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He swallowed hard.

She turned to another, the south-eastern one. “Sandward.”

Finally, she made it to the most southern end of the room.

“Lumenshire Abbey.”

Elowynn lifted her gaze and looked directly at Caelyn.

He blinked, his black eyes staring at her, but said nothing. She went back to looking at the engraved map and—

“Oh my gods. No...” Elowynn thought she was going to be ill. She brought a hand to her stomach, forcing herself to calm.

Caelyn appeared beside her almost immediately. "What is it?"

“There are even sites on here destroyed ages ago. And they are all connected.” Her attention remained fixed upon the map as she pointed to the ruined symbols. They looked as though someone tried to gouge them from the floor.

“Those. They once held observatories, but are now what we know as Starfall Ruins. They are seated upon the channels linking one observatory to another.”

“I thought history said the observatories had been built independently across different eras and by different territories,” Lora said.

“They did,” Korvel replied. “Some had been rebuilt after the Great Vigil. Others had survived it. I mean, think about it. Scholarly traditions existed because of those assumptions.”

“The evidence right here, beneath our feet, suggests none of that was true. None of them were separate,” said Elowynn.

Caelyn looked like he was trying to decipher everything they were saying. His hands reached up to press on the sides of his head.

"I don’t understand," he said.

Elowynn pointed toward the nearest platform. Then another and another.

"They were never separate," she repeated clearly. "The observatories."

Her voice sounded distant even to herself. "They were—are—connected."

"Connected how, though?” asked Korvel.

The question sat between them for a time as Elowynn thought.

The others were murmuring, putting out theories, but eventually Elowynn blurted out, “They were components of some sort of system built to work together for one main purpose.”

Total silence followed until Korvel finally asked the question all of them were thinking.

“What purpose?”

Elowynn didn't answer right away. She continued walking through the chamber, following one of the larger channels carved into the stone floor. The line crossed dozens of smaller intersections before eventually converging upon the largest platform she had yet seen.

Even from across the chamber, she recognized the symbol etched into its center.

It was the Celestial Spire.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze and traced the surrounding channels again. This time she followed them outward rather than inward. Observatory after observatory appeared along the network, each linked to the next through a web of pathways—made by the aethercurrents—that stretched across the entire map.

Everything led back to the Spire.

Elowynn came to an abrupt stop.

Around her, everyone watched, waiting. But she could hardly notice them. Her attention remained fixed upon the stone beneath her feet while pieces of information collected over turnings of study began fitting together in ways she had never considered before.