Nova returned to Vereth’s warehouse at dusk. She’d learned that at this hour, sunlight from the single vent hit the bottom crate, and the fragments changed color. Not blue. Gold. “That’s the first crate ever guarded,” Vereth had said. “Not the most valuable. The first.”
She wasn’t here for gold light. She was looking for what she’d missed.
In a cabinet beside the work log, she found an old ledger. Not inventory. Names. Handwritten. Each page: a name, a year, a location, and a one- or two-word note. A lineage of guardians. From the first page — someone over a hundred years ago — to now.
She flipped to the end. Third from last: Itheron. Year: fifty years ago. Note: one character. “Returned.” But beside it, in different ink, Vereth had added a symbol. A question mark. Second from last: Vereth himself. Last entry: blank. The lineage technically ended at Itheron. He was theoretically still alive. No guardian had seen him in fifty years. He’d returned — but never took up the guardianship. Vereth had waited half a century. Then became guardian himself.
Nova touched the blank last page. Still warm. Waiting for a name.
Beside the crate, she found the cloth that had wrapped twelve new fragments. Not the warehouse’s standard oiled paper. Old woven thread. From the Weavers’ Hall — not bought there, but scavenged from outside. The Weavers lost so much thread daily that no one noticed twelve strands missing. Someone had collected them to wrap fragments. Someone who knew the thread couldn’t be traced. Someone who wasn’t Itheron himself — Itheron was on the other side of the Rift. This was his hand on this side. Inside the Rift Explorers.
She didn’t chase Lynx. He’d delivered the fragments because someone was stealing them. He knew the source but wouldn’t say. When Lynx went silent, he was protecting whoever had told him.
Passing the Weavers’ back stairwell, Lynx sat in his usual spot. Not waiting for her — waiting for the light angle to illuminate a question mark in his notebook. Nova didn’t stop. But said, to the stairwell air: “Itheron came back. Fifty years. The fragments you delivered — nobody stole them. He left them out to be stolen.”
Lynx said nothing. Closed his notebook. Not finished. Starting over.
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