A chill rolls down my spine. “The Shardwalker.”
Kael nods. “This must’ve been written long after the events. But it aligns with what I told you. A Glowranth royal… bonded to something—someone—not from this world. When they joined, their bond didn’t just change them. It tore open a rift that never fully healed.”
I run my hand over the page, reverent despite myself. “That… doesn’t sound like something you casually shelve and forget.”
His expression hardens. “They didn’t. It says here the council of that time—not yet a queendom—buried the heart of the rift’s power source beneath what would eventually become the citadel.”
I blink. “So, this place isn’t just hiding a library. It’s hiding the rift?”
“Or its remnants,” Kael says. “Whatever was left.”
Suddenly the energy in the air makes more sense. The odd pulsing. The ache in my arm where Kael’s markings now live. Maybe we’re not just here to read about history. Maybe we’re sitting on top of it.
“Does it say what happened to them?” I ask. “The Shardwalker and his mate?”
Kael’s mouth flattens. “No. Just that they were powerful. Unstoppable. And dangerous.”
I swallow. “Sounds familiar.”
His eyes lift to mine, something sharp and worried flickering there. “It’s a warning. These scrolls… they weren’t meant to be kept as knowledge. They were meant to contain it.”
A beat passes. I reach for the nearest bundle of texts and start tying them off. “Cool. Let’s take it all anyway.”
He huffs but doesn’t argue. We’ll need help translating the rest. Iris, Shanae, and even Varek, if he can pull his head out of his tortured romance for five seconds. We’ll have to get all this back to Dathanor. Quietly.
We move fast.
There’s no time to sit and read, no matter how much Kael’s fingers linger reverently over the spine of each book he selects. I’m stuffing scrolls into the pack like we’re looting a magic version of Officeworks. A twinge of guilt hits me—like maybe the ancient Glowranth of lore would rather we read their life’s work than treat it like takeaway—but survival trumps manners.
Kael lifts a bundle of aged parchment and slides it into his satchel. “We need to prioritise the texts that reference the Shardwalker, fated bonds, and the original breach. Anything that connects it to the citadel.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I mutter, not for the first time. “Although if I ever meet the ancient Glowranth equivalent of Arthur Conan Doyle, I’ll personally deliver a glowing Yelp review.”
He arches a brow. “That was a sentence.”
I shrug, even as my mind races. “I’ve got questions, Kael. Lots. But one of them won’t shut up.”
He stops, glancing over.
“I get that the current rifts are different,” I say, my voice low. “They come in storms, right? They rip through and vanish. Slice a bit of a world and stitch it onto Terrafeara. But this? The one we’re apparently standing on? The very first one—it didn’t seal on its own. It was open. Wide. They had to close it manually and then build a damn citadel on top of it.”
Kael nods, tension tightening his jaw. “It had permanence. Like a doorway instead of a tear.”
“Right,” I say, grabbing another scroll. “So whoever’s creating the new rifts now—they’re doing it differently. More erratic. Temporary.”
“And harder to trace,” Kael murmurs.
I pause, straightening. “You think they’re doing it from here? This location?”
His gaze sharpens. “I don’t know. But the energy down here—it’s not dormant. It’s alive. And it responded to us.”
“You think it’s a fated bond thing?” Something that Varek mentioned earlier.
“I think… I don’t have all the answers,” he admits, “but someone must. And if they’re manipulating rifts now, they might have learned how by coming here.”
I shudder. “Great. So we just waltzed into the tutorial zone of Rift-Tearing 101.”
He doesn’t smile.
