Two weeks after Sable arrived, a message came from the eastern territories.

Not from Vael. From Obsidian.

Marina read it at the boundary stones in the early morning before the camp woke. The handwriting was precise and economical, the same quality she had seen in his observation logs in the Keep. No wasted words. No performance of remorse.

The secondary archive had been located.

He had found it in four days, which Vael's delegation had apparently received with the specific silence of people who had been looking for the same thing for thirty years and needed a moment to sit with that information.

The archive was sealed below the root...