The air in the archive clung to Aden's skin like a shroud, thick with the scent of mildew and the faint, metallic tang of old blood. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the vaulted ceiling, casting skeletal patterns over the labyrinth of shelves. Shadows pooled in the corners, restless and watchful, as if the very walls resented his intrusion.
Aden's torch had long since sputtered out, leaving him to navigate by the pallid glow of runes etched into the floor—a ghostly lattice that pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of something buried deep beneath the stone.
He moved with the silence of a wraith, fingertips grazing spines of cracked leather and brittle parchment. Every tome seemed to whisper as he passed, their titles half-rotted but still legible in the gloom:
The Thirteen Blasphemies, Echoes of the Sundered, Wrath and Its Many Faces. The archive was a graveyard of ambition, its shelves lined with the corpses of techniques too terrible to wield, too costly to forget.
'Find it.'
The thought hissed through him, sharp as Egmund's voice. Somewhere in this crypt of knowledge lay the key—the means to outpace Kairus's relentless ascent. Aden's hands trembled, not from fear, but from the raw, gnawing hunger that had driven him here.
His body had been reforged in the Sanctum's crucible, but it wasn't enough. Not when Kairus Varkaine moved through the world like a blade unsheathed, cutting down destinies with every step.
A draft snaked through the chamber, carrying with it the faintest hum of power. Aden froze. There, wedged between a moldering grimoire and a scroll case crusted with verdigris, a sliver of vellum peeked out—its edges gilded, untouched by time. He pulled it free, the parchment unnaturally cold against his skin.
The scroll unfurled with a sound like a sigh.
"Vasco Eclipse."
The words glowed a sickly green, etched in ink that writhed as if alive. Beneath them, a figure coiled in a swordsman's stance, blade arcing in a crescent of shadow. Aden's breath hitched. He knew this technique. Not from the archive's dust, but from the fragments of his memories—Kairus Varkaine, years from now, wielding this very art to carve through the Vasco family's finest. The protagonist's stolen trump card.
'But not this time.'
Aden's grip tightened. The parchment trembled, resisting, as though the shadows themselves sought to wrest it from his hands. Diagrams burned into his vision: footwork that defied balance, strikes that bent like smoke, a finale that demanded the swordsman's silhouette merge with the night itself. The price? Unwritten. The cost? Implicit in the way the ink seemed to leach warmth from his veins.
Egmund stirred, a serpent uncoiling in the dark of his mind.
'This is it. The edge you need. Take it. Claim what the fates denied you.'
Aden hesitated. The scroll's aura throbbed, a discordant rhythm that made his teeth ache. Somewhere deep, a voice—his own, perhaps—warned him. But Kairus's face loomed brighter, that calm, relentless gaze, the certainty of a man who had already rewritten history once.
He rolled the scroll and shoved it into his coat. The moment it left his hands, the archive seemed to exhale, the shadows along the walls rippling like water disturbed.
The climb back to the surface felt endless. The spiral staircase, narrow and slick with condensation, wound upward into suffocating blackness. though aden has cleared the mess he had made at the Archive covering up any evidence that may lead back to him, Aden's pulse roared in his ears, each step echoing too loud, too final. Halfway up, he paused, torchless and gasping, and pressed a hand to the wall. The stone wept beneath his palm, its moisture oily, foul.
'You are not alone.'
The realization struck like a blow. Above, a sliver of moonlight cut through the dark. Aden tilted his head, squinting—and there, high in the latticework of arches that crowned the Sanctum's central tower, a figure stood silhouetted against the night.
Lady Cindra.
Her posture was relaxed, one arm draped over the windowsill, the other cradling a goblet that glinted silver in the pale light. Even from this distance, Aden could feel her gaze—a predator's idle scrutiny, neither hostile nor kind.
She made no move to descend, to confront him. Simply watched as he emerged from the archive's throat, his coat heavy with stolen secrets.
Aden forced himself to walk slowly, shoulders squared, though every nerve screamed to run. The courtyard stretched before him, barren save for the skeletal remains of training dummies and the ever-present stain of blood. He didn't look back. Didn't dare.
But as he reached the barracks, a sound drifted down—a laugh, low and rich, tinged with irony.
"Like father, like son."
Lady Cindra's voice carried the weight of a eulogy.