The air in Borin's office was thick with anticipation. The Captain stood by his desk, arms crossed. Silas leaned against a display case, a curious glint in his pale eyes. Ronan stood near the door, watching his friend with a mixture of hope and apprehension. This was the final test.
"The training is theoretical until it is proven in practice," Borin said, his voice a low rumble. He gestured to a small, ornate box resting on his desk. It was crafted from a dark, petrified wood and sealed with a complex, pre-Shattering lock. "This is a relic box from a fallen noble house. Our client wants to know who last owned it. The records are gone, but the echo remains. It is over a century old, faint and buried under years of silence. Tell us, Watcher. What does it say?"
Liam felt a profound calm. The nervous energy, the desperate grief that had clouded his senses for so long, was gone. He was no longer a victim of the past, but its student. He walked to the desk and placed his hands gently on the cool, smooth surface of the box. He wore his new Focusing Lenses; through them, the world seemed sharper, the chaotic background noise of ambient temporal energy filtered into a quiet hum.
He closed his eyes and sank into the object's timeline. It was not the violent plunge of the chronometer's echo. This was a controlled descent. He consciously bypassed the recent past—decades of sitting in a dusty vault, the hands of Compact apprentices cleaning its surface. He was searching for a specific type of echo: the resonant feeling of ownership, of emotional connection. He pushed deeper, through layers of time that felt like silt and shadow, until he felt it—a faint warmth, an echo of pride and affection.
He had found the moment. He was now an observer in a lavish, gas-lit study from over a century ago. A woman with elegant, silver-streaked hair was closing the box's lid. The scene was frozen, a perfect tableau. Using his new power, he moved through the memory, a ghost in a forgotten room. He circled the woman, examining her clothes, the room's decor. He needed a specific, verifiable detail. He saw her hands. On the ring finger of her right hand was a magnificent signet ring, carved with the image of a snarling chimera.
Liam's eyes opened. The calm in the office was absolute.
"It was a woman," he said, his voice steady and clear. "In her late fifties, with silver streaks in her hair. She was in a study filled with maps of the Southern Continent. The last time she closed this box, she was wearing a gold signet ring on her right hand. The crest was a chimera."
Silas pushed himself off the display case, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his face. He looked at Borin and gave a single, approving nod.
Ronan let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He saw the change in his friend. It wasn't just a new power. It was a new presence. The haunted, reactive boy who had walked into his office months ago was gone. In his place was a man who had faced his own personal abyss and had not flinched.
Later that evening, after the debriefing, Liam and Ronan were alone in the archive. The atmosphere between them had shifted. There was a new equilibrium, a sense of shared purpose built on a foundation of mutual respect.
"You were right," Liam said, looking at the Focusing Lenses in his hand. "I had to want the truth more."
"We all have our own ghosts to face," Ronan replied, his voice softer than usual. "Looks like you finally learned how to talk to yours instead of fighting them."
Liam walked over to the table where the evidence from their investigation was laid out. He looked at the schematics of Elias Vance, the symbol of the Blank Page Legion, the list of forgotten names. For weeks, these items had been a source of frustration, a puzzle with too many missing pieces. Now, they were simply a problem waiting to be solved.
He no longer touched the documents with a sense of helpless fury. He put on his Focusing Lenses. He placed his hands gently on the crisp, aged parchment of the schematics. He closed his eyes, sinking into its past, no longer a passive victim of its echo, but an active interrogator. He focused his will, his new power a precision instrument, and he asked his first real question of the investigation.
"Show me the watermark," he whispered. "Show me who made this paper."
The chaotic noise of the past quieted, and a single, clear image bloomed in his mind's eye, sharp and undeniable as a fingerprint. It was the symbol of the old, defunct paper mill in the Printing District. He had his thread. The hunt could begin again.