Alchemical lanterns cast wavering shadows across the vault’s ravenglass chamber, their light seeming to bend around the void-black crystals lining the walls. Adelinde kneeled before the partially erased inscription, her fingers tracing grooves worn smooth by centuries of weathering and deliberate damage.

  Her tools lay spread before her: thin paper for taking rubbings, various grades of charcoal, fine brushes, and pots of dark powder she could blow across the stone to reveal hidden marks.

  “‘The heart of the bond must remain pure,’” she muttered, blowing a layer of powder across a particularly degraded section. The fine black dust settled into microscopic grooves, revealing ghost-like traces of carved text. “‘When the centre fails…’” The next words were completely obliterated, gouged out by whatever tool had been used to censor the warning.

  Time pressed against her. The call of duty, of ceremony, could not be put off much longer.

  Each new technique risked damaging the fragile marks further. Too much powder could fill the grooves permanently, too vigorous a rubbing might wear away what little remained.

  But she couldn’t stop, not when she was so close to understanding.

  Adelinde applied a faint dusting of powder across the worn stone. Years of practice had taught her how different materials weathered—sandstone wore differently than granite, marble held tool marks that limestone would lose. She’d spent countless hours studying how ancient craftsmen had carved their messages, learning to read not just the words but the techniques behind them.

  “‘Unstable when severed…the mechanism requires constant’”—she frowned, adjusting her lamp angle to catch the shadows better—“‘…constant harmony between rider and mount.’”

  A mechanism. All her research into ravenglass had suggested it was a natural amplifier of wyvern bonds, but this implied something more deliberate. Something engineered.

  She shifted position, her knees aching from the stone floor. The corrupted ravenglass specimens in their cases caught the lamplight, their purple glow a constant reminder of what was at stake.

  The next section of text proved more intact, protected by an overhanging lip of stone. She pressed her paper against it carefully, dabbing with her charcoal to create a rubbing. “‘The catalyst flows through channels unseen, binding heart to heart, mind to mind. But corruption spreads like wildfire through these same paths, turning strength to weakness, loyalty to madness.’”

  Her hand trembled as she copied the words into her notebook. The implications were staggering. The Kingdom’s entire system of wyvern bonds relied not just on natural resonance, but on some kind of artificial mechanism—one that could be corrupted.

  “This explains everything. The wyverns’ aggression, the unstable bonds…someone’s been tampering with the mechanism itself.”

  But how long had this been happening?

  And who would have the knowledge to attempt such delicate sabotage?

  Time was running out. Each touch of her tools risked wearing away more of the ancient carving. She had to choose: preserve the text for future study or extract as much information as possible now, knowing her work might destroy it forever.

  Knowledge over preservation. She pressed her paper against the stone, knowing each rubbing would take more of the surface with it.

  “‘The mechanism draws power from the royal line,’” she translated, dabbing as gently as she could. “‘Their blood carries the original resonance, strengthening all bonds within the Kingdom’s reach. But this strength becomes vulnerability when…’” The stone crumbled beneath her touch, ancient text falling away to dust.

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  Still, the fragment revealed enough. The royal bloodline—her bloodline—somehow anchored the entire system.

  Was that why her father had been targeted?

  Not just for political power, but to destabilise the very foundations of wyvern bonds?

  She gathered her materials and retreated to her private study, mind racing.

  The room’s familiar chaos of books and scrolls offered little comfort now. She spread her notes across her desk, creating a web of connections between historical events and recent disturbances.

  Reports of minor incidents stretched back years: wyverns showing unexpected aggression, bonds fluctuating during critical moments, riders complaining of interference.

  Each incident had been dismissed as isolated, explained away by weather or fatigue or simple bad luck.

  But viewed together, they formed a pattern.

  A deliberate, systematic weakening of the Kingdom’s infrastructure.

  “Someone’s been playing a very long game.” She marked timeline points on a fresh sheet of parchment. “The assassination wasn’t the beginning—it was the culmination.”

  She pulled down more records. Maintenance logs for the ravenglass vault, schedules of Guardian inspections, reports of bond disturbances. Gaps appeared in the documentation, subtle enough to go unnoticed individually, but damning when viewed as a whole.

  A shadow fell across her desk. Gisela had entered through the study’s high window.

  “You’re troubled. More than usual.”

  “This goes deeper than we thought.” Adelinde gestured to her scattered notes. “The corruption, the assassination, the whole system of wyvern bonds—it’s all connected. Someone’s been working for years to undermine everything we thought we knew about ravenglass.”

  “And now that you know?”

  The question hung in the air. Adelinde’s hands clenched on her desk. “Knowledge isn’t enough, is it? Not this time.”

  “You can unravel the mysteries of the past, but if you do nothing, they will unravel the future.”

  “My sisters—”

  “Need to know. All of it. The mechanism, the corruption, the conspiracy.” Gisela’s tail swept a careful arc, gathering scattered papers. “Unity is the Kingdom’s greatest strength. Division is what our enemies want.”

  “But will they listen?” The old fear crept in—of being dismissed, of being the baby sister with her head in books while real threats loomed.

  “They must. And you must make them.” Gisela’s thoughts pressed against hers, warm with certainty. “You are not that scared child anymore, Adelinde. You are a scholar of the Kingdom, and you have uncovered a truth that could save or doom us all.”

  Adelinde stood, pacing the cramped space between bookshelves. “The mechanism explains so much. Why ravenglass is essential to maintaining bonds. Why corruption spreads so quickly through the network. Why the royal bloodline…” She stopped. “Why Father had to die.”

  “The first strike in a larger plan?” Gisela asked.

  Adelinde shook her head. “The final strike. They’ve been weakening us for years, waiting for the perfect moment.” She pulled out another scroll, a record of Guardian appointments dating back two decades. “Look at these names. Every few years, a new ‘specialist’ assigned to inspect the ravenglass vault. Each one present just long enough to make subtle changes, then reassigned before anyone could notice the pattern.”

  Gisela’s wings rustled. “The Guardians themselves?”

  “Some of them, at least. They’re the only ones with enough knowledge of ravenglass to attempt something like this,” Adelinde said, tracing a timeline with her finger. “The corruption started small—probably experimental at first. Then it spread, following the natural resonance patterns of the bond network.”

  “Like poison in the bloodstream.”

  “Exactly.” Adelinde gathered key documents, organising them for presentation. “We need to show this to Irmin and Elana. The military implications alone…”

  A pulse of purple light drew her attention. She rushed to her work table, where a small specimen of corrupted ravenglass lay contained in a glass box. The shard writhed with interior light, its surface rippling like liquid despite its crystalline structure.

  “The resonance is increasing,” Gisela said.

  Movement in the courtyard below caught Adelinde’s eye. Palace wyverns paced their enclosures, their scales dulled to sickly hues. Even Gisela’s golden shine seemed diminished.

  Adelinde turned back to her notes, fingers trembling as she gathered the most critical evidence. Her years of careful research, her quiet observations and dismissed theories, they had led her to this moment. To a truth too terrible to face alone.

  A final fragment of text caught her eye, nearly lost among her papers. She had almost missed it earlier.

  “‘When the bonds break, the Kingdom falls.’”

  The words burned into her mind as the corrupted ravenglass pulsed in the shadows. Someone had set the Kingdom’s foundations to crumble—and the collapse had already begun.

  “Gather your courage,” Gisela said. “The time for study is over. Now we act.”

  The corrupted ravenglass flared again, casting purple shadows across her shelves.

  She would not let the Kingdom fall. Not while she held the key to understanding its greatest vulnerability.

  And its greatest strength.

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