Page 57 of Orc’s Bones

“It’s done.”

“Yes.” I took my palms off the wall. “The work is sealed in it. The relic. Two centuries of methodology encoded into pre-catalogue bone memory. The Vault will hold it until someone with the capacity to receive it comes down here and the room decides to let them.”

“The Vault decides.”

“It decided to close. It’ll decide to open.” I looked at the sealed threshold. “Not anytime soon.”

He looked at the blank stone for a moment.

“Good.”

We went up.

The passage ascended. Each tier registered differently as we climbed — the founding current giving way to the lower Warline levels, the mid-level chambers, the final corridor.

Korven Draal was at the junction.

Sixteen years on post. He hadn’t moved since they’d descended — had heard the hum from below building for an hour and then going quiet and had not gone down. Had understood that what was happening below was not his to interfere with and held the line above it.

He looked at Thruk. Then at me. Then at the absence below us.

“The hum.”

“Resolved.” Clean and final.

Korven exhaled. Not relief — the release of a man who’s been braced a long time and is done with it. He straightened. “Upper levels clean. No anomalies above the founding tier since you went down. The ghostfire—“ He stopped. Jaw tight on something he was working to name. “Changed about thirty minutes ago. Went from uneven to even in the Crypt corridor. Haven’t seen that without a formal reset in sixteen years.”

“The Vault sealed itself. What you’re reading is the Dominion’s natural hum without the interference that’s been running through it for months.”

Korven took that in directly, without asking for more than he needed. He looked at Thruk.

“The Dominion holds.”

Thruk looked at him for a moment.

“The Dominion holds.”

Varek was at the upper Crypt entrance.

He’d been waiting — that much was clear from the way he stood, the patience of someone who had committed to continuing to wait for however long it took. He looked at Thruk. At me. At the state of us: bone fragments in Thruk’s hair, my hands carrying dust from the Vault floor, neither of us having slept.

“How bad.”

“Done.” Nothing in his voice for decoration. Finished things were finished. “Secure the Dominion. I want the founding tier passage sealed from the upper Crypt entrance — physical seal.”

Varek was already moving before the last word. Not running. The speed of someone who had been ready the whole time.

He stopped at the corridor junction. Looked back.

“The Archive. Lyssa sent word — she’s been in the reading room since the hum went quiet. Says the lineage records are showing a pattern she hasn’t seen before.”

“Tell her to document it. We’ll look at it in the morning.”

Varek looked at Thruk. Then at me. Read us in half a second and chose not to say what he’d read.

“Yes.” And was gone.

Dawn was early.