Maisie walked away from the M.A.D. expedition without looking back, the revoked permit still folded in her coat like a verdict. She didn’t speak. She didn’t cry. She just walked until she reached her tent—her tent—now stripped of its Rysti fragment, its funding, its future.
She ducked inside.
The silence met her like a ghost. Nothing in the tent felt like hers anymore. Nothing but this.
Outside, porters finished boxing up the last fragments of her expedition. Inside, she dropped to her knees beside her cot and reached for the only thing left untouched—her father’s journal.
The leather was cracked, edges stained from years of use. She had read it a hundred times. Annotated, cross-referenced, and committed every diagram to memory. And yet now, something pulled at her. Some part of her was not looking for data, but an anchor.
She flipped past the first half out of habit, straight to the glyphs, the field notes, the theories. Her fingers slowed on a page she barely remembered—creased oddly, the spine too thick. She tilted the binding and ran a thumb along the edge.
It caught.
She blinked. Pressed again.
A thin seam in the binding lifted.
Her breath caught as she peeled back the worn leather. Between false glue and stitched lies, a folded page waited—yellowed, fragile, hidden for years.
Maisie unfolded it with reverence.
Rostrum Expedition Team:
- T. Morton
- J. Dolen
- K. Vael
- D. Hailcrest
The name hit like a pulse through her chest.
Hailcrest.
Her father’s handwriting filled the margin beside it:
“If the sigil ever speaks again...”
And beneath that:
“Contact in Snomantle.”
Maisie stared at the page until her vision began to blur. The rest of the world dimmed, quiet as snow.
Her father had never told her this.
Not in person. Not in writing. Not in all his lectures and scattered clues.
This note was private. Hidden. For after. For now.
She read the name again.
- Hailcrest.
Not a note. A trailhead.
She wasn’t alone. Her father had left her a way forward.
She reached for her pack.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The snow had stopped.
For the first time in weeks, the clouds above Frosthold parted, and the sky revealed itself—not black, but blue. Not night, but the edge of something older.
Maisie sat cross-legged in her tent, her father’s journal open across her knees. The spine no longer groaned. It yielded to her fingers as if it had been waiting.
She turned past diagrams and notes, skipping the familiar pages she’d memorized years ago, until she reached a folded section labeled:
“Aurorian Star Patterns and Resonant Cycles.”
His handwriting trembled slightly; the ink had faded, but the letters were still legible.
“Auroria-Nyxlumina occurs once every ten years, beginning on the eve of the double-lunar eclipse, peaking during full convergence when all four moons align. Duration: 13 days. Visibility: strongest in southern Auroria.”
A decade.
She counted backward.
Her father died twenty years ago. The sigil fragment had last pulsed ten years ago, briefly, then gone silent. She hadn’t even known what she was looking at then. The last Nyxlumina cycle passed while she was twenty-two and enrolled in Havenbrook, fighting to get someone—anyone—to believe his work mattered.
All her arguments with Havenbrook’s professors ended by labeling her father’s theories as “fringe.”
And now, here it was again.
She looked up from the page. The inside of the tent was brighter than it should’ve been. Pale blue light rippled across the ceiling.
She stood.
Outside, clusters of researchers and townsfolk had gathered atop the nearest ridgeline. Some had brought sketchpads, while others had brought aurora-recording artifacts or enchanted lenses. The Auroria-Borealis shimmered in full bloom—ribbons of green and blue dancing across the heavens. But behind them, a second glow emerged—thinner, sharper, curling with glyphic shapes across the sky.
Sigils!
For just a moment, she could see them—celestial patterns, curling like calligraphy across the aurora.
For a heartbeat, she felt the sky was speaking to her alone.
Gasps filled the ridge.
A girl dropped her scrying lens.
And then it was gone.
The sky fell still.
But Maisie felt it. A low thrum beneath her boots, like something waking beneath the ice.
From the crowd, a familiar voice rang out—faint, bright, cruel.
“Well. That’ll sell a few thousand pages of commentary,” said Serenya Vale, brushing frost from her elegant cloak.
“Imagine what it’ll do to Calren’s prestige when he unveils his sigil on the final day of Nyxlumina. Good thing M.A.D. moved up their timeline, given recent revocations.”
Maisie froze, her stomach twisting.
“The whole Symposium’s attending,” Serenya added, tone syrupy. “Don’t worry. We’ll be sure to footnote you, Maisie. Spiritually, at least.”
Calren gave a mild nod nearby, his arms folded as he stared skyward like the gods had just complimented his theory. He didn’t even glance in Maisie’s direction.
But Serenya did.
She turned a tool in her gloved hand—a leather-wrapped handle with precision-carved etchings. It glowed faintly under the remnants of the auroral light.
“Imported from Solara,” she said to one of the other assistants. “Direct from Havenbrook’s private inner archive. Dr. Deylor’s personal gift. Only one in existence.”
Maisie’s breath caught. That tool.
She looked down at her gloves.
Then, at the empty box once holding the blue Rysti fragment still sitting in her tent.
The sigils were responding now. The Nyxlumina had begun.
And Calren would tell his story first.
If she didn’t act, her father’s truth would be buried under stolen glory and polished lies.
The sky had spoken.
The countdown had begun, and Maisie felt every second slipping through her hands.