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“It is, but...” Elowynn read it, her head shaking. “The notation was written two centuries before I was born. And there is no other explanation beyond a routine transfer authorization.”

She shrugged lightly. “Honestly, I do not think it means much. It could have been anyone. House Selvicta once had holdings throughout much of the north and into the city. There is very little to go on here.”

Elowynn turned the page, continuing to search.

After a few more flipped pages, she stopped. Her eyes moved lower, and the repeated notation in a side column made her chest constrict.

Transferred.

The word appeared so often that it lost all ordinary meaning. Toward the later pages, the language began to change. Transferred became reassigned. Reassigned became relocated. Then, in the final section of the ledger, the entries shortened until the notation became only one word.

Removed.

Lora leaned closer, then promptly leaned back again. “Well, that’s not ominous or anything.”

Elowynn turned to the last page. The final entry waited there as if expecting them to stumble across it.

Senior-Archivist Arcturus Thalvio.

The name meant nothing to anyone else, but Elowynn recognized it right away. She had seen it in restricted records during her second turning in Veylspire, attached to a scholar whose theories on resonance containment had been dismissed publicly as speculative and later removed from most Collegium indexes.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the ledger. Beneath the name, written in a different hand, was the final notation.

Removed, by order of the Auric Conclave.

A shiver ran up her spine.

Caelyn looked down at the page, then at her face that had lost all color. “You know that name.”

Elowynn nodded because she didn't trust herself to speak at first. The ledger had confirmed something she had already begun to fear, but confirmation didn't bring relief. It brought consequences and evidence of forced silence.

“He wrote about resonance containment,” she said. “His work was considered fringe. Dangerous, some said. Most of his papers were even restricted before I ever arrived in Veylspire.”

Korvel’s expression had closed itself into something unreadable and Elowynn looked at him.

“The Conclave knew,” she said as fury began to surface. “They bloody well knew, Korvel!”

He didn't respond. Instead, he looked away.

That anger rose through her, blazing. It cut through her exhaustion with astonishing lucidity.

The Conclave had not just inherited secrets. They had managed them. They had removed people, sealed records, buried chambers, and allowed generations of scholars to build entire careers around partial truths.

Caelyn was still looking at the ledger. His gaze had locked on the word removed, and Elowynn saw the wheels turning in his mind before he gave voice to his thoughts. His face changed, the way it did when pain arrived too rapidly to conceal.

“They knew something like this existed,” he said, his voice rough as he repeated her earlier words. “Something beneath the city. Something connected to what I can feel. They knew enough to hide it from the world.”

Caelyn’s hand loosened in hers, growing slack beneath the weight of what he was trying to fully comprehend.

Elowynn understood then that he was thinking about every unanswered question. Every person who had looked at him with fear. Every turning spent believing he was singular and unknowable, while beneath the heart of Aetheris lay proof that someone had been studying the edges of that incomprehensible thing long before he was born.

“That is not proof that they understood you,” Elowynn said.

His eyes turned toward her and the look in them nearly destroyed her.

“No,” he said. “But it might prove they knew there was a truth worth hiding.”

She couldn't deny the possibility.