.
His lips curved faintly.
Then, lighter—almost conversational:
"Cultivation must pay well."
The words were a joke. A casual jab at the world.
But Cecilus didn't laugh. He didn't even pretend to.
He hesitated as if humour was a trap he didn't understand the rules for.
Finally, carefully: "It pays," he said carefully. "If you keep your position."
"And if you don't?"
Cecilus's fingers tightened once, then relaxed. "Then you keep nothing."
Weaver held his gaze. "Including this."
Cecilus's eyes flicked—not to the house itself, but to the floor. To the mats. To the symmetry he'd arranged earlier. Like looking at it directly might make it less real.
"I won't be able to stay here," Cecilus said, voice controlled.
Not dramatic. Not self-pitying.
A statement of logistics—because people like him survived by thinking in logistics.
Weaver blinked.
He had been thinking about maps. About the centre. About a continent erased so thoroughly the world gave its absence a polite name.
He had not been thinking about rent.
He let the silence sit long enough that it didn't look like surprise.
Then: "You were housed by the sect."
Cecilus nodded once. "I was… assigned. This place is close enough to travel, far enough to be quiet. Useful."
Useful.
Weaver's gaze dropped to the book again, then returned to Cecilus.
"And now you're not."
Cecilus didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Weaver's mind ran—cold, automatic. In his first life, money had been a leash held by his father. Here, money was a leash held by… whoever noticed you existed.
And he could already feel the outline of the same prison forming in a different shape.
He tapped a finger once on the desk.
Soft sound.
Cecilus reacted to it—barely. A reflex. Like the tap might have been a signal.
Weaver filed that away without comment.
"So," Weaver said lightly, "we'll need coin."
Cecilus's eyes lifted. Uncertain. Waiting for the shape of the command.
Weaver smiled faintly again. "Unless gods are paid in worship."
Cecilus swallowed. "My lord…"
Weaver's smile didn't change. "Say it."
Cecilus forced the words out carefully, like stepping onto thin ice. "If you join a sect… you will be… owned."
Weaver tilted his head a fraction.
Cecilus caught himself, as if he'd said something improper, and stiffened.
Weaver's expression remained composed, but the inside of him went very still.
Owned.
It was the word his whole first life had been built around, even when no one said it out loud.
He let the silence lengthen.
Cecilus held his posture like a man bracing for impact that might never come.
Finally, Weaver asked—soft, precise—"What stage are you?"
Cecilus blinked. Not because the question was hard—because it was the kind of question a god shouldn't need to ask.
"Second," Cecilus said.
A pause.
"I Inscribed this year."
He didn't add pride to it. He didn't add apology. He said it like a fact that could be verified by anyone with eyes.
And Weaver noticed, then—really noticed—what he'd ignored before.
At Cecilus's cheekbone, just under the outer edge of his eye, the Paper Fox Tell sat like folded ink: sharp red-black angles that caught the lanternlight in a way skin shouldn't. Not large. Not grotesque. Visible enough to be read. Permanent enough to be counted.
Weaver nodded once, as if he'd already known.
"You're close to third," Weaver said, testing.
Cecilus's breath hitched—tiny. He answered carefully. "Close."
Not bragging.
Not denying.
A man walking a narrow beam between impressive and dangerous.
Weaver leaned back, letting that settle.
So that was why the scholarium wasn't a daytime option.
Not because Cecilus had told him some grand story about recognition—he hadn't. Cecilus had simply… avoided daylight whenever Weaver drifted toward the idea of crowds. He had steered him away from open streets with quiet efficiency.
Weaver had let it happen because he'd needed the guide.
Now he understood the shape of it.
He didn't let it show on his face.
Instead, he said, "You've done well for yourself."
Cecilus didn't respond the way people responded to praise.
His eyes tightened for a fraction of a second, like the words had brushed against something sore.
Then he bowed his head. "I served."
Not I worked. Not I earned.
I served.
Weaver's mouth twitched.
A god would accept that.
A man would hate it.
He let the god-mask hold.
"You're frightened," Weaver said, almost gently.
Cecilus went rigid.
"My lord—"
Weaver raised a hand, stopping the denial before it started. "Not of me."
Cecilus froze harder, because that was worse.
Weaver watched him carefully, then continued.
"You're frightened of what happens when someone asks why you're gone."
Cecilus didn't move. His eyes stayed fixed on Weaver's shoulder, not his face—respectful, and also the safest place to look.
"Paper Fox does not forgive mistakes," Cecilus said at last, voice low.
Weaver nodded like a judge hearing testimony.
Then—light again, a deliberate pivot:
"You look younger than I expected," Weaver said mildly.
Cecilus recoiled, puzzled; his eyes flicked up, then down immediately—a reflexive check, as if gauging whether it had been criticism.
Weaver kept his expression neutral.
Cecilus said, cautiously, "My lord… I have not had time to become old."
It was almost humour.
Almost.
But it didn't have warmth. It had exhaustion.
Weaver studied him in the lanternlight.
Tall. Lean. Long brown hair tied back in a practical knot, with two strands left loose at the front—either fashion, or a habit from training that insisted on having something to hide behind. His eyes were slightly narrowed at rest, giving him a composed, watchful look even when he wasn't trying. In a different world, in a softer life, that face would've been charming in the effortless way attention gathered around it before anyone admitted they were looking.
Here, the charm had been weaponized into stillness.
Weaver looked away first, because gods did not stare.
He opened the geography book again, not to read it, but to give his hands something to do.
Cecilus stood where he was, waiting.
Minutes passed that way in the strange quiet of two people sharing a room under false roles.
Then Cecilus spoke, softly, as if the question itself could be punished.
"My lord…"
Weaver didn't look up. "Speak."
Cecilus hesitated. "Why… are you here?"
Weaver's fingers paused on the page.
A simple question. A lethal one.
If he answered like a man, he would be revealed.
If he answered like a god, he would be unbelievable.
He needed something that sat exactly between: a truth with a lie-shaped shell.
Weaver lifted his eyes to Cecilus, letting the silver starburst in them do the work his voice shouldn't have to.
"I was banished," Weaver said.
Cecilus's breath caught.
Weaver continued, slow and measured, as if reciting policy.
"There are laws above your sects," he said. "Laws above continents. Even gods have borders they are not permitted to cross."
He watched Cecilus's face carefully.
Fear, yes—but also hunger for explanation. People like Cecilus needed systems. They survived by putting cruelty into categories.
Weaver gave him categories.
"I broke a law," Weaver said. "Not by malice. By… proximity."
He let that word land, because it felt true in every world he'd lived in.
"Proximity," Cecilus repeated, faintly.
Weaver nodded. "I came too near something I was not meant to see. I asked a question I was not meant to ask."
The truth inside the lie pulsed: I came too near freedom.
"Banished," Cecilus said again, quieter, as if saying it twice made it more real.
Weaver leaned back slightly, still composed. "When you are cast down, you lose certain permissions."
He raised his hand, palm up, like displaying emptiness.
"Memory is one of the first."
And there it was: the first true slip.
Cecilus's eyes narrowed just a fraction.
He stared at his hand like it might start bleeding light.
Weaver felt it—and corrected, smoothly. Too smoothly.
"I remember what I am."
Then he looked down at the book again, as if that ended the matter.
It didn't.
Cecilus's voice came out strained. "Then… I am following a god who was rejected by the heavens."
The disgust in his tone wasn't aimed at Weaver.
It was aimed upward—at the idea that even gods could be treated as disposable.
Weaver kept his face still.
Inside, something tight eased, because Cecilus had accepted it.
Not fully. Not comfortably.
But enough.
Weaver said, "You are following the strongest explanation available to you."
"Now rest," Weaver added. "You're trembling."
"I am not," Cecilus replied instantly—then caught himself. "Apologies, my lord."
Weaver nodded as if granting forgiveness.
Silence again.
The lake outside made a soft sound as wind pulled its surface into new shapes.
Finally, Cecilus spoke with the careful bluntness of someone pushing through fear because time was worse.
"My lord," he said, "the scholarium will be quiet now."
Weaver did not move.
He let Cecilus hang on the edge of that statement for a moment, because making people wait was part of the mask.
Then he closed the geography book gently.
"Lead," Weaver said.
Cecilus bowed, deep enough to hurt his own spine.
He turned toward the door—and paused, just for a breath, as if gathering courage like air.
Then he stepped into the night.
And Weaver followed.
Not because he trusted him.
Because he had no other map that walked and spoke.
The scholarium did not announce itself with a gate.
It announced itself with space—the way the streets widened as you approached, the way vendors stopped shouting two terraces early, the way even Fenrir's lanternlight seemed to straighten its posture.
Cecilus led Weaver through a side stair that should have belonged to servants and ended, instead, at an open court of pale stone. White gravel crunched underfoot in a quiet, disciplined way. A basin sat at the centre—water so still it looked like polished glass—and above it rose the building's face: layered arches, tall windows latticed in bone-thin wood, and a façade carved with patterns that weren't quite decorative and weren't quite writing.
They were rules pretending to be art.
Weaver slowed.
He told himself it was a god's measured pace.
The doors were immense and yet they opened without weight, swinging inward on hinges that moved like someone had once argued with gravity and won. Warm air rolled out—dry paper, wax, ink, and something faintly metallic beneath it, like old coins kept too long in cloth.
Inside, the scholarium unfolded.
Not one hall.
Many.
The first chamber was a rotunda so high Weaver's eyes had to climb to find the ceiling. Galleries ringed the walls in stacked tiers—three, four, five levels of balconies—each lined with shelves that ran like ribs around the circular heart of the place. Columns rose in pairs, dark wood banded with pale stone, carrying arches that braided into one another overhead. Lanterns hung in careful constellations, their light diffused through paper shades so it pooled rather than stabbed.
And above it all, a great opening—an oculus—drank moonlight and poured it down as a pale shaft, turning dust into glittering, slow-falling snow.
Halls branched off from the rotunda like arteries.
One angled toward a wing of narrower stacks, ladders mounted on rails to run along the shelves.
Another disappeared into a long corridor of reading alcoves—small desks with screens for privacy, every seat placed as if someone had measured the exact angle shame liked to sit at.
Farther still, Weaver caught glimpses of doorways marked with simple white plaques: no ornament, no boast. Just a clean line, a seal, and the kind of quiet that said certain questions do not live here.
Weaver stared.
He had spent hours in a private library built for him in his first life—built as a consolation prize, built to keep him indoors and grateful. Marble floors, soft chairs, servants who fetched whatever title he pointed at.
That had been a room.
This was a city made of knowledge.
A cathedral that worshipped ink.
He walked forward with the slow reverence of someone approaching something that could hurt him if he breathed wrong.
Cecilus did not share the awe.
He kept his head slightly bowed, shoulders tight, gaze fixed ahead. Not because he did not respect the place—because he respected people, and people were dangers in robes.
White-robed attendants drifted through the rotunda like quiet birds. Some carried stacks of books against their chests. Some held bundles of slips tied with thread. None hurried.
Several of them nodded when they saw Cecilus.
Not deeply. Not formally.
Simple acknowledgement.
Weaver received a few nods as well—glances that took in his posture, the strange calm, the silver starburst of his eyes.
Most looked away after.
No curiosity held too long. No question asked out loud.
Fenrir didn't do silence.
The scholarium didn't do talking.
Weaver let himself drift.
He walked the nearest shelf-row at a leisurely pace, fingers brushing spines as if they were the teeth of some vast, sleeping animal. The bindings varied—leather worn smooth by hands, lacquered boards that gleamed like polished stone, stitched cloth covers softened by time.
Some titles were written in neat black. Some in red. Some in gold so fine it looked like thread.
He had to stop himself from smiling.
He wanted to take everything.
Not greed—something worse.
Hunger.
Behind him, Cecilus hovered in a controlled panic that never quite crossed into motion. His eyes tracked the room the way a hunted man tracked treelines.
Finally, he stepped closer, voice kept low enough not to disturb the air.
"My lord," Cecilus murmured, "forgive me—"
Weaver didn't look away from the books. "Mm."
"We… should not linger."
Weaver let another two steps pass.
Then, slowly, he turned.
He smiled at Cecilus the way a god smiled at weather: indulgent, faintly amused, unconcerned.
And then he turned back and kept walking.
Cecilus swallowed whatever else he'd wanted to say.
Weaver felt his own pulse of urgency—cold, practical—flare beneath the mask.
He did not show it.
He could sit here for days. His body would not demand sleep. His mind, stubborn and human, would happily drown itself in pages until it forgot why it had ever wanted freedom in the first place.
But Cecilus couldn't stay.
And Weaver did not trust him enough to let him leave his side.
If Cecilus vanished into a crowd, Weaver would be alone again.
And ignorance was the one thing that killed men more reliably than steel.
A sharp breath beside him.
Cecilus blurted, too fast for his own discipline, "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"
The question hung in the air like a dropped pin.
Weaver's hand paused on a book spine.
In particular.
There were too many particulars.
Maps. Laws. Names of things that would kill him. Names of things that could save him. The shape of power. The price of it. The ways people here lied without lying.
But there were also questions he could not afford to ask.
Not about cultivation—not too directly. A wrong question could reveal how little he understood, how untested his strength was outside a locked room.
And not about the heavens.
Not about Oracline. Not about Primordials. Not about the kind of beings that erased continents like mistakes.
If Cecilus saw hunger for those answers, he might understand exactly what Weaver was.
Or worse—he might decide to feed Weaver a lie shaped like truth.
Weaver made his face blank—calm, mildly thoughtful, as if selecting from options he already owned.
Then he said, softly, "Show me where you keep your religion."
Cecilus flinched.
It was small—barely a tightening at the eyes, a fraction of tension in the jaw—but it was there, immediate and involuntary, like the word had touched a scar.
"My lord," Cecilus said carefully, "the books regarding the gods are not kept here."
Weaver lifted an eyebrow.
Cecilus lowered his gaze further, as if the shelves themselves might punish him for speaking.
"They are sacred," he continued. "Only a reverent has access. The knowledge is… carried outward. To patriarchs. Then shared again to the church."
A system.
A choke point.
Control disguised as reverence.
Weaver's mouth tightened.
He let the expression be readable—just enough displeasure to look divine instead of confused.
"And cultivation?" Weaver asked.
Cecilus hesitated.
Then he moved.
He didn't lead Weaver deeper into the busiest aisles. He led him away—past the rotunda's main ring, down a narrower hall where the lanterns were spaced farther apart and the air felt faintly… measured. As if someone had decided this part of knowledge required distance.
They turned into a side row.
And there, alone, was a shelf that looked wrong.
Not empty—singular.
One book.
No companions. No adjacent titles. No neat series. Just one volume sitting with the quiet authority of something that didn't need company to prove it mattered.
Weaver stopped in front of it.
The book was large enough to require two hands. Hardback. Its cover was pale—ivory, almost white—with a subtle raised pattern like pressed paperwork or faintly embossed scrollwork, but there were no words. No title. No author. No blessing stamped into the spine.
Gold threaded through the design—not inked, not painted, but set into it like inlay. It looked less like decoration and more like something trapped under lacquer: molten light caught mid-spill.
Even the edges of the pages were gilded, not for beauty—for durability. As if this thing was meant to be handled by hands that could crack stone.
Cecilus reached out and took it down with a kind of care that bordered on fear.
He held it for a heartbeat, then presented it to Weaver with both hands.
"Here," Cecilus said. "This is… the book."
Weaver accepted it like it weighed nothing.
It did.
He could feel it in the small shift of his wrists, the pull in his forearms.
Not heavy as stone.
Heavy as importance.
"And what is it?" Weaver asked, voice mild.
Cecilus spoke faster now, as if finishing the sentence quickly would keep the world from noticing he'd spoken at all.
"It contains the knowledge of every mortal stage," he said, "the Waycraft of every sect, and various recorded Aspects. It is… a compendium. A reference."
Weaver's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Then why is it alone?"
Cecilus swallowed.
"Because it is not meant to be read like a normal book," he said. "And because it is not meant to be taken."
Weaver's thumb traced the edge of the cover.
The gold caught the lanternlight and, for a moment, looked like it moved.
"To read it," Cecilus began, voice dropping, "or to take it out, you have to be a—"
A hand landed on Cecilus's shoulder.
Not gentle.
Not cruel.
Possessive in the casual way people touched things they considered theirs..
A voice followed—bright, friendly, too loud for the scholarium's restraint, as if it had never been taught shame.
"Ah. Darro."
Cecilus went perfectly still.
Weaver did not move, as if any movement would be a consequence rather than an action.
The voice continued, smiling so hard it could be heard.
"Good to see you. For some reason, I didn't see you during briefing today."
The hand squeezed—just a fraction.
"Nor did I see Lin."
A pause, carefully placed.
Then, with the same cheerful tone:
"And you know what's even crazier? Lin was found dead shortly after."
The speaker leaned in as if sharing gossip.
"And here you are."
Another squeeze.
"What a relief," he said, the grin widening into something that had too many teeth, "to see you're okay."
Cecilus's breath caught once—silent, panicked.
Weaver watched the hand on Cecilus's shoulder.
Then he lifted his gaze, slowly, toward the owner of the smile.