Chapter 38 #3
Every eye moved toward the Codex. I sighed and dragged it closer.
“You heard her.” Nothing. “You said none of the versions remember whole. Fine. Show us where the original breaks.” The leather warmed beneath my hand.
Then the pages began turning. Maps flashed past. Diagrams. Names I had never seen.
Constellations that didn’t resemble the sky over Alareth.
The pages stopped. Writing filled the upper half of the parchment.
It wasn’t identical to any version on the table, but I recognized the bones of it immediately.
Divided power. A star. Something separated that would one day remember what it had been.
Then the writing stopped halfway down. Below it was empty parchment. Near the bottom, the text resumed.
Emrin leaned over my shoulder. “Right here.” Faint impressions crossed the blank space. Vareena angled the lamp. Lines emerged in shallow grooves where a quill had once pressed into the page.
Raiden’s voice lowered. “How much is missing?”
Emrin counted. “Six lines.”
Nobody moved. The Cindralith copy had been scraped. The Elyndorian one cut. But this page was smooth. No damage at all. Just six lines that had once existed and did not anymore.
Dax stared at the Codex. “I thought no one could alter it.”
“So did I.” I put my palm against the page. It felt cold. “Do you know what was here?”
Silver appeared:
I KNOW THAT IT WAS TAKEN.
“That isn’t what I asked. Do you know the words?”
The answer took longer:
NO.
For once, the Codex managed to surprise all of us. “You don’t know?”
The page trembled beneath my hand:
I DO NOT.
Kieran moved closer. “Who took them?” Nothing. “Who?” Still nothing.
“I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t like you.” Dax said with a smirk.
Eiryx was studying the blank space rather than the silver words. “There’s no damage.”
“Could magic remove ink that cleanly?” Vareena asked.
“Some magic could.”
“What kind?”
His gaze stayed on the parchment. “I don’t know.”
I looked back at the Codex. “You let someone do this?”
Silver tore across the page so quickly that I flinched:
NOT LET.
The room went silent. I had seen the Codex mocking. Cryptic. Angry with me.
I had never seen it react like that. “Someone did this to you.” The words disappeared. It did not answer. For the first time since I had found it, I wondered whether some of its silence was more than choice. “What else was taken?”
Nothing.
“How am I supposed to know anything you show me is complete?”
This time it answered:
YOU ARE NOT.
Another line formed beneath it:
QUESTION WHAT REMAINS.
I stared at the words, then at the table. The cut Elyndorian binding. Cindralith’s scraped parchment. Umbrael’s replacement warning. Tharellan’s incomplete fragment. The Codex was older than all of them. And it had been altered too.
I looked at the empty section. “Can we recover it?”
The Codex waited:
WHAT HAS BEEN REMOVED LEAVES A SHAPE.
Emrin understood immediately. She pulled her notes closer and marked the same gap across every surviving version. Different methods. Different centuries. The same absence. Vareena stared at the arrangement. “They didn’t want to reinterpret this part.”
Raiden shook his head. “They wanted it gone.”
“From the copies we know about,” Eiryx said.
Kieran looked at him. Then at the crown notation. “Official copies.” The distinction changed everything. The Sanctum had preserved court histories, temple records, approved transcriptions. Things important enough to catalogue.
“What about the ones nobody approved?” I asked.
“Private collections,” Vareena said.
“Our family records,” Emrin added.
Kieran nodded toward the Umbrael text. “Royal material that never entered public archives.”
“And anything removed before the official versions were altered,” Eiryx said.
Lidia closed the Elyndorian volume.
“Then we stop trying to guess six missing lines and find a copy they missed.” No one argued.
I looked around the table. “Kieran takes anything connected to Umbrael’s crown.
Eiryx follows records once they leave official custody.
Vareena and Raiden handle Elyndor and Cindralith.
Dax and Emrin check your family archive and older Tharellan records. ”
Then I looked at Lidia. She noticed the hesitation immediately. “And me?” A few nights ago, I might have chosen the safest task before she had the chance to decide for herself.
The realization was embarrassing. “You found the binding. Check the physical records for alterations we’ve missed. Rebinding, replaced pages, scraped ink. Anything that tells us when somebody got to them.”
She considered me for a moment. “All right.” That was all. It was also her choice.
Kieran glanced at the Codex. “And you?”
“I keep working on this.”
His eyes met mine. “Not by yourself.” I didn’t argue.
The book lay open between us, six missing lines pale beneath the lamplight.
Every realm had inherited a different version of the truth.
Someone had been changing Starborn history for centuries.
Even the Codex could be made to forget. We didn’t have the prophecy.
Only the shape of what someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to remove. For now, that would have to be enough.