2024-07-22 10:30:34
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Chapter 389
Ash drifted across the chamber in thin, uneven lines. Caster stood still at the center of his quarters, hands loose at his sides. The lamps were dimmed to a low glow. The wards hummed at a steady pitch. Nothing moved except the ash. It floated past his eyes.For a moment, it looked darker than before. Thicker. It gathered in the air and slowed, as if caught on invisible threads. One fleck brushed his cheek. Another settled on the edge of the desk. The ash touched the surface and spread.Black lines bled outward, thin and sharp. The texture changed. It flattened. It was stained. Ink.The chamber blurred. The sound of the Tower faded, replaced by silence so complete it pressed against his ears. The floor beneath his boots hardened into rough stone. The air grew colder. Older. Caster blinked once. He was no longer in the Tower.He stood in a narrow vault carved into bedrock. The walls were bare. No banners. No sigils. Just raw stone cut by steady hands. A single table waited in the c
Chapter 388
Ash brushed the stone floor before it touched the air. Caster noticed because it moved incorrectly. It drifted sideways, paused, then sank, like something deciding where to land. The chamber was quiet except for the slow tick of a cooling ward crystal and the faint hum of the Tower’s night ward cycling. No wind. No mana surge. Nothing that should move dust.Caster sat at the narrow worktable with his sleeves rolled to the elbow. A single lamp burned low, its light shielded by etched glass to prevent scrying. He had sealed the door himself. Three layers. Physical lock. Oath-sigil. Null dampener. The chamber felt smaller for it.Ash settled along the edge of the table. It did not scatter. Caster did not touch it. He leaned back slightly, chair legs scraping once before he stilled them. His eyes tracked the ash, not directly, but through the reflection in the polished steel plate beside his notes. He kept his hands flat on the table, palms down.The ash shifted. It gathered into a thi
Chapter 387
The door to the sub-archive sealed without sound. No latch. No echo. Caster stood where he was, hands visible, palms open. The air smelled of dust and old binding wax. Light came from three fixed globes, steady and white, suspended above a stone table etched with catalogue marks.Lysane stood on the other side of the table. She did not sit. She did not gesture for him to do so. She placed a thin folio on the stone and slid it forward with two fingers. “Read,” she said.Caster stepped closer. His boots stopped at the table’s edge. He did not touch the folio yet. He looked at the cover. No title. No seal. The edges were scorched, not burned through, just kissed by heat.He opened it. Inside were sketches. Rune lattices. Partial bindings. Broken attempts. Corrections written over corrections. Blackthorn-era work.Caster’s fingers hovered above the page. He did not turn it yet. “These were recovered from the eastern vault collapse,” Lysane said. “Three days before Ashfall was named.”Ca
Chapter 386
The restricted archive wing did not announce itself with alarms. The door sealed behind Caster with a clean, final sound. No echo. No light change. Just the soft click of wards settling into place.Caster stopped walking. Shelves rose on both sides, tall and narrow, packed with sealed tablets, bone-bound codices, and crystal memory slabs wrapped in black filament. The air smelled dry and cold, like stone that had never seen sunlight. Thin runic lines crawled along the floor, faint and steady, forming a containment grid that cut the hall into measured segments.He did not turn around. “You’re early,” Lysane said.Her voice came from behind him, calm and even. No echo. She had already dampened the space.Caster set the case he was carrying on the floor. He straightened one glove with his thumb. “You said archive orientation,” he said. “This wing isn’t on the Sixth Ring maps.”“It isn’t on any maps,” Lysane replied. Footsteps approached, unhurried. “That’s why it’s useful.”Caster turne
Chapter 385
The seal cracked with a sound like bone snapping. Caster felt it through his boots before he heard it. The vibration ran up the stone floor, into the bench legs, into his knees. The vault door did not swing open. It peeled. Layers of ward-script lifted from the surface like dead skin and slid down in strips, turning gray as they fell.A Sixth Ring warden stepped back at once. “Don’t touch,” the man said, voice tight.Caster already had his gloves on. The vault was small, square, and old. The ceiling sat low enough that a taller mage would have to duck. Three stone shelves lined the walls. On them rested scroll cases of dark metal, each stamped with a containment mark that no longer glowed.Ash coated everything. Not thick. Not drifting. Just enough to dull edges and soften corners.Caster crossed the threshold alone.The warden shut the outer gate behind him. Iron slid into iron. Three locks turned. The sound echoed longer than it should have.Caster stopped just inside the room. He
Chapter 384
The ash began falling during morning bells. Not from the sky. From the walls.Caster noticed it before anyone spoke. He stood near the edge of the Sixth Ring gallery, boots planted on polished stone, hands folded behind his back. A faint gray fleck slid down the inner curve of the chamber wall, slow and deliberate, like dust choosing gravity late. It touched the floor without sound.No one reacted. The bells rang again. Low. Measured. A call to order. More ash followed. It drifted sideways before settling. It traced the edge of a sigil etched into the floor, then stopped, as if the stone repelled it.Caster did not move. Across the chamber, an archivist from the Third Ring brushed her sleeve. Gray smeared across white fabric.She frowned, rubbed again, then noticed her fingers came away clean. The cloth was gone where the ash touched it. Not burned. Not torn. Missing.She froze. “Proceed,” said Archmage Verdan of the Fifth Ring. His voice carried without effort. “Seal the chamber.”T
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