Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

The seam widened just enough for a person.

Saffi slid through sideways, shoulder first. The alloy felt cool against her sleeve. The light inside was steady and pale, the kind of light rooms make when they are meant for thinking, not for showing off.

Behind her, Alteea followed and the door sighed closed. No latch. No lock. The line simply sealed and was gone. Saffi turned back to touch it on instinct and met a perfect surface. No edge. No hint it had ever moved.

"It's... Gone" she said.

"It always is" Alteea answered. "Makes it hard for idiots to wander in"

Saffi looked forward and forgot how to breathe for a second.

A spiral stair fell away under them - a ribbon of pale glass, wide enough for one person: two if one of them kissed the wall.

It curved downward through open space, step after step after step. The drop in the center went so far that her eyes tried to guess at an end and gave up quickly.

The walls were not walls. They were rows.

Shelves, stacked far above her reach. Not screens, tablets or data cards.

Paper. Folders. Bound books with spines that barely held. Every piece encased behind clear panels that sat flush with the curve - tight sealed, edge to edge.

Labels written by hand, neat or messy, depending on who had been in charge that year.

It was quiet. Not the kind that hurts. The kind that lets you hear your own shoes and the tiny sound of a sleeve against glass.

The room didn't smell like anything. It felt like a place isolated in space and time.

"Is this..." Saffi started, and stopped because her brain had raced ahead of her mouth. "Is this all of it?"

"Everything we ever bothered to remember, yeah" Alteea replied.

Saffi could have asked a hundred questions.

Her mouth picked a small one instead. "How far down does it go?"

"As far as we need it" Alteea said. "This was built when Neoshima first had its petals. We wanted one place that could survive bad ideas"

"Looks like it did" Saffi said, because jokes were how you look at something too big without dropping it.

"Mostly" Alteea said.

They started down. The glass steps didn't creak. The spiral had a simple rail on the open side, a clean line that caught her palm with confidence.

Her reflection came and went on the clear panels that covered the archives - a faint ghost walking beside her.

Saffi kept glancing back at the place where the door had been. "How can a door like that even hide? You can't weld something that smooth"

"Stupid precision" Alteea said. "One of the Phalanx made it. She could channel Eon into blades. Thinner than hair. She cut the seam before the panels were set. When she finished, it closed like literally nothing"

Saffi shook her head. "That's not precision. That's art"

"That's war" Alteea said quietly. "She used to say sharpness is honesty. If you want truth, you bleed for it"

"You knew her"

"Barely" Alteea said. "Good woman though. Would have made an insanely good wife. I really envy her curves... Alright, alright, sorry" she finished, after Saffi threw some mean looks at her.

"Alteea.. I swear, I can't understand you. What can you even envy about other women!?"

"You'll understand when you'll get older-" Alteea tried to respond, but Saffi snapped again.

"You can clean, cook, you have a PhD in both maths and biology as far as I know... You have a great body, you lead the whole ass Lighthouse, and I've seen you do everything by yourself sometimes. What can anyone want more!?"

"Woah, woah, woah! Saffi, chilll!!" Alteea burst out laughing. "I - How - Wha -" she tried to say, but she was laughing too hard to tie 2 words together.

They kept walking regardless. The spiral took them past sections with neat, stamped headings - AGRONOMY, WATERWORKS, CIVIL LAW.

Then sections that had been labeled with markers by someone who didn't care about neat - EMERGENCY ROSTERS, PRICE CONTROLS, PROTOCOLS WE HATE. Alteea tried to talk again

"Alright. Whew. So, I'm glad you think of me that way, Saffi. But you know? Uh... Everyone has their... Preference... Or... Type... You know?"

"Stop making weird excuses. You're everyone's type."

Saffi slowed at a row that held bound folders with metal clips. The labels said things like Terraforming Protocols. Eon Strain 1.3. Surface Evacuation Statistics.

She let a finger hover near the glass, close enough to feel cold, not close enough to leave a print.

"This is all real" she said softly. "The first city's memory"

"Every government, every ruler, every war, every riot, every law and mistake" Alteea said. "They locked it here. Humanity's receipts"

"How is it so clean? Shouldn't it decay?"

"Controlled air and pressure" Alteea answered. "Dry. No mold. The Heart runs it through the Spire. No oxygen in the cases. Not too complicated"

Saffi took a breath and realized she could taste the faintest dust, like a ghost of a page turning a long time ago.

They passed a section of drawings - endless, incomplete maps, a small model of Neoshima as it must have looked when the first petals were just lines and hope.

Alteea stopped at a railing that held a folded map behind its own pane. The edges had gone brown. Roads were hand marked, wrong then fixed.

"This is history" Saffi said.

"No" Alteea said, setting her hand against the glass and then taking it away quickly so she wouldn't smudge it. "This is why we keep repeating it"

"Hmm... And I'd everything organized?"

"Upper sections hold public records" Alteea said, gesturing to the rows they had just passed. "Lower levels - that's where they buried things"

"Buried?"

"Files too dangerous to erase, too shameful to share. Or just too complicated for a public that likes neat stories. For a public that doesn't need to know that the Nyxes have wiped out yet another division. For a dumb public that... Just needs to be manipulated. For everyone's safety" Alteea said.

Saffi started to descend, leaving Alteea a bit behind. The deeper shelves had fewer printed tags and more handwriting. Some labels were just dates.

Some just said:

[???]

The panels here had small scratches at the edges, the kind that happen when you open something you weren't supposed to and then put it back in a hurry.

"Who else knows about this room?" Saffi asked.

"Fewer every year" Alteea smiled. "That's one way to keep a secret. Another is to make a place inconvenient. Stairs help"

"You made a library that punishes leg day"

"I didn't make it. I just kept it from getting forgotten. And added a handrail" Alteea said.

They went on. Saffi's eyes moved faster than her feet. One panel held a ledger labeled PETALS - INITIAL LOAD TESTS. Another held a thick book with a lock on it and the simple title First Order Wardens - Internal.

The spiral opened on a short shelf that looked neglected - a row of thin folders and one fat book that had sagged inside its case, the way heavy things do when nobody turns their pages.

A sliver of paper stuck out at a wrong angle. Saffi reached to tuck it back with one careful finger against the glass, and that's when she saw it - tucked between two older ledgers, half hidden.

A folder so thin it didn't justify its own space. The cover was almost blank. No printed label.

Just a word, scribbled by hand in faded black ink, the lines jagged like the person had been writing without a table under it.

"⨅╎ᔑ⍑ possession"