The Noxhollow Archives were not like a library.
Libraries had card catalogs and ladders, neat rows of bound tomes and whispered conversations about overdue returns. The Archives, by contrast, felt like entering the belly of some ancient, slumbering beast.
No one told Rowan how to get there. No one had to. The rune pulled him like a compass needle.
Down spiraling stairs worn smooth by centuries of use, past wards that shimmered across doorways like spider silk, and finally into a cavernous hall lit by lanterns that floated untethered, flickering with a ghostly light.
The air smelled of dust, parchment, and memories.
And in the deepest alcove, behind a shelf marked UNSORTED OR FORBIDDEN, he found it.
A single folio, bound in black leather, tucked behind volumes that hadn't been touched in ages. No title. Just a rune burned into the cover.
The same rune that marked his arm.
He opened it.
The parchment inside was brittle. Ink faded with time. But the entries were legible.
"RECORD OF EXILE: Caelum Nire, Silver-borne. Year 423."
Rowan's throat tightened.
He read on.
"Second-born son of the House of Hollowmere. Showed exceptional magical resonance at age six. Rune manifested during a failed binding ritual. Unclassifiable by color, deemed too unstable for ranking."
"Exhibited unnatural affinity for rune-mirroring, voidwalking, and inkshift spellwork."
"Expelled after unauthorized entry into the Astral Mirror Tower."
"Incident resulted in the destruction of a sealed reliquary, seven injured, one lost to corruption."
"Fate unknown. Believed dead."
Below that entry, scrawled in a different hand:
"Or waiting."
Rowan stared at the page.
The ink began to move.
Letters bled, shifting beneath his eyes, reforming into a single warning:
"Runeborne must not remember."
He snapped the book shut and shoved it back into the shelf.
The lanterns rapidly flickered overhead, once, twice, then steadied.
Rowan stood motionless, breath held.
A soft voice drifted from behind him.
"Find what you were looking for?"
He turned slowly.
Professor Winthra stood in the aisle's mouth, arms folded beneath her cloak of dark green and frost-colored braids. Her expression was unreadable.
Rowan couldn't tell if she'd been there long or had simply appeared.
"I…" he hesitated. "I didn't take anything."
"Curious thing," she said, walking toward him, "about the Runeborne. The moment they're told not to seek answers, they start tearing down every wall that holds them back."
Rowan blinked. "You mean…"
"I mean," Winthra said gently, "you aren't the first to wander into truths that should've stayed buried."
She placed a hand on the book he'd just returned.
"This history was hidden for a reason."
Rowan swallowed. "Because of what he did? Caelum Nire?"
Winthra's gaze hardened. "Because of what he was becoming."
She turned, motioning him to follow.
They walked in silence through the winding shelves. As they reached the broad central chamber of the Archives, Winthra paused beside a mosaic on the wall… once vibrant, now faded with age.
It depicted a figure in silver, standing at the edge of a great chasm. Behind them, towers burned. Before them, a black gate yawned open.
Rowan felt the rune on his arm throb faintly.
"He tried to seal it," Winthra whispered, not looking at Rowan. "That gate. That place. With nothing but his will and a rune that no master understood."
"Did he open it?"
"No," she said softly. "But something answered when he knocked."
That night, back in Room 11, Rowan stared at his arm.
He rolled up his sleeve, tracing the rune with a shaky finger.
The memory of the mirror flickered in his mind. His older self, standing with the black-bladed sword, surrounded by shadows. Watching. Waiting.
He didn't want to be Caelum Nire.
He didn't want to be a weapon.
But the rune wasn't something he could give back.
The book, the visions, the voice in the walls… they weren't random.
They were calls.
And Rowan was beginning to think he wasn't meant to ignore them.
Rowan barely slept that night. The faces of Caelum Nire and the black gate haunted his thoughts, dancing behind his closed eyelids like flickering shadows.
Morning arrived gray and cold, heavy with mist rolling in from the distant mountains beyond Noxhollow. The academy seemed quieter than usual, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Cassian found Rowan in the dining hall, eyes sunken but restless. "You look like you wrestled with a nightmare," he said, sliding into the seat beside Rowan.
He hesitated but then nodded. "I'm... starting to understand why the silver sash is a warning."
Cassian smiled faintly. "It's more than that. The Runeborne carry a destiny, and a burden. Sometimes, they don't survive the first test."
Rowan swallowed hard. "Test?"
Cassian leaned in, voice low. "Tomorrow. The Trial of Awakening."
Rowan blinked. "I didn't know there was a trial."
"Most don't," Cassian said. "But the academy has its ways of finding you. It's how the Runeborne prove themselves… or disappear."
Rowan's heart thudded. He glanced down at the rune on his arm, pulsing faintly beneath his skin.
The next day dawned bright and cruel. Rowan was summoned to the East Wing, where the air smelled of ancient stone and burning incense.
The hall where the Trial would take place was a vast chamber lined with rune-engraved pillars, each glowing faintly in the dim light. At the center stood a stone altar, its surface worn smooth by centuries of use.
An elder robed in deep violet stepped forward. "Rowan of the Silver Sash," she intoned, voice echoing, "today you face the Trial of Awakening. Your rune will guide you, but your courage will carry you."
Rowan nodded, hands trembling.
The altar flickered, and suddenly the room shifted.
The walls melted away, replaced by a dense, endless forest bathed in twilight.
A voice whispered in his mind.
"Find the heart. Find the key."
The air in the forest was thick with fog and silence, not even the wind dared whisper. Rowan stood alone among towering pines that pulsed faintly with rune-light beneath their bark, the sigils glowing like buried veins. The trees were too still. The light was too alive.
He took a step forward.
The forest shifted.
Branches creaked where none had moved. Roots uncoiled like watching serpents. Behind him, the stone platform and columns were gone, as though they'd never been. The Trial had truly begun.
"Find the heart. Find the key."
The words weren't instructions.
They were a demand.
Rowan walked for what felt like hours, following no path, only a pull in his chest. The deeper he went, the colder it grew not just in temperature, but in spirit. The kind of cold that clung to memory. That made you forget why you were walking in the first place.
The fog thickened until even his own hands were a blur. He paused.
Snap.
A twig cracked behind him.
He turned, heart pounding.
Nothing.
He stepped back.
The fog parted.
And a figure stood across the glade.
It was a boy… around his age, but older in the eyes. Dressed in a silver-trimmed coat, bearing the same rune Rowan wore on his arm.
The same features.
The same face.
Rowan stared at himself.
"What is this?" he asked aloud.
The other Rowan smiled faintly.
"Not what. When."
The double raised a hand.
A shimmer spread through the trees, a memory surfacing like light breaking through water. Rowan saw flashes:
A sword raised in defiance.
A black gate yawning wide.
Runes carved into sky and bone.
Cassian, older, broken and bleeding.
Noxhollow in ruins.
He stumbled back.
"What is this?!"
His double stepped forward. "The price of awakening is truth," the echo said. "To wield the rune is to invite fate. And fate is hungry."
"I don't want this," Rowan whispered.
"But it wants you."
The forest groaned.
The trees began to twist inward, their roots rising like claws.
The false Rowan's eyes burned silver.
"Prove you're worthy of the power. Or be forgotten like the rest."
Rowan reached into his coat.
The rune-book was there, humming with heat.
He opened it, pages blank, but he didn't need ink.
He pressed his palm against the parchment, and the rune on his arm glowed, searing through his skin and into the page.
The ground shuddered.
The trees halted.
And light exploded outward from the book, tearing through the fog.
The false Rowan screamed and shattered into mist.
The forest cracked open, revealing a path.
At its end, a heart-shaped stone altar.
And atop it...
A black iron key, humming with runes only Rowan could read.
He stepped forward, hands steady now.
As he touched the key, the forest peeled away like paper burned by flame.
He was back in the trial chamber.
The elders stood unmoved, as though no time had passed.
The violet-robed woman stepped forward. Her expression was unreadable.
"You have passed."
Rowan clutched the iron key in his palm. It was warm.
He wasn't sure what he'd unlocked.
But something had definitely opened…
The iron key was heavier than it looked. Rowan kept it hidden in the inside pocket of his coat, its weight pressing against his ribs like a heartbeat he couldn't silence.
He wasn't sure what it unlocked.
He wasn't sure when it unlocked.
But he could feel something watching him now… not just with eyes, but with time itself. The kind of gaze that came from behind walls and under floors, that had been watching long before he was born.
It made food taste dull and sunlight seem pale.
He hadn't told Cassian. Not yet. Not about the forest, the vision, or his double.
Somehow, he knew… not everyone would understand.
The students had returned to their usual routines. Sword drills clanged in the far courtyards, and younger mages scrawled practice runes in glowing chalk across the stone floors of their classrooms. But as Rowan walked the halls, the other students gave him space.
Some nodded respectfully.
Others looked at him like he was a loaded weapon.
The silver sash had once marked him as "unknown."
Now it marked him as something worse, unpredictable.
At midday, he found himself summoned, again, this time not to the elders, but to the Glass Stair.
He hadn't seen it before.
The tower stood to the far east of the academy, half-forgotten and leaning slightly as though too tired to remain standing. Its steps spiraled around a hollow center, and the glass wasn't transparent, it was like looking through memory.
Waiting at the base was a tall, angular man in a robe stitched with ink-black vines. His eyes were pale and clouded like frosted windows.
"Rowan, yes?" he said.
"Yes."
"I am Archmage Vaern." His voice was like gravel wrapped in silk. "You survived the trial. You bear the mark. Now we must see what kind of echo you leave behind."
"I don't understand," Rowan said.
"You don't need to," Vaern replied. "You only need to walk."
He climbed.
Each step of the Glass Stair whispered to him, actual voices rising from the glass beneath his feet.
"… Caelum…"
"…he wasn't supposed to…"
"…the runes moved on their own…"
"…we sealed the gate, but not the cost…"
Rowan gritted his teeth. He climbed faster.
The tower narrowed. The light shifted. The voices quieted.
And then… silence.
He reached the top.
It was a small room, circular, windowless, walled in mirrors etched with runes. At the center stood a pedestal.
Upon it was a basin filled with a silvery liquid that pulsed like it was breathing.
"Place your hand into the pool," Vaern instructed from behind.
Rowan hesitated.
Then obeyed.
The liquid was warm.
But it wasn't wet.
Images surged into his mind. No forest this time. No false selves.
Instead, he saw:
A blade wrapped in runes, floating above a stone hand.
An obsidian doorway locked by seven keys, one of which pulsed in his coat pocket.
A name scratched into stone: Rowan Nire.
He jerked back.
The pool hissed.
Vaern stepped forward slowly, peering into the ripples.
"Well," the archmage muttered, "the line survives after all."
"What?" Rowan asked, breath catching.
Vaern turned away muttering to himself.
"This changes everything."
Rowan didn't remember the walk back from the Glass Stair.
His thoughts reeled with the vision, that name, carved in stone.
Rowan Nire.
It wasn't just the surname. It was the weight of it.
The way Vaern had said, "The line survives."
Caelum Nire.
That couldn't be a coincidence.
And if it wasn't…
What exactly had Rowan awakened?
He returned to his dormitory well after curfew. The stone corridors were dim, torches flickering low in their sconces, casting long shadows across the vaulted ceilings.
Most students were asleep.
All except one.
Cassian was waiting outside their door, arms crossed, leaning against the wall with a slice of dried apple in his mouth.
"You've been gone a while."
Rowan didn't speak at first.
Cassian raised an eyebrow. "Did they show you the pool?"
Rowan nodded.
"I thought so." He bit off another chunk of apple. "You look like someone opened a box they weren't supposed to."
Rowan finally spoke. "Do you know what the name Nire means?"
Cassian's face shifted.
Not surprise… something darker.
"Yes," he said softly. "I know exactly what it means."
They didn't talk more that night.
But Rowan couldn't sleep.
So instead, he walked.
The halls of Noxhollow were like a labyrinth, old as time, and full of doors that didn't lead to the same place twice. He passed empty classrooms, a statue that seemed to hum when he looked at it too long, and a hallway lit by floating lanterns that drifted away as he approached.
Eventually, he came to a stairwell he didn't recognize.
It led down.
Far below the foundation.
The air grew colder with each step, and the torches on the walls became rarer, older… some still burned with green flame, as though fueled by something not quite of this world.
Rowan felt the pull again.
The same pull from the Trial of Awakening.
Something was calling to him.
He reached the bottom.
It wasn't a dungeon. It wasn't a vault.
It was a library.
But no books sat on the shelves.
Only scrolls.
Crystals.
Slabs of etched obsidian.
And rune-carved bones.
At the center of the room stood a stone plinth with a sealed envelope resting on it, aged but untouched by time.
His name was scrawled on the front.
Not Rowan.
To the last of the Nire.
He opened it.
Inside was a page of thick parchment, marked with a symbol that shimmered with old magic.
A rune he had never seen before, not in his book, not in class, not even during the trial.
It pulsed softly as he stared at it.
And beneath the rune, written in a hand that trembled with urgency, were the words:
"They think I'm dead. But if you found this, the blood still remembers."
"Unlock the seventh door. But beware the Sixth, for it lies."
Rowan backed away.
The torches flared.
And then the stone beneath him began to shift.
A crack appeared in the floor, a straight line that was perfectly carved, glowing with the same unknown rune.
Then footsteps above.
Voices.
Someone was coming.
Someone who shouldn't know he was here.
Rowan snatched the letter and shoved it into his coat just as the heavy wooden door above groaned open. He ducked behind a low shelf of rune-etched skulls, heart hammering like a trapped bird in his chest.
Voices drifted down the stairwell.
Two. Maybe three.
"…supposed to be sealed…"
"…he couldn't have gotten this far alone…"
"…Vaern won't like this."
Footsteps echoed. Slow. Deliberate. Someone was confident… or impatient. Their torchlight cast warped shadows down the spiral steps, dragging strange silhouettes across the stone floor.
Rowan crept backward, searching for an exit.
Nothing.
Only scrolls, silent relics, and the faint hum of runes that didn't want to be touched.
Then, a sound.
A click.
Soft. Mechanical.
A rune on the wall, shaped like a twisted "S" with a circle bisecting it, shimmered as his body brushed past it. The wall trembled, groaned, then slowly shifted. A secret passage cracked open, revealing a narrow hall swallowed in darkness.
Rowan didn't think.
He ran.
The passage was tight and cold, lined with slick stone and damp moss. It curved in unnatural ways, sometimes narrowing so much he had to turn sideways, other times bending at impossible angles. This place hadn't been made for humans. Or if it had… they weren't the kind who walked in sunlight.
He heard voices behind him. Someone had noticed the open wall.
The chase had begun.
After what felt like an eternity of winding turns and oppressive silence, Rowan stumbled into a low, circular chamber.
There was a statue at the center.
A knight in cracked black armor, kneeling before a stone basin filled with ash. His head was bowed, hands resting on the pommel of a greatsword that seemed to hum faintly with residual power.
Behind the statue, a door. Simple. Ancient.
He approached.
The runes around the frame glowed, not threatening, but… expectant.
His hand moved to his coat. He pulled out the iron key from the Trial.
It vibrated in his palm.
Rowan inserted it into the keyhole.
The runes responded instantly, racing like lightning across the door's surface.
Click.
The door swung open.
Beyond it… a stairway that descended further still.
But before he could move, the air shifted.
A whisper.
Low. Unhuman.
He turned.
And saw them.
Two figures, barely visible, cloaked in robes darker than shadow… no faces, only masks. Smooth and pale like porcelain, featureless save for a single eye carved into each forehead.
The Watchers.
Rowan had heard rumors. Whispers passed between students in hushed tones, that Noxhollow kept secrets even the headmaster feared, guarded by those who had no names.
The Watchers moved without sound.
One stepped forward, hand raised, a rune shimmering on its palm.
Rowan didn't wait.
He darted down the stairs, the key still clutched in his hand.
The door slammed behind him.
He could hear them on the other side.
Waiting.
The stairwell opened into a space unlike anything he'd seen, a grand hall buried beneath the castle itself, filled with moonlight despite being miles underground.
And carved into the walls, stretching hundreds of feet high…
Were names.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Some glowing. Some cracked. Some crossed out with ancient rune-scorch.
And near the bottom, barely visible… glowing faintly:
Rowan Nire.
The Hall of Names stretched so far that it curved out of sight in both directions, as though the earth itself had folded around this secret sanctum. The air was cool, crisp like high mountain wind, though they were far underground. It carried no dust, as if time dared not settle here.
Rowan stood frozen before the wall, eyes locked on the faintly glowing name near the bottom.
Rowan Nire.
It pulsed once.
Soft. Slow.
Then again.
A rhythmic thrum, like a heartbeat carved into stone.
He stepped closer. The stone beneath his feet shifted, just barely, with his approach. More runes lit up around the name. Words began to appear beside it, not in ink or paint, but in glowing threads of magic.
A history. A bloodline. A warning.
"Heir of the Hollow Flame," the wall whispered.
"Last of the True-blooded Rune-born."
"Key to the Sealed Door."
Rowan reached out, his fingers trembling.
When he touched his name, warmth surged through his hand, racing up his arm and into his chest. The rune that had marked him in the Trial of Awakening, the one that had burned into his shoulder, flared beneath his coat.
And suddenly, he saw.
Not with eyes.
With memory not his own.
A battlefield beneath a red sky.
A knight in black armor wielding a rune-marked blade against a creature that shimmered like shadow turned liquid.
A great door sealed by seven locks, runes carved into its surface like scars.
And in the center of it all, a boy… no older than Rowan, standing alone, holding an iron key.
Rowan gasped and fell to his knees.
The vision faded.
But the feeling remained: he had been here before.
Or someone like him.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
The voice came from behind him.
Rowan spun around.
An old man stood in the doorway at the far end of the hall, leaning heavily on a cane carved from blackwood. His beard was long and white, his robes faded but embroidered with silver thread shaped like vines and stars.
He had the look of someone who had outlived entire kingdoms.
Rowan took a step back. "Who are you?"
The man smiled, gently.
"I am called Ovrin. Once, I was Archivist of Noxhollow. Now… I am something less. Or more, depending who you ask."
Rowan's fingers still tingled from the vision. "You knew about me?"
"I suspected. I waited. That wall doesn't light up for just anyone." Ovrin hobbled closer, looking up at the glowing name. "Nire. It has been a long time since that name stood here unbroken."
Rowan's voice was small. "What does it mean?"
"It means," Ovrin said, "you are the only one left who can open what must never be opened… or close what should never have been opened at all."
A silence passed between them.
Far above, Rowan could still sense the Watchers pacing.
Waiting.
He looked at Ovrin. "Why me? I didn't ask for any of this."
"No," the old man said, eyes kind but sad. "But your blood did. And blood is a language the runes never forget."
Ovrin turned and began walking deeper into the Hall.
"You should come. There's more to see. More to remember."
Rowan followed.
The walls around them grew darker, older, the names here weren't glowing. They were scorched. Some were unreadable, burned out like fallen stars. Ovrin paused at one of them and touched the stone with a wrinkled hand.
"She tried to stop it. She almost succeeded."
"Who?" Rowan asked.
Ovrin didn't answer.
Instead, he stopped before another door… smaller than the others, rune-locked and bound with chains made not of metal, but of what looked like a frozen shadow.
He looked at Rowan.
"You carry one of the keys. But you'll need the others."
Rowan blinked. "How many are there?"
Ovrin sighed. "Seven."
Rowan swallowed. "And where are they?"
The old archivist smiled grimly.
"Scattered across the broken edges of our world. Some are buried. Some are guarded. And one… is lost."
The shadow-chained door loomed before Rowan, pulsing with an energy that set his bones on edge. He didn't dare step closer.
"Seven keys…" he murmured, trying to wrap his mind around it. "Why would someone scatter them?"
"To keep them apart," Ovrin said softly, "and to keep the Sealed Door shut. Once, all seven were bound together in one place. But when the Hollow Flame began to die, the world split its burden."
Rowan looked at him. "What's behind it?"
The old man's eyes flicked toward the rune-lock, then quickly away.
"The End. Or the Beginning. Depends who holds the door open."
He tapped the stone with his cane, and a seam appeared in the floor beneath them. With a rumble, a small stairwell revealed itself… narrow, hidden, and descending deeper still.
"This path leads back into the castle. Quietly. You'll be safer this way."
Rowan hesitated. "Why help me?"
Ovrin gave him a long, sad look. "Because I once thought I was the last Nire. I was wrong. The line skipped, but it survived… through fire, through silence, through forgetting. You're the one it chose."
"But I don't know anything," Rowan said.
"You will," said Ovrin. "The first key woke the rune in your soul. The others will answer that call. You'll feel them, eventually."
As they descended, the stairwell gave way to a low-ceilinged passage lit by runes etched in the walls. They pulsed softly as Rowan passed, reacting to something inside him. Ovrin shuffled behind, muttering to himself as he tapped the wall here and there with his cane.
The passage opened into a narrow corridor lined with old suits of armor and forgotten weaponry. Above the doorway, a faded plaque read:
Aurum Vault: Dormant Artifacts – Tier Sealed
"Tier Sealed?" Rowan asked.
Ovrin gave a sideways grin. "Just means the Headmasters stopped cataloguing it centuries ago. Doesn't mean it's safe."
At the far end, a pedestal stood beneath a ring of hanging chains. Upon it lay a dagger… simple, but beautifully crafted. Its hilt was wrapped in dark leather, and its blade shimmered faintly with an oily sheen, runes barely visible along its edge.
The moment Rowan stepped near it, the dagger hummed.
Not loudly.
It felt like recognition.
He felt it, in the same way he had felt the key during the trial, in the same way he had felt the rune etch into his shoulder. It belonged with him.
"The first key," Ovrin said.
Rowan stared. "But it's a weapon."
"Yes. And no." Ovrin stepped beside him. "Each key is bound to a form, shaped by purpose, but also by the one who awakens it. For you, the first was a dagger. A blade that hides easily, but strikes true. There's meaning in that."
Rowan hesitated, then reached out.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the runes lit up.
The same rune that had appeared in the letter. The one not found in any of the books.
It burned for a second, not painfully, but deeply. As if it were etching something inside him.
When he pulled it from the pedestal, the air grew still.
A low, distant sound echoed through the vault, like a great bell tolling underwater.
"You've taken your first step," Ovrin said. "Now others will feel it."
"Others?"
"There are those who would see the Sealed Door opened," he said. "And others who would see you broken before you gather the rest."
Rowan gripped the dagger tighter.
He wasn't sure what scared him more.
Back in the lightless passage, Ovrin touched a small rune on the wall. A second door opened, this one leading into a lower corridor of the main castle, where flickering torchlight hinted at returning life and students shuffling about for morning drills.
Rowan turned to the old man. "Will I see you again?"
Ovrin smiled faintly. "If the Hollow wills it."
Then the wall closed.
And Rowan was alone again… but not empty-handed.
The walls of Noxhollow had begun to wake.
Rowan moved quickly through the lower corridors, dagger tucked beneath the folds of his uniform coat. The fabric scratched at his skin, but he dared not readjust it in the open. Each stone passage echoed with footsteps, students murmuring, boots clicking, distant laughter bouncing.
By the time he reached the Silver Sash wing, his heart had only just stopped racing.
Inside Dormitory Seven, the others were still asleep. Or pretending to be.
Wesley snored with dramatic flair in the corner bunk, one leg thrown over the side like a flag planted in enemy territory. Theo muttered in his sleep… something about frogs and battle formations. And the shadowy boy, Alek, lay completely still. Rowan wasn't even sure he breathed.
Rowan slipped the dagger beneath his mattress, wrapping it in a scrap of his old orphanage blanket. He wasn't sure why he brought that with him, but now, it felt right.
Like a tether to the boy he had been… before all this began.
He stood at the tall arched window for a long while, staring out across the campus.
Beyond the central courtyard, the sky was beginning to lighten. Noxhollow looked like something out of a dream, gothic spires piercing the morning mist, rooftops slick with dew, ravens wheeling in lazy circles overhead. Far to the west, a bell tower chimed the sixth hour.
His eyes drifted toward the Watcher's Spire.
It stood silent.
But somehow, he knew he had been seen.
"Early start, Silver."
Rowan spun around.
A girl stood in the doorway… tall, self-assured, her golden sash gleaming against dark green robes. Her boots barely made a sound as she stepped inside, hands clasped behind her back like a soldier inspecting barracks.
He recognized her from the arena.
The golden sash meant she was in her fourth year, a likely candidate for a Watcher's apprenticeship.
"Didn't mean to startle you," she said, though her tone suggested she had meant exactly that.
Rowan straightened. "Can I help you?"
The girl raised an eyebrow. "You're the new one. Rowan, right? The only Silver Sash this year. Curious thing, that."
He nodded slowly.
She stepped closer, eyes scanning the room and him.
Rowan frowned. "Do you need something?"
She studied him for a long moment. Then, as if satisfied by whatever she saw, or didn't, she leaned in slightly.
"Some advice, Silver." Her voice was low now, almost kind. "This place doesn't tolerate mysteries for long. You show up out of nowhere, rune unknown, sash unranked, and within two days you've set off half the wards in the Archives."
Rowan's blood ran cold.
She knew.
Or suspected.
Either was dangerous.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
She smiled, not warmly. "Of course not. Just a walk, right? Little stroll beneath the castle while everyone else was asleep. We've all done it."
She turned, stepping toward the doorway.
"Keep walking like that, Silver, and someone's going to ask the wrong question. And next time, it won't be me."
She was nearly gone when Rowan called after her.
"What's your name?"
She glanced back.
"Calla."
Then she was gone.
The silence left behind felt heavier than before.
Rowan stood still for a long time, heart hammering again, but not from fear.
From awareness.
The keys would not wait.
And he wasn't alone in searching.