TWENTY
The knock at Amelia’s door was sharp and unrelenting, rattling Silas from his dazed state of note-sorting. He exchanged a glance with Amelia, who rose from the floor where she’d been cross-referencing their research, posture tense, as though expecting something nefarious behind her closed door.
Silas followed, reaching her just before she grasped the handle.
Amelia opened the door, finding a courier there, a plain wooden crate tucked under one arm.
He heard her sigh of relief at the innocuous visitor.
“Delivery for Mister Silas Finley?”
Amelia gestured to him. He gave the man a polite smile, stepping forwards to accept the crate, glancing down to see the tidy lettering of his sisters across the top.
They thanked the man, moving back inside.
Amelia hovered by his shoulder while he set the crate on her desk, prising the lid free.
Inside, carefully wrapped in layers of worn cloth, were two journals.
Silas breathed in steadily as he picked up the top one, a battered leather journal, its edges frayed with age.
He recognised it from a collection of his father’s journals.
Amelia let out a soft whistle. “Look at that.”
Silas looked back into the crate at what she referenced.
Beneath his father’s journal was the second book Aurora had mentioned.
It was made of dark brown leather, blackened at the corners, its cover carved with twisting, faintly glowing glyphs.
A small symbol was etched into the centre, a bowl-like semi-circle cradling a small star.
Silas reached for it, though the moment his fingers brushed the journal, an icy pulse shot through his bones. Amelia hissed softly.
He withdrew his hand quickly. “You felt that?”
Amelia frowned at her own fingers, flexing them before shaking them out like she still felt the unnatural chill. “Yeah.”
“Orion,” Silas said hoarsely. “My father…these were his.”
Amelia didn’t reply.
His heart already pounded as he set the battered journal down on the table, fingers trembling. He opened it, and he was hit by a wave of nostalgia at the familiar lettering inside. He swallowed, but forced his gaze to the cramped, untidy writing on the pages.
The first few entries were normal, coherent. They were field notes, precise observations about the Rift’s shifts, theories about the Monoliths not being opposites, but halves. A connected system, yearning for unity.
Orion spoke of a ‘thread-line’, a metaphysical tether that could be reconnected, centred somewhere in the Ruins of Veilthorne.
Amelia pointed to a section, breath unsteady as she read aloud. “If re-joined, it may reset the world's magic,” she said, casting him an excited glance before continuing. “No more blighted storms. No more unravelling spells. Balance.”
Silas’ pulse quickened.
This was monumental.
If it was real.
As they excitedly flipped the pages, the journal began to change. It was gradual at first. Sentences began to twist halfway through. Words were repeated. Diagrams that started out crisp devolved into near-meaningless spirals. Margins crowded with frantic notes.
The Rift speaks…the Rift sings…can't sleep…Veilthorne is watching me …
The centre is hunger…the centre is hope …
I see the lines burning across the world…I see her in the dark …
His hands tightened on the leather.
Silas leaned closer, their shoulders brushing. “He was losing himself,” he said quietly. “The Rift…it was eating away at him.”
“He was there too long,” Amelia whispered. “It's not meant for prolonged exposure. Look…he references trying to use midnight magic to find a way into Veilthorne. He…passed through the wards at precisely midnight.” She let out a stunned breath, before whispering. “Do you think that broke the wards?”
“Perhaps,” Silas said bitterly, “and perhaps it cost him.”
There were no final entries, no explanations of his disappearance. Only an abrupt stop. A stain on the last page, dark and stiff like old blood.
They stood in heavy silence.
“How did Aurora even find this?” Amelia queried softly. “How did it come back from the Rift, when your father didn’t?”
He swallowed, puzzling over the query. All he could do was shrug, despising how he had so few answers to so many things.
Amelia shifted, peeking at the second book covered in glyphs. Silas’ gaze shifted to it, too.
It gleamed faintly, glyphs curling in on themselves like vines of molten ink. It didn’t just look sealed, it felt sealed, like a heartbeat thrumming steadily behind impenetrable stone.
Compelled, he reached out again. As his fingertips brushed it, a sharp crack of magic lashed at his hand. He yanked back with a soft curse.
Amelia let out a sigh. “Must you touch everything without care?”
He sent her a look. She rolled her eyes before looking back to the sealed journal.
“Protective seal,” she muttered, shaking her fingers. “Probably a complex one.”
“Why would my father lock it?” Silas said, voice tight with suspicion. “Unless what’s inside is extremely dangerous. Or extremely valuable.”
“Or both,” Amelia said grimly.
They studied it together, heads nearly touching as they leaned over the ancient thing.
Silas traced a hovering finger above the glyphs, careful not to touch it again. “It’s like nothing I’ve seen before. This isn't a normal seal. Usually if the owner passes…” He grimaced at the reminder. “…A glyph-lock would be null, and anyone could access it.”
His mind spun as they studied it.
“Maybe the glyphs need a specific word,” Amelia said. “Or a spell?” They exchanged a long look before lapsing into a pondering silence. “We could try opening it.”
Silas’ lips pressed into a thin line. “It might not be safe to.”
A small, bitter smile ghosted across her mouth. “When has anything been safe since the Rift?”
Silas didn't answer.
Together, they stared at the cursed book on the table, the ticking clock of their survival pounding in their ears.
Somewhere in the dark corners of his mind, he wondered…what if the answers inside were worse than the questions they already had?
Hours later, he closed the leather-bound journal and looked up. Amelia sat in the wingback chair, looking down at him on the floor.
“That’s it,” Silas said, setting it aside. He tried to absorb the knowledge as a scientist, and not as a boy who had lost his father and was trying to make sense of it.
“Are you alright?” Amelia asked.
“Mm,” he said with a small nod.
The room was quiet, and he filled it with a heavy sigh.
Right. Enough of that.
Silas stood, standing before her. She just looked up at him.
“Up,” he demanded quietly.
“What for?” she asked, leaning back in the chair.
“We’re going to practice using the bond.”
Her eyes fell to the stack of books she had been reading through, before nodding with a weariness. “Yes, we should learn to control it better.”
“If we can,” he said, offering her a hand. She hesitated briefly, but reached for it, allowing him to pull her to stand. “Until we know more, when we aren’t researching, we will be practicing, yes?”
Amelia nodded her head in agreement.
“Think about something emotional,” Silas asked.
She cocked her head. “We know we can manipulate emotional responses already.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s start small and work our way up.”
She sighed softly, looking away into the dark grate of her empty hearth. She stared into it for a long moment. He watched her closely, seeing her bottom lip shift, her eyebrows pull together as she imagined something he couldn’t see.
It hit him quickly, like he had tumbled from a cliff without warning.
Sorrow, anger, and pain mingled, a bitter tangle of emotions that almost had him doubling over with it.
It kept going, rising and falling, washing over him like waves of anguish and betrayal.
He started to pant as the feeling overwhelmed him, squeezing at his heart. He gritted his teeth as it swelled.
“Stop,” he ground out.
Amelia jumped slightly, blinking as though coming out of a daze.
The feeling subsided, but a lingering ache remained. He rubbed at the centre of his chest.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
He took a step closer, struck by an overwhelming desire to hold her, to take that pain away. “Winslow…”
She held a hand up and shook her head, stopping his advance. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
He stopped, reaching up to grip at the edge of the fireplace, needing something to stabilise him.
“You’ve…been quite subdued since seeing your parents at the conference.”
Her eyes snapped to him. “So?”
Silas hesitated before voicing the concern that had niggled at him since seeing the runes.
“Did they…was it them?”
She shook her head with denial, but fear and pain sliced across his chest through their bond.
“You don’t have to protect them,” Silas urged.
She was quiet for a long time before her eyes fell shut, letting out a sigh of resignation. Amelia turned away, facing the cold fireplace, arms hugging around her middle.
“They were scientists first, and parents… last ,” she said in a voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear.
Something sunk inside of him at the admission.
Her parents.
They marked her, forced magic into her veins, forced her to be obedient .
He swallowed his rage, sorrow, and disgust.
She let out a bitter laugh, meeting his eyes.
“I can feel your pity,” she said before looking away again.
“I was fourteen when they started with the intellect rune. They had actually convinced me it was a good idea, that it would lead to me becoming one of the greatest scholars in Aethrial, that I would solve all the lands problems. They said it would make me great…and I wanted so badly to please them. I let them.”
Silas held in his horror, trying to control his reaction so she didn’t have to feel it.