The corrupted ravenglass shard pulsed on Adelinde’s workbench, dark veins threading through its crystalline structure.

  She adjusted her magnifying lens for the third time in as many minutes, careful to avoid direct contact with the specimen.

  Even through the protective layer of glass, its wrongness scraped against her mind, like fingernails on slate.

  Her laboratory felt smaller than usual, the shelves of arcane implements and ancient texts pressing close in the lamplight. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams. Their familiar scents of sage and wormwood mixed with the metallic tang that always accompanied ravenglass work. But this specimen’s emanations carried something else—something sour.

  “Corruption penetrates deep into the crystalline matrix,” she muttered, scratching notes with her free hand. The nib caught on a rough spot in the parchment, splattering ink. “Spread pattern suggests deliberate contamination rather than natural degradation. Notable deviation from standard resonance frequencies.”

  The thought chilled her.

  Ravenglass didn’t degrade naturally—that was its defining characteristic.

  The material’s perfect molecular alignment made it ideal for stabilising and amplifying wyvern bonds, for crafting unbreakable weapons.

  Every apprentice learned that principle on their first day. She remembered her own studies, six years ago, Master Sigmund’s voice steady as he explained the foundational theories.

  “The perfection of ravenglass is what gives it power,” he’d said, holding a flawless specimen to the light. “Its structure cannot be altered by time or tools—only by the heat of molten rock.”

  She reached for her reference text—‘Principles of Crystalline Resonance’—and compared her observations to the classical descriptions. The corruption’s pattern matched nothing in the established literature. But something about it tugged at her memory, an echo of research from months ago.

  Her notes from that period filled three leather-bound volumes, their margins crammed with questions and cross-references. She’d been tracking anomalies in the bonding network, tiny fluctuations that most dismissed as measurement error.

  But the patterns had suggested something deeper, something systematic.

  A distant roar shattered her concentration.

  The sound reverberated through the laboratory’s stone walls, rattling glassware and sending ripples through her containment solutions.

  Not the usual training calls or greeting cries—this held pain, confusion, rage.

  Adelinde hurried to her window. In the courtyard below, palace wyverns snapped and snarled at each other, their usual ordered formations dissolving into chaos.

  Guards scrambled to separate the creatures. The wyverns’ scales had dulled to sickly hues, their movements jerky and unnatural.

  The timing couldn’t be coincidence. Not with her father’s murder, not with the corrupted ravenglass specimens multiplying in the vault, not with the growing reports of unstable bonds.

  She returned to her workbench, pulling down another text—this one ancient, its binding cracked and pages brittle. The Old Tongue script took longer to translate, but its descriptions of failed bonding experiments drew uncomfortable parallels to current events.

  “‘The balance shatters when resonance fails,’” she translated, frowning at the metaphorical language. “‘Discord spreads like poison through the web of minds.’ They knew this could happen. They’d seen it before.”

  Her fingers traced the aged parchment, following lines of text that hadn’t seen light in centuries. The ancient scholars had understood something about ravenglass that modern research had forgotten…or deliberately obscured.

  Another roar echoed from the courtyard, followed by the crash of breaking wood.

  Adelinde’s hands trembled as she copied the relevant passages into her notes. If someone was deliberately corrupting the ravenglass network, they could destabilise every wyvern bond in the Kingdom. Their entire defensive structure would collapse.

  She should tell her sisters. Irmin’s military connections could help track the corruption’s source. Elana’s diplomatic channels might reveal who stood to gain from such sabotage.

  But doubt crept in, familiar as an old wound.

  They wouldn’t listen. They never did, not to their quiet scholar sister with her books and theories.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A memory surfaced: herself at twelve, trying to explain a theory about improving bond resonance. Irmin rolling her eyes, already turning away. “Some of us have real work to do, little sister.” Elana’s dismissal had been gentler but no less firm. “That’s fascinating, dear, but perhaps focus on your basic studies first.”

  Her hands clenched on the ancient text. She’d been right then—her theory had later been proven correct by other scholars. But the pattern had been set. Her sisters saw her as the baby of the family, head always in the clouds or buried in books.

  A shadow fell across her workbench. Gisela’s golden form filled the doorway, the wyvern’s wings folded tight as she manoeuvred into the laboratory. Her presence steadied Adelinde’s racing thoughts, their bond humming with shared purpose.

  “You’ve found something.” It wasn’t a question.

  “The corruption…it’s not random.” Adelinde gestured to her notes, the diagrams and translations spread across parchment. “Someone’s tampering with the ravenglass network. Deliberately destabilising the bonds.”

  “Then why do you hesitate to share this knowledge?”

  Adelinde’s shoulders hunched. “You know why. They never listen. Not about things they can’t see or fight directly.”

  “You see what others cannot.” Gisela’s voice carried gentle reproach. “That is your gift. But a gift unshared is a wasted truth.”

  “What if I’m wrong? What if I raise the alarm and it turns out to be nothing?”

  “And if you’re right? If your silence allows this corruption to spread unchecked?” Golden eyes fixed on her. “Knowledge is power, Adelinde. But power must be wielded, not hoarded.”

  “You’re right.” Adelinde gathered her notes, mind racing. “The vault. There might be more evidence there, something concrete enough that they can’t dismiss it.”

  They made their way through the palace’s torch-lit corridors, down to the ravenglass storage vault.

  “The specimens,” a guard said, breaking protocol. “They feel wrong, my lady. Like they’re angry.”

  The vault’s atmosphere had deteriorated since her last visit. The background resonance that usually filled the space with gentle harmony had twisted into something discordant, setting her senses screaming.

  More specimens showed signs of corruption, dark veins spreading like cracks through perfect crystal.

  She moved methodically through the vault, documenting each corrupted specimen. The spread followed no obvious pattern—some of the oldest specimens remained pristine while newer acquisitions showed advanced degradation. But something about the distribution nagged at her analytical mind.

  “The corruption clusters,” she muttered, marking positions on her rough map of the vault. “Like it’s spreading from specific points of contact.”

  Gisela’s tail swept a precise arc as she turned. “Could someone have planted corrupted pieces among the pure ones?”

  “That would require intimate knowledge of vault security,” Adelinde said. “Access to the specimen catalogue.” Her mind raced through implications. “And an understanding of ravenglass resonance patterns that rivals that of the ancient masters.”

  She moved deeper into the vault, past the main storage areas to sections untouched for generations. Here, the walls bore traces of old power—ward marks and protective sigils carved by long-dead mages. But something else caught her eye: ancient runes, partially obscured by grime and deliberate damage.

  “Help me with this.” She pulled a clean cloth from her satchel, carefully wiping away centuries of dust. The runes emerged slowly, their meaning fragmented by tool marks that scored through crucial passages.

  “‘The balance shattered…’”—the next words were completely obliterated—“‘…by the will of…’” Another deliberate erasure. “‘When the heart turns dark, the body follows.’”

  “This is no accident,” Gisela said. “Someone wanted this knowledge hidden.”

  Adelinde’s hands shook as she copied the fragments into her notebook. “These marks are old, but not as old as the original text. Someone came here, perhaps generations ago, and systematically destroyed specific passages.”

  Gisela’s concern deepened. Adelinde felt the wyvern’s natural scholarly caution warring with growing alarm. “Why these passages? What knowledge was worth erasing?” Gisela asked.

  “The corruption’s not new.” Adelinde’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The ancients knew it could happen. They tried to warn us, but someone…” She traced the tool marks. “Someone didn’t want us to know.”

  She turned back to her specimen map, seeing it with new eyes. The corruption’s spread wasn’t random—it followed paths of resonance, exploiting the very networks that strengthened wyvern bonds.

  “It’s using our own power against us. The stronger the bond network grows, the faster corruption can spread through it.”

  A memory surfaced—Elana explaining political manoeuvring over dinner. “The strongest alliance can become the deadliest weakness, if your enemy knows how to exploit it,” she’d said.

  Her father had nodded approval at Elana’s insight. But he’d missed Adelinde’s attempts to discuss her theory, her warnings about anomalies in the bonding network.

  Always busy, always focused on immediate threats rather than theoretical ones.

  Now he was dead, and theory had become deadly reality.

  Gisela nudged her shoulder. “You’re thinking about your sisters again.”

  “They should have listened.” The words emerged bitter. “All those times I tried to warn them about weaknesses in the system, about unexplained resonance patterns…”

  “Then make them listen now.” Gisela’s voice carried steel beneath its melody. “You have evidence. You have history. Most importantly, you have truth.”

  “Truth didn’t help before.”

  “Before, you were a child seeking approval. Now you’re a scholar protecting the Kingdom.” The wyvern’s tail encircled her. “The question isn’t whether they’ll listen. It’s whether you’ll speak loudly enough to be heard.”

  Adelinde stared at her notes—pages of careful observations, theoretical frameworks, historical correlations. All pointing to a conclusion too terrible to ignore—someone with intimate knowledge of the Kingdom’s foundations was systematically dismantling them.

  And they weren’t finished yet.

  The corrupted ravenglass in her laboratory pulsed with sickly light, its resonance a discordant note in the Kingdom’s symphony of power. Each compromised specimen represented another crack in their foundations, another weapon turned against them.

  “We need to tell them.” The words emerged stronger than she’d expected. “All of it—the corruption, the sabotage, the historical precedents. Whatever they choose to do with the information, they need to know.”

  Gisela’s approval radiated through their bond. “Your sisters will listen. Trust in that, if not in yourself.”

  Adelinde gathered her materials. The fractured words on the wall seemed to pulse in the lamplight, their warning clear despite the deliberate damage. Someone was rewriting the Kingdom’s fate, using its own power against it.

  She would not let them succeed in silence.

  This time, she would make them hear.

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