2. Tobin
Tobin
“We have seconds,” I say, ignoring, once again, how Leith seems to know this before the rest of us. Now isn’t the time.
Asha wipes blood from her throat. “Excellent. I work well under unreasonable pressure.”
“You work recklessly under all pressure.”
“Still working.”
I send silver current through the floor, keeping it narrow enough to avoid the purple lines. The archive’s catalogue rushes back at me in fragments. Executions. Threshold breaches. Divine contamination. Gate closures.
I force my magic deeper.
“Find anything?” Hale asks.
“Several hundred reasons for Blackridge to expel us.”
“Useful ones?”
“Give me a fucking second.”
Leith moves towards the door. Death-current spreads from his boots and darkens the ward bands from our side. “About three seconds,” he murmurs.
I catch a record marker buried beneath three sealed catalogues. “Got something.”
The archive door strikes Leith’s current from the other side. Black power lashes across the bands. He doesn’t move, but blood appears beneath one nostril again.
“Quickly,” he says.
I drive my magic towards the marker. A cabinet six aisles over unlocks with a heavy snap.
Asha is already moving.
Hale catches her around the waist. “Where?”
“Sixth aisle,” I say. “Cabinet marked Threshold Sovereigns.”
“That sounds promising,” Asha says.
“It also sounds heavily cursed.”
“Everything here is cursed.”
Another impact hits the door. One silver band brightens through Leith’s darkness.
We run.
The purple current under the floor reacts, branching towards us. I throw silver barriers behind us, cutting it off before it can reach Asha. Cabinets shudder on both sides. Chains rip free of their hooks and strike into the aisle.
Hale catches one, fire exploding over his fist, then tears it from the cabinet. “Found the objections.”
“Don’t burn the records,” I snap.
“No promises.”
A chain lashes towards Asha’s throat. I sever it with a silver strike before it reaches her. The broken links drop, each one carrying an active rune.
“Don’t step on those.”
Asha jumps over them. “I gathered.”
We reach the sixth aisle as the archive entrance bursts open behind us.
Power floods the restricted section. “Miss Asha,” Blackridge calls out, completely calm. “If you are in here, I suggest you say so now. You have two seconds before I start blasting my way to answers.”
“Here!” she says instantly, and I glare at her. But maybe she’s right. He said he wouldn’t hinder her.
Blackridge’s power stops halfway down the aisle.
Silence follows.
Asha lifts her chin. “You said you wouldn’t hinder me.”
“I didn’t expect you to interpret that as permission to break into a restricted archive.”
“Then you should’ve chosen your words more carefully.”
Blackridge enters the aisle behind us. His power reaches the cabinet first and locks every chain in place before we can touch it. He looks at the blood covering Asha’s shirt, then at the shattered glass and scorched chain in Hale’s hand.
His expression becomes dangerously blank.
“What happened to her?”
“Yseld,” Leith says from somewhere behind him.
Blackridge looks back. The pressure locking down the archive eases enough for Leith to pass. He joins us with fresh blood on his face, death-current still burning over his hands.
“What did Yseld do?” Blackridge asks.
“Dragged me into one of her memories, attacked me when I said my true name and announced her intention to steal my real body,” Asha replies. “It was an unpleasant conversation.”
Blackridge’s attention returns to the blood at her throat. “Yseld was the student who passed.”
He mutters it like he truly didn’t know. Somehow, that makes me trust him just a tiny bit.
“That’s what she said,” Asha says. “She was the one who became the first goddess of StormGate, conveniently, I might add, by being a syphon.” She glares at Blackridge.
He glances mildly back at her. “That information wasn’t in any surviving record.”
“Then your records are shit,” Hale replies.
Blackridge looks at the scorched chain still in his hand. “Put that down.”
Hale drops it. The chain strikes the floor, and every rune in the broken links goes dark.
I turn to the unlocked cabinet. “We found a marker for Threshold Sovereigns.”
“I noticed.”
“Are you going to stop us?”
Blackridge’s eyes settle on me. “That depends on what you intend to do with the information.”
“Open the gate, retrieve Asha’s body, prevent Yseld from taking it, and leave your academy intact.”
Asha glances at me. “The last part is negotiable.”
“No, it isn’t,” Blackridge and I say together.
Her expression turns sour.
Blackridge faces the cabinet. He lifts one hand, and the silver chains unwind from the doors. They retreat into narrow channels along the frame. A final ward remains, black script burning across the glass.
“You said you wouldn’t hinder us,” Asha reminds him.
“I’m not hindering you. I’m preventing the archive from removing your memories when you open that cabinet.”
I study the black script. “Selective erasure.”
“Total erasure if it detects a foreign divine current.”
“Me,” Asha says. “Foreign and divine.” She sighs, but it’s a happy sigh, like she remembers who she was and the power she has, and it makes her happy.
That makes me extremely unhappy. But only because I want her to be happy and she currently is less than herself. “What do you know about the gate sealed in storm magic and fed by the dead?” I ask because if we’re doing this, we need to get a move on.
Blackridge studies me for a long moment. “Enough to know you’ve misunderstood the dead.”
Leith comes closer. “Explain.”
“The dead don’t feed the gate. They maintain the seal.”
“So releasing them weakens it,” Asha says.
“It destroys one of the barriers keeping Yseld from crossing.”
The archive falls silent around us.
Leith’s face gives nothing away, but his death-current withdraws into his hands. “I released hundreds in the chamber.”
“You released them from a suppression system,” Blackridge says. “Not from the seal itself. The distinction may have saved us.”
“May have?” Hale asks dubiously.
“The lower systems overlap. SilverGate has rebuilt them so many times that no complete plan survives.”
Asha steps up to the cabinet. “Then open this and let’s find one.”
Blackridge presses two fingers to the black script. His power enters it without a visible flare. The marks resist, crawling over the glass towards his hand.
I watch the sequence repeat in reverse.
“Wait,” I say.
Blackridge stops.
“That isn’t an erasure ward.”
His eyes cut to me. “It erases memories.”
“It does more than that. The final sequence redirects what it takes.”
Asha looks between us. “Redirects where?”
I bring a silver current to the glass and stop before touching it. The script reacts to my proximity, revealing a second layer beneath the first. “Into a record.”
Blackridge’s expression hardens. “Yseld.”
“She hasn’t only been moving through the archive,” I say. “She’s been feeding on anyone the ward has stripped.”
Asha turns towards the darkness between the cabinets. “How many?”
“Potentially everyone who tried to access these records.” I follow the hidden sequence with my current.
Threads branch from the cabinet into the floor, joining the purple lines that run throughout the archive.
“It doesn’t just protect information. It takes knowledge from intruders and gives it to her. ”
“Then Yseld could know everything SilverGate knows,” Leith says.
“Everything someone carried when the ward caught them,” I correct. “Names. Currents. Gatework. Personal memories.”
Hale’s fire rises. “Including weaknesses.”
“Especially weaknesses.”
Blackridge removes his fingers from the script. The marks retreat across the glass, but the second layer remains visible under my silver current.
The purple current beneath us pulses.
The cabinet answers.
A woman screams from behind the glass.
Hale drags Asha back as a face presses against the black surface from inside. It vanishes almost instantly, replaced by another. Then another. Men, women, and creatures I can’t identify appear in rapid succession, each one trapped in a moment of terror.
They aren’t spirits.
They’re memories.
“Lovely,” Asha murmurs. “Can we destroy it?”
“Not yet,” I say.
“You always say that.”
“Because you always want to destroy useful evidence.”
“I want to destroy dangerous evidence.”
Blackridge sends power into the floor around the cabinet, severing the threads before they can retreat into the archive.
Every face behind the glass screams at once.
The sound drives into my skull. I clamp silver current around my mind before the memories can force their way inside. Hale pulls Asha against his chest, turning his body between her and the cabinet. Leith sends death-current over the aisle, but the trapped impressions don’t react.
“They aren’t dead,” he says.
“No,” Blackridge replies. “They’re stored.”
The purple lines beneath us flare hard. Power tears up through the cabinet and strikes Blackridge in the chest. It would level another creature, kill a weaker one than that. But he just stands there glaring down at his smoking robes with a look of utter disgust.
Hale blinks. “You still alive?”
Blackridge lifts his glare to him. “Regrettably for everyone testing my patience.”
Asha points at the cabinet. “Can we destroy it now?”
“No,” I say.
“Then your usefulness is declining.”
The black script spreads across the glass again. Faces vanish beneath it. The cabinet doors lock with a heavy metallic snap, and the silver chains begin sliding back out of the frame.
I drive my current into the gap before they seal it.
The cabinet catches my magic.
Pain tears through my palm and races up my arm. Images hit me in broken flashes, and they aren’t pretty. “You know, you really should lock this place off better.”
“Only the most exceptional magic-users can bypass the wards,” Blackridge states.
Leith looks smug for a second before he wipes more blood from his nose. “You are unwell,” I say, pointing at him.
Blackridge glances at him. “Quite. You need to get out of here.”
“No,” Asha says. “I need to find my way home.”
“It isn’t in here,” Blackridge states. “Clocks ticking, Miss Asha.”
Then he vanishes, and Leith collapses.