"Milo?" Zane moved closer, his hand finding Milo's shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"The runes," Milo's voice barely above a whisper. He reached out with trembling fingers to point at the shard without touching it. "I recognize them. From my advanced necromantic studies. But they're not supposed to exist anymore."
Even his skeletons were shaking, their tiny forms rattling with what I could only describe as fear. Jeffrey's jaw clacked nervously, the shard still held aloft.
"What kind of runes?" Fenric was already moving closer, his tablet forgotten for once.
Milo swallowed hard. "These markings are older than the Bureau. Older than modern magical practice. They predate the first Council."
The room felt colder suddenly. Rook had stopped his prowling, his amber eyes fixed on the glowing shard with the intense focus of a predator sizing up prey.
"Bones with these markings," Milo's voice steadied slightly as he fell into academic mode, though fear still threaded through his words, "they belong to the Oracle of Endings. A being so powerful that when they died, their remains had to be sealed away because they kept trying to prophesy from beyond death."
"Trying to prophesy while dead?" My eyebrows shot up. "That's a new level of commitment to the job."
"It's not funny, Winter," Milo ran both hands through his curls, making them stand even wilder. "The Oracle of Endings didn't just predict the future. They couldendthings. Prophecies. Lives. Entire civilizations. When they died, and there's debate about whether they actually died or just stopped participating in linear time, the first magical authorities locked their bones in the Vault Beneath."
"The Vault Beneath," Fenric repeated, his face grave. "I've seen references to it in the oldest Bureau archives. Triple warded. Sealed by the first Council and every authority since. Those bones are supposed to be impossible to access."
"Yeah, well," I gestured to Jeffrey's offering, "somebody forgot to tell the bones that. Because they don't just walk away from a maximum-security magical prison, Fenric."
The mini-skeletons nodded solemnly, their synchronized agreement somehow making the situation more surreal.
"Unless," Milo's eyes widened with horrified realization, "unless they want to walk away."
The shard pulsed again, brighter this time. The blue light spread, creating shadows that seemed to move independently of their source. I felt my markings respond with increasing intensity, drawn to the fragment like metal to a magnet.
"Winter, don't touch it," Rook moved between me and the tiny skeletons, his body a solid barrier.
"I wasn't planning to," I assured him, though my hands twitched with the urge to reach out. "But I feel it, Rook. It's calling to me."
"That's because you're both prophetic in nature," Fenric was typing furiously on his tablet now, his bureaucratic instincts kicking in. "The shard recognizes your markings as kindred magic."
Jeffrey made an insistent chattering sound, still holding the bone aloft. The other skeletons began to sway slightly, creating a rhythm that matched the shard's pulsing light.
"They're not going to leave until she accepts it," Milo watched his extended skeleton family with growing alarm. "That's skeleton protocol. Once an offering is made, it has to be received or formally refused."
"Then I refuse it," I crossed my arms. "Formally. With emphasis. Tell them thanks but no thanks, I've got enough glowing magical problems without adding ancient oracle bones to the collection."
The skeletons stopped swaying. For a moment, the room held its breath.
Then the shard began to vibrate in Jeffrey's hands, the hum rising in pitch until it became a high, piercing note that made us all wince. The blue light exploded outward in a pulse that washed over us like a wave.
Images flooded my mind. Not visions of the future or echoes of the past, but something else entirely. I saw the Oracle of Endings, not as a person but as a concept given form, sitting atthe intersection of all possible timelines. They weren't predicting which path would be taken; they were choosing which ones to terminate, pruning the tree of reality to keep it from growing wild.
"The Harbingers didn't create the system," I gasped as understanding crashed through me. "They inherited it. From the Oracle."
Fenric caught my arm as my knees buckled. "What did you see?"
"Everything," I looked at Jeffrey's offering with new comprehension and growing dread. "The Oracle wasn't just powerful. They were the first. The original architect of controlled fate. And their bones" I swallowed hard. "Their bones are still active. Still trying to do the job they were created for."
"Which is?" Zane prompted, though his expression suggested he'd already guessed.
"To find a new Oracle," I finished quietly. "To pass on the power. To me."
The shard pulsed once more, and this time I didn't fight the pull. I reached past Rook's protective bulk, my fingers closing around the bone fragment.
Pain exploded through my arm, white-hot and searingly cold all at once.
