Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

They stood a moment longer by the thin folder.

Saffi's breath fogged the panel by a whisper and cleared again. The scribbled word sat there like a dare she could read but not accept yet.

"What even is this?" she asked.

Alteea tilted her head, thinking the way she did when she was trying to remember a page without opening the book. "Funny guy. He lived before Neoshima was built. Back when the city was more prayer than plan. You only get fragments from that far back."

"What kind of fragments?"

"Information. Twisted information. A warrior who appeared only when it mattered" Alteea continued. "No house. No banner. I mean, not that we knew of. He would arrive, end a fight, and vanish."

Saffi leaned on the rail. "So? What happened?"

Alteea nodded. "Eventually, someone convinced him to come inside long enough to take a reading. His Eon output was ridiculous. Double anyone on record then. Would still be near the top now, if the Phalanx never came."

"That's the part you believe?"

"I believe data when it is inconvenient" Alteea said. "And this was. The machines showed two streams. Two clean lines. Parallel. Completing each other. Like a braid you couldn't pull apart without ruining both halves"

Saffi's eyebrows drew together. "So that's where the "possession" came from, huh?"

"That was the word they used later" Alteea said. "He told them that a voice had been with him a very long time. Always there. Quiet when the world was quiet. Loud when it mattered. It helped him in fights. It knew Nyxes like they were cousins. Sometimes, he said, it even took control"

Saffi glanced up the spiral where the shelves faded into distance. "What happened to him?"

Alteea shrugged a little. "Pick your ending. Some say he fought the Nyx Queen one on one and disappeared in that fight, leaving behind a massive crater you can still visit to this day. Others swear they saw him years later buying onions in a market. I don't know. I am not sure anyone should"

"Sounds like a story you tell at a drunk table"

"It mostly is. But maybe it hides something true we can't measure. That's what good stories do"

Alteea touched the rail with a knuckle. "Come on. Deeper"

They started down again. The air cooled another degree. The stair curved, step after step, and the small lights between shelves gave them just enough light to see without guessing.

The shelves shifted as they descended. The neat rows of protocols and law books gave way to things that didn't wear numbers well. A complex clay figure, encased. A series of charcoal sketches on rough paper showing a bridge that never got finished.

Saffi slowed. "There's everything here. Paintings. Tools. Poems scribbled in margins. But… Where's the music?"

Alteea rested a palm on the rail and looked out toward the dark center of the spiral. "Music, my dear"

She paused like she was waiting for the right words to climb the stairs.

"Is as close to Eon as you can get" she finished.

"What do you mean?"

"Rhythm. Amplitude. Frequency. Technique… And then the piece you can't name that makes all the other pieces obey. Passion, maybe? Perseverance? I don't know. You don't store that on paper.

"You didn't answer my question"

"Near the top of the staircase, I think."

Saffi thought about the nurse who hummed off key in the hall and made a whole floor feel less alone. "Maybe that's why Nyxes sound wrong. Like broken chords"

"Maybe" Alteea said. "Or maybe they sound right to something we haven't met yet. Either way, I would rather you play to crystals than to them"

"Noted" Saffi smiled.

They went deeper, past archeology, history, physics…

After a while the spiral opened and didn't hook back to shelves immediately. The space spread into a round chamber, wide and quiet. The air smelled like clean stone and a little like rain. The walls here were simple and bare, curved alloy that was smooth at touch.

In the center, a pedestal rose from the floor – dark stone, waist high, edges worn smoother than the rest as if a hundred hands had brushed it on the way past. On the pedestal sat a book that made Saffi stop moving before her mind decided to.

It was enormous. Almost meter long, half a meter wide. Thicker than two hands stacked one on top of the other. The cover looked like old leather, but it was way tougher. Along the edges, thin bands of copper bound the pages in layered stacks, each stack held by screws small as seeds.

Letters were pressed into the cover by force and belief.

LUMINITE EXPERIMENTATION – RESTRICTED

Saffi stepped forward until her reflection bent across the pedestal's face. She lifted her hand and put it back down and then lifted it again and hovered it over the copper like you hover a hand over water that might be warm or might be ice.

"This is..." she started.

"Everything we know about Luminite"

The words did not echo. They did not need to. The book had a way of catching sound and keeping it.

"It opens…?" Saffi said, more to test the idea than to argue. The copper bindings had tiny screws with heads like stars. The corners were clipped so they wouldn't catch.

She glanced at Alteea. "You've been here before?"

"Often" Alteea said. "This is where I come when I remember that I don't know enough. Which is … Most days"

Saffi circled the pedestal once. The floor here was smooth enough to hold a reflection. "Who… Wrote all this?" she asked.

"Everyone who thought they could make Luminite behave" Alteea said. "The ones worth reading admitted when they were wrong. The geniuses worth remembering did not live long enough to write their own endings"

"Because of the experiments?"

"Because of the results" Alteea replied, and there was something in her voice for a second - a small scrape of fear under the even line.

Saffi watched her. "You sound like you have seen something you won't put in a file"

Alteea looked at the book and not at Saffi. "I have seen many things. What happens when you teach a thing to listen, and it starts answering questions you did not ask included"

"That is a strange way to say you don't want me to open it right now?"

Alteea huffed a breath. "You read me too well. Congratulations. This is a place for long mornings and three pots of coffee."

Saffi nodded, letting the "want to pry" fade. "I will come back"

"Eventually…" Alteea said.

They stood in the quiet, their breaths the only heard thing. Above them the spiral rose, carrying the weight of paper, mistakes and good ideas that had to wait their turn.

"Can I ask a question you'll probably hate?"

"You may" Alteea answered.

"When you said earlier that Luminite remembers. Did you mean it like a poet? Or like a scientist?"

Alteea folded her arms loosely and leaned a hip against the rail. She looked at the book a long breath and then at Saffi. The confidence in her face didn't go away. It made room. "Like a person who has seen it do so" she said, finally.

Saffi nodded, not wanting to ask any other question. Alteea went on.

"That is my fear. Not that it's power. That's memory. And memory goes where it has been told to go until someone tells it a better story. It can be very useful, or extremely destructive."

"Then we should tell better stories"

"Yes" Alteea said. "Preferably without dying first"

Saffi smiled. It was small and real. "I can manage that"

"I know you can" Alteea grinned, and for a second the mentor and the assistant looked at each other without titles. Just two people at the bottom of a city staring at a book that could ruin their week or save someone's life. Or both.

Saffi reached out and let her fingers rest on the copper band, just the lightest touch, like a knock on a door you are not sure you are ready to open. The metal was cold, like nobody opened it in a while.

She took her hand away. "So… When can I come check it out?"

"Dunno" Alteea said. "But not now. Remember why we came here."

They started back toward the stair. Saffi let herself look over her shoulder one more time. The big book sat there, patient. The words on its cover caught the pale light and gave none of it back.

"Aaah, I got carried away! I should have went straight to where I wanted to go." Alteea laughed at herself. "Let me show you… "

She hesitated.

"The legends that contributed to writing this book."