Chapter 1: The Page That Went Blank

302 AE. Elavorn’s Rest, eastern quay.
The morning had the soft patience of fog. It slid between broken arches and lake-still streets as if the world were trying not to wake the dead. I set my desk near the window, where the mist turned sunlight into pearl, and opened my newest journal.

I wrote the date. I wrote the weather. I wrote the small news that keeps an enclave stitched together: Alarion Deepwake had returned from the shallows with three intact roof-tiles, and the Tidecaller had promised a meeting about rationing lamp-oil. Ordinary things. Safe things.

Then I turned the page to continue my entry and stopped.

The ink I had written was gone.

Not smeared. Not faded. Gone as if the paper had never met my hand.

I blinked hard, then pressed my palm to the page. Dry. Clean. The fibers held no stain, no ghost of letters. My throat tightened with a sudden, childish panic that tasted like salt.

“No,” I whispered. “No, not this.”

I flipped backward. The previous pages remained. My neat script stood as it always had, careful as a prayer. Only the newest page had emptied itself. Only the page where I had begun to write what I had not dared write before.

My brother’s last words.

I tried to recall them, to drag them up by force. The memory rose like a shape under water and then slid away. I could see his mouth moving. I could see the salt on his lashes. But the words were a blank shore.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. I slammed the journal shut as if it might spill more.

The Tidecaller entered with two attendants carrying rolled maps. She paused when she saw me standing too straight, knuckles white on leather.

“Naelira,” she said gently, “you look as if you’ve seen a Drowned Spirit at breakfast.”

“I have,” I said, then hated the tremor in my voice. “Not at breakfast. On my page.”

She set the maps down and came closer. “Show me.”

I opened the journal. She leaned in, brows drawing together. “A clean sheet.”

“It wasn’t,” I insisted. “I wrote on it. I wrote his words. They were there.”

The Tidecaller’s gaze softened in the way leaders practice when they must not inflame fear. “You have been awake too long. Grief makes tricks of the mind.”

“My mind does not erase ink,” I snapped.

One attendant shifted uncomfortably. The Tidecaller raised a hand, dismissing them. When we were alone, her voice lowered. “You keep records of loss for all of us. You carry too much. Let the healers brew you a sleeping draught.”

“If I sleep,” I said, “what else will vanish?”

She held my stare a moment, then looked away toward the window, where mist pressed its pale face to the glass. “Nothing is taking your memories, Naelira. The water here is heavy. It pulls on thoughts.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to be the kind of historian who accepts a simple answer. Instead, I heard my own voice, thin and sharp as a reed. “Someone is stealing what we cannot afford to lose.”

The Tidecaller exhaled. “Be careful with that idea.”

But after she left, I opened my journal again and touched the blank page until my fingertips ached.

In the quiet, I made a vow I did not write down. Not yet.
I would hunt whoever had reached into my life and taken my brother’s last gift. If ink could be emptied, then I would fill the world with words until the thief drowned in them.

Chapter 2: A Warning in Salt and Silk

302 AE. West causeway, tide-stairs.
Sirell the Salt-Touched lived where the water could find her. Her rooms were carved into an old watchtower whose lower stones were always damp, no matter how many braziers burned above. People said she listened to the tides like they were a voice. I had always laughed politely at that.

I did not laugh when I arrived.

She opened the door before I knocked, as if my footsteps had been announced by the lake itself. Her hair hung in wet ropes, though no rain fell. Salt glittered at her collarbones like frost.

“You’ve come with a hole in your hands,” she said.

“My hands are fine,” I replied, then realized she meant the blank page. My stomach clenched. “You know.”

“I taste it,” Sirell said, and stepped aside. “Come in. Do not bring the fog with you.”

Inside, woven silks hung from the ceiling in pale sheets, catching drafts and turning them into slow waves. At the center of the room, a shallow bowl of lakewater sat on a low table. Sirell knelt beside it and placed two fingers on the surface.

The water trembled.

I sat across from her, journal clutched to my chest. “My page went blank,” I said. “And with it, the memory of my brother’s last words.”

Sirell’s eyes flicked up, sharp. “You wrote them down.”

“Yes.”

“Then the thief is close,” she murmured. “Close enough to drink ink.”

“Who?” The question came out too eager. “A scavenger? A spirit? Someone from the outer shallows?”

Sirell flinched at the last phrase. “Do not fling distant waters into this. Vaelorien has its own hungers.”

She drew a small bundle from beneath the table. When she unwrapped it, I saw a strip of fabric so black it seemed to swallow lamplight. Dreamweave, the dockside traders called it. I had seen scraps used to soothe nightmares, laid over a sleeper’s eyes.

Sirell held it as if it might bite. “Silk that remembers dreams,” she said. “Salt that remembers bodies. Fog that remembers grief. When they meet, something stitches.”

“Stitches what?” I asked.

“Shut,” she said simply. “A needle in the fog. It passes through minds and closes them like seams.”

My pulse thudded. “A person.”

“A habit,” Sirell corrected. “A will. Perhaps a spirit. Perhaps worse. It is polite. It is patient. It tells itself it is helping.”

“If it is helping, why does it hurt?” My voice cracked on the last word.

Sirell’s expression softened, and for a breath she looked young, not haunted. “Because grief is sharp, Naelira. It cuts. And some beings cannot bear the sight of blood they did not spill.”

I leaned forward. “Tell me how to find it.”

She withdrew her hand from the water. The surface stilled, but the room felt fuller, as if listening. “You do not,” she said. “You let it pass. You stop writing what it wants.”

“I cannot.”

Sirell’s gaze hardened. “You can. You must. If you chase it, it will thread through more than paper. It will thread through people. Through children who have not learned to guard their thoughts.”

My jaw tightened. “It already has. It took my brother’s words.”

“And if you hunt it,” she said, “it will take your brother’s face. Your mother’s laugh. The taste of your own name. It will leave you clean, and you will call that mercy.”

I stood, anger rising like heat. “You’re afraid.”

“Yes,” she said without shame. “I am. Fear is a tide too.”

I gripped my journal. “Then I will be the rock.”

Sirell rose as well, her wet hair dripping onto the stone. She stepped close enough that I smelled brine and old incense. “If you insist,” she whispered, “catalog the small lapses. The ones no one admits. The missing minutes. The forgotten songs. That is where the needle pricks first.”

I swallowed. “You’re helping me.”

“I am trying to keep you alive,” she said. “There is a difference.”

When I left, fog curled around my ankles like a warning. Back at the archive, I began a new ledger, not of relics or dates, but of absences. Each time someone paused mid-sentence. Each time a name slipped away. Each time a page felt too empty.

And under the first entry, I wrote one line, pressing hard enough to bruise the paper.

Revenge is a kind of remembering.

Chapter 3: The Scavenger’s False Trail

302 AE. Outer docks, low tide.
Rumors in Elavorn’s Rest travel the way fish do, in schools and flashes. By the third day of my ledger, the whispers had a shape: surface scavengers. Divers who came down with greedy hands and left with relics wrapped in oilcloth. They traded trinkets for spirit favors, they said. They bartered with the dead.

Alarion Deepwake offered to accompany me, which was his way of saying I should not go alone.

“You’re not a guard,” I told him as we walked the dock planks. The boards were slick with algae, and the mist made every rope look like a snake.

“I’m not letting you interrogate divers without someone to pull you back,” he replied. His voice was calm, but his eyes were tired. “You have ink on your fingers and fury in your spine. That combination gets people drowned.”

We found the diver near the piling where the water turned black with depth. He was young, with a smile too quick and hands that never stopped moving. A slick-handed sort, the kind who could tie a knot while swearing he had no rope.

Alarion stepped forward. “You’re called Renn,” he said. Not a question.

Renn’s grin widened. “Called many things. Depends who’s paying.”

“I’m not paying,” I said. “I’m asking. Have you been trading with the Drowned Spirits?”

Renn’s eyes flicked to my journal tucked under my arm. “Historians don’t ask. They record.”

“Then consider this recorded,” I said, and forced my voice steadier than my pulse. “Answer.”

He held up his palms. “Easy. I dive. I salvage. I sell to the living, not the dead. Spirits don’t spend coin.”

Alarion’s gaze swept him, then narrowed. “What’s in your pouch?”

Renn’s hand went to his belt. “Nothing that concerns you.”

Alarion moved faster than his calm suggested, catching the pouch and tugging it free. Renn cursed, lunging, but I stepped between them.

“Let me see,” I said.

Renn’s throat bobbed. “It’s just cloth.”

Alarion loosened the drawstring. A strip of dreamweave slid into his palm, black as midnight. Sirell’s words echoed: silk that remembers dreams.

My anger found a target, and it felt like relief. “Where did you get that?” I demanded.

Renn’s grin faltered. “From a trader. Not here. Not in Vaelorien.”

“Liar,” I said, too quickly.

He shook his head hard. “I don’t mess with your spirits.”

Alarion held the dreamweave up to the pale light. “This is dockside black barter,” he said quietly. “Not the kind you admit to in daylight.”

Renn flinched, and for a moment I thought we had him. I stepped closer, lowering my voice the way I had heard the Tidecaller do when she wanted truth.

“Tell me who paid you to bring it here,” I said. “Tell me who wants our memories.”

Renn’s eyes went unfocused. His lips parted as if he were searching for a word. Then his face tightened in confusion.

“I… I don’t know,” he stammered. “I had it. I know I had it. But… when did I get it?”

My stomach dropped. This was not the performance of a caught thief. This was the panic of someone reaching into an empty pocket inside his own mind.

He grabbed at his hair. “I dove yesterday. Or was it two days? There was a woman, maybe. Or a man. Fog, fog, fog.” He looked at me with sudden terror. “What did you do to me?”

“I didn’t,” I said, and meant it.

Alarion’s jaw clenched. He turned the pouch inside out. A tiny knot of salt crystals fell into his palm, tied with a thread so fine it was almost invisible.

Renn stared at it as if it were a spider. “That wasn’t there,” he whispered. “I don’t carry salt. It ruins leather.”

A cold clarity slid through me. “It was planted,” I said.

Alarion nodded once, grim. “Someone wanted us to blame him.”

Renn backed away, eyes darting toward the water. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m done with your cursed ruins.”

“You can’t leave,” I said, reaching for him. “If you’re missing memories, you’re in danger.”

He jerked away. “So are you.”

He fled down the dock, nearly slipping, vanishing into fog and shouting for a boat. I stood frozen, the dreamweave and salt-knot in Alarion’s hands like evidence that refused to point in one direction.

A false trail, Sirell would call it. A red herring dragged through mist to make the water look guilty.

Alarion tucked the dreamweave back into the pouch and handed it to me. “Keep it,” he said. “If someone planted this, they wanted you to touch it.”

I swallowed, my fingers closing around the fabric. It felt cold, like a wet eyelid.

That night, I wrote in my diary: The thief does not only steal. It frames. It edits. It wants us to accuse the wrong hands so it can keep stitching in peace.

And beneath that, I added a second line, smaller.

If I cannot trust clues, I must learn to trust patterns.

Chapter 4: Mist-Dragon at the Breakwater

302 AE. Breakwater stones, dusk.
The Mist-Dragon rose without warning, as if the lake itself had decided to remember an old guardian. I was on the breakwater with Alarion, watching fishermen pull in their nets, when the fog thickened and the water swelled.

A long, pale head broke the surface. Not scaled like the old arch-sketch dragons in half-rotted folios, but sleek as river-stone, its hide the color of moonlit milk. Mist clung to its horns and dripped from its jaw in slow beads.

No roar came. Instead, a hum.

It vibrated through the stones beneath my boots. It slid into my teeth and made them ache. The sound was mournful, but not weak. It was the note of something that had watched centuries drown and still chose to sing.

The fishermen fell to their knees. One began to sob without knowing why.

Alarion’s hand hovered near his knife, then dropped. “Easy,” he whispered, as if speaking to a storm. “We mean no harm.”

The dragon’s eyes, dark and deep as submerged halls, turned toward me. The hum shifted, and my mind filled with half-remembered names. Names of streets that no longer existed. Names of friends I had never met. Names that tasted like salt.

I pressed my hands to my ears. “Stop,” I gasped.

The hum softened, but did not cease. The dragon lifted higher, water streaming off its neck like veils. A Drowned Spirit might have looked like that once, proud and unreachable.

Then, in the fog between us, something moved.

Not a body. A picture.

Ink dissolving in water.

I saw it as clearly as if it were painted on the air. Letters unspooling from a page, curling like seaweed, then thinning into nothing. The image struck so hard my knees went weak.

Alarion caught my elbow. “Naelira, what is it?”

“It’s not taking objects,” I whispered. “It’s taking the record. The proof.” My throat tightened. “It’s stealing the shape of loss so we can’t even point to what’s missing.”

The dragon’s gaze held mine. The hum changed again, becoming a series of pulses, like a heartbeat. With each pulse, the fog in front of me formed brief scenes.

A hand tying a knot. Salt crystals catching lamplight. A book opening. A reader pausing, eyes soft with memory.

Then a needle, thin as a hair, slipping through fog.

I shuddered. “A needle in the fog,” I breathed, hearing Sirell’s warning as if it had been spoken by the lake.

Alarion’s grip tightened. “You’re seeing something.”

“Yes,” I said. “And it’s close.”

The dragon lowered its head until its breath washed over my face. It smelled of deep water and old stone. In the mist between its nostrils, I saw one more image.

My own journal, open to a blank page.

I flinched back. “Why show me this?” I asked, voice shaking. “Do you want me to stop? Or do you want me to fight?”

The dragon’s hum deepened, and for a moment I thought I heard words inside it, not spoken aloud but pressed into my mind like a seal.

Remember true.

Tears stung my eyes. “I’m trying.”

The Mist-Dragon lifted its head and turned toward the open lake. Its body slid back beneath the surface, leaving only ripples and a fading note that lingered in my bones.

The fishermen slowly stood, dazed. One muttered, “A blessing,” as if he needed to name it something gentle.

Alarion looked at me. “What did it mean?”

I swallowed, tasting fog. “It meant our enemy is not a thief with a sack,” I said. “It’s a presence that edits grief. It wants our pain smoothed away until we forget why we mourn.”

Alarion’s expression darkened. “And you want revenge on a presence.”

“I want revenge on whatever took my brother’s words,” I said. “Presence or not.”

As we walked back, the breakwater stones felt less like protection and more like a boundary drawn by something watching from below.

That night, my diary entry ended with a question I could not answer.

If the record of loss is stolen, what becomes of justice?

Chapter 5: The Historian’s Temptation

302 AE. Archive room, lamplight.
I found the method by accident, which is how dangerous practices always begin. A spilled vial of spirit-salt, a torn scrap of old prayer-silk, and my own stubborn habit of repairing bindings when no one else had time.

The archive has warding stones set into the floor at the corners, dull and pitted from years of damp. We keep them fed with a measured trickle of spirit energy, not as a weapon, but as a lullaby. The Drowned Spirits drift calmer when the stones are warm.

I had watched the elder scribes refresh them a dozen times. I had never thought to borrow from them.

I had been re-stitching a water-warped ledger when my elbow caught the vial. Spirit-salt scattered like pale sand. I swore under my breath, reached for cloth, and found only a strip of prayer-silk torn from a ruined banner. I pressed it to the spill, meaning to clean.

My pen, already inked, brushed the damp edge of the silk.

The ink bled strangely, not into the paper but into the air, as if the words wanted to float. The room smelled suddenly of brine and candle smoke. The warding stones gave a faint answering thrum, like a sleeping creature shifting.

The page did not go blank. It held.

I stared, heart pounding. “Anchor,” I whispered.

When Alarion came in, he found me with three books open and a shallow dish of warding-water set between them. The water shimmered faintly, as if it remembered the stones it had touched. It was not meant for experiments. It was meant for peace.

His eyes widened. “Naelira. What are you doing?”

“Keeping my words from being eaten,” I said, and kept my voice steady. “If the thief dissolves ink, then I bind the ink to something it cannot swallow easily.”

Alarion stepped closer, gaze fixed on the dish. “That’s spirit energy.”

“I know.”

“You’re borrowing from the dead,” he said. His tone was not accusing, but it carried weight. “They will notice.”

I dipped my pen, letting a thread of that pale shimmer cling to the nib. When I wrote, the letters came out darker, as if shadowed by depth. They looked stubborn, almost defiant.

“Look,” I said, turning the page toward him. “It holds. The page stays written.”

Alarion’s jaw tightened. “At what cost?”

I hesitated. The truth was, the act felt helpful and wrong at the same time. Like stealing a boat to save someone from drowning. The boat still belonged to someone.

“The cost is mine,” I said, though I was not sure.

Alarion reached out, then stopped himself from touching the ink. “You’re angry,” he said quietly. “Anger makes people think they can bargain with anything.”

“I’m not bargaining,” I snapped. “I’m protecting.”

“From what?” he pressed. “From the Stitcher, or from grief?”

The name slipped out of him without thought. My stomach turned. “You know that word.”

Alarion’s eyes flicked away. “Sirell speaks in riddles. People repeat them. It doesn’t mean I believe.”

I leaned closer. “Do you fear I’ll anger the Drowned Spirits,” I said, “or do you fear I’ll succeed and prove the Tidecaller wrong?”

His gaze sharpened. “Don’t drag her into this.”

“I didn’t,” I said, then realized I had. My voice softened. “Alarion… if I can anchor memories, I can keep what’s left. For everyone.”

He shook his head slowly. “You’re a historian. You preserve. You don’t bind.”

“Why not?” I demanded. “If the dead can demand memories as payment, if spirits can trade truth for pain, then why can’t I use their energy to hold what’s mine?”

Alarion’s voice rose, the first crack in his calm. “Because it starts with yours, and then you’ll justify taking others. You’ll call it necessary. You’ll call it revenge.”

The word hit me like cold water. Revenge. My goal. My secret vow.

I looked down at my ink-stained fingers. The letters on the page seemed to pulse faintly, as if alive.

In my diary that night, I wrote: Revenge is starting to look like hunger. The thief hungers to smooth grief. I hunger to keep it sharp. Are we different, or only opposed?

Then I added, in smaller script anchored with warding shimmer:

If I become a thief to catch a thief, I will deserve the blank page.

Chapter 6: The Drowned Court’s Price

302 AE. Flooded hall beneath the old amphitheater.
Sirell guided me through a stairwell that smelled of wet stone and old performances. The amphitheater above had once held songs. Now it held water, and below it, the Drowned Court gathered.

Alarion came too, despite his objections. He walked behind me like a shadow that wanted to be a wall.

“Do not speak first,” Sirell warned as we reached the final step. The water lapped at our ankles, cold enough to numb. “Do not promise what you cannot bear to lose.”

“I only want answers,” I whispered.

Sirell’s mouth tightened. “Answers are never only answers.”

The flooded hall opened before us, vast and dim. Pillars rose like drowned trees. Pale lantern-fish drifted near the ceiling, their glow weak and wavering. In the center, figures stood in the water, half-seen. Drowned Spirits. Their faces were blurred by the lake’s memory of them.

They did not speak aloud. Their presence pressed on my skin, heavy as deep pressure. Yet I heard them in my mind, a chorus without sound.

Historian.

The word tasted of ink and salt.

I swallowed and bowed, because I had been taught respect even when fear tried to unteach it. “I come to ask about stolen memories,” I said, voice trembling despite my effort.

Sirell hissed softly, a warning. Too direct.

A spirit drifted closer. Its outline was elegant, like an elf caught mid-dance, but the water distorted it. The thought-voice returned, sharper.

Trade.

Alarion stepped forward. “No,” he said aloud, and his voice echoed off the pillars. “She will not trade.”

The spirits’ attention turned toward him, and the water around his boots rippled. Sirell touched his arm, urging him back.

I forced myself to speak carefully. “What price do you ask?” I said, though my stomach twisted.

The answer came as a feeling, a pull behind my eyes.

One cherished memory for one truth.

My breath caught. A memory. Cherished. My mind offered them up like coins: my brother teaching me to swim in the shallows, laughter bright as sun on water. My mother brushing my hair while singing a song from before the drowning. The first time I held a quill and realized words could outlast bodies.

Alarion’s hand found mine. His grip was steady, grounding. “Naelira,” he murmured, “don’t.”

Sirell’s eyes shone with fear. “They will take what you offer,” she whispered. “And they will not give it back.”

I looked at the spirits, and grief rose like a tide. I wanted truth so badly it felt like hunger. I wanted to cut the thief open and pull my brother’s words out whole.

My mouth opened. I almost said yes.

Then I felt the weight of it. If I traded a cherished memory, I would be doing what I hated. I would be letting someone else decide which pieces of me were worth keeping.

“No,” I said, voice raw. “I refuse.”

The water around the spirits stilled. The pressure in my skull eased slightly, as if they were surprised.

Sirell exhaled, shaky. Alarion’s grip tightened once, proud and terrified.

A new sensation brushed my mind, like fingertips tying string.

Clue, the Court seemed to offer, not as gift but as inevitability.

In my mind’s eye, I saw small knots of salt-crystal, careful and precise. I saw them tucked into places where hands lingered. Book bindings. Pillow seams. The edge of a diary page.

Salt-thread knots, the thought-voice whispered. Where minds unravel.

Then the presence withdrew, leaving the hall colder.

We backed out slowly. When we reached the stairwell, I realized my cheeks were wet.

Alarion touched my face with the back of his hand, gentle. “You chose pain,” he said softly. “That was brave.”

“I chose mine,” I replied, voice shaking. “Not theirs.”

Sirell leaned against the wall, eyes closed. “The Court respects refusal,” she murmured. “Sometimes. Or it respects stubbornness. Those are hard to tell apart.”

As we climbed back into the misty air, my diary felt heavier under my arm, as if it knew it had become a battlefield.

Chapter 7: Knots in the Archive

302 AE. Archive, midday fog.
I returned to the archive with the Drowned Court’s clue burning behind my eyes. Salt-thread knots. Where minds unravel.

The archive in Elavorn’s Rest is not grand. It is a patched-together warren of shelves rescued from submerged halls, dried and repaired and re-repaired. It smells of old paper and lakewater no matter how many herbs we burn.

I began with the books most handled. Prayer ledgers. Maps. The Tidecaller’s ration records. My own catalog of relics.

Alarion watched from a chair near the door, arms folded. He had insisted on staying, which meant he did not trust the room any more than he trusted my anger.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m fine,” I lied, and kept searching.

My fingers slid along spines, feeling for unevenness. At first I found nothing. Then, in a volume of ship manifests, my thumb snagged on a tiny hard bump beneath the leather.

I pried the binding open carefully. There, tucked between stitching and board, was a knot of salt crystals tied with a thread so thin it could have been hair.

My breath caught. “Alarion,” I whispered.

He stood instantly, crossing the room in two strides. “Don’t touch it,” he warned, but it was too late. I had already lifted it free.

The knot glittered in my palm, beautiful and wrong. It had been tied with care, the way I tied repairs when I wanted them to last.

I forced myself to keep looking, pulse roaring in my ears. In another book, another knot. In a third, another. Each hidden where a reader’s fingers might pause, where a mind might wander into memory.

Alarion’s voice was tight. “How many?”

“Too many,” I said.

I laid them on my desk in a neat row, because neatness is what I do when I am afraid. Ten knots. Twelve. Fifteen.

Then I noticed something that made my stomach drop.

The thread pattern.

When I repair bindings, I use a particular loop, a habit taught to me by an elder scribe who said it kept pages from warping in damp air. The knots on my desk had the same loop. The same tiny twist at the end.

My hands went cold. “No,” I whispered.

Alarion followed my stare. “What?”

“It’s my stitch,” I said, voice barely audible. “This is how I tie.”

Silence filled the room, thick as fog. Even the shelves seemed to lean in.

Alarion’s brows knit. “That doesn’t mean you did it.”

“But it means whoever did wants it to look like me,” I said, then shook my head hard. “Or… or it means I did and don’t remember.”

Alarion’s face tightened with anger, not at me but at the thought. “Don’t say that.”

I laughed once, brittle. “Why not? Pages go blank. People forget. A diver panics because he can’t recall where he got dreamweave. Why should I be immune?”

Alarion grabbed one of the knots with a cloth, careful. “If you were doing this, you’d have a reason.”

“I have the strongest reason,” I said, and my voice cracked. “Revenge.”

He stared at me, and in his eyes I saw fear of what grief could turn into. “Naelira,” he said slowly, “your brother’s words were taken. That doesn’t make you a criminal.”

“It makes me desperate,” I replied.

I picked up my journal and opened to the blank page, the one that had started all of this. I ran my finger over it. The paper felt innocent. That was the worst of it.

In my diary, I wrote with anchored ink until my hand cramped:

Today I found salt-thread knots in the archive. They match my repair style. Either the Stitcher wears my hands like gloves, or my hands have betrayed me while my mind slept. I do not know which is worse.

When I looked up, Alarion was watching me as if my words might vanish mid-sentence.

“Promise me something,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“If you find out it’s you,” he said, voice rough, “you tell me before you try to punish yourself.”

I swallowed hard. “And if it’s not me?”

“Then,” he said, “we find who is borrowing your stitch. And we make them stop.”

His certainty steadied me. But the knots on my desk glittered like tiny accusations, and the fog outside the window pressed closer, eager to listen.

Chapter 8: The Tidecaller’s Quiet Confession

302 AE. Tidecaller’s chamber, evening lamps.
I went to the Tidecaller with the knots wrapped in cloth and my heart wrapped in rage. I did not ask for permission. I did not wait for an audience bell. I pushed through the chamber doors like a storm that had learned to wear ink.

The Tidecaller looked up from her table of maps. Her attendants started to rise, but she lifted a hand.

“Leave us,” she said.

When they were gone, I dropped the cloth bundle onto her table. Salt crystals spilled out, catching lamplight like tiny stars.

Her face tightened. “Where did you find these?”

“In the archive,” I said. “Hidden in bindings. Tied with my stitch.”

The Tidecaller’s gaze flicked to my hands, then back to the knots. She did not look surprised. That hurt more than any denial.

“You knew,” I accused.

She leaned back slowly, as if her chair had become heavier. “I suspected,” she said. “Not you. The method.”

“A method that steals memories,” I said, voice shaking. “You told me I was stressed. You told me the water pulls on thoughts.”

“It does,” she replied. “And sometimes we pull back.”

My throat tightened. “What does that mean?”

The Tidecaller stood and walked to the window, looking out at the mist-laced lakes. Her silhouette looked older than I remembered. Burdened.

“When Vaelorien fell,” she said softly, “the living survived by learning how to bargain with the dead without losing ourselves entirely. The Drowned Spirits can demand memories. They can demand names. They can demand the shape of your grief.”

I stepped closer. “So you decided to limit them.”

She did not turn. “Yes.”

Alarion, who had insisted on coming with me, spoke from near the door. “You authorized something,” he said, tone flat.

The Tidecaller’s shoulders rose and fell. “A containment ritual,” she admitted. “Years ago. A secret one. There was a rogue spirit. It did not belong to the Court. It wandered the drowned halls and helped in the way a knife helps: cleanly, and without asking.”

“Helped by stealing,” I said.

“Helped by smoothing,” she corrected, and finally turned to face me. Her eyes were tired. “It called itself nothing. We called it by its habit. The Stitcher.”

The name landed like a stone in my stomach. “You trapped it,” I said. “And it escaped.”

Her jaw tightened. “We did not trap it in chains. We bound it to rules. We contained its reach. Or we thought we did.”

I stared at her, shaking. “My brother’s last words.”

Pain flashed across her face. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t give them back,” I snapped. “You hid this. You let it keep working.”

“I hid it because panic would have torn this enclave apart,” she said sharply, then her voice softened, and that softness carried its own wound. “And because the Stitcher’s work was contained. It took edges, not hearts. It kept the Court from demanding too much by making our grief less sharp to trade.”

Alarion’s voice was low. “You used it as a shield.”

“Yes,” the Tidecaller said. “A cruel one. But a shield.”

My anger surged, then tangled with something worse. Understanding. The moral dilemma Sirell had warned of, made flesh.

“If I expose it,” I whispered, “the Court may demand harder prices.”

The Tidecaller nodded once. “They will. They always do when they sense weakness.”

“And if I do nothing,” I said, “it will keep stitching us shut until we are empty.”

Silence stretched. Outside, a distant splash echoed, like something large turning in the lake.

The Tidecaller stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Naelira. Revenge will not bring back what was taken.”

“It might stop it from taking more,” I said.

Her gaze held mine. “Then choose carefully. Vengeance that burns too bright draws hungry eyes from below.”

Alarion moved to my side. “We can stop it without offering anyone else to the Court,” he said, more hope than certainty.

I looked at the knots on the table. My stitch, used against me. My grief, used as justification.

“I’m not asking for your blessing,” I told the Tidecaller. “I’m asking for the truth. Where is it?”

She hesitated, then spoke as if each word cost her. “Follow the Mist-Dragon’s humming. It gathers where old records sleep. In the fog-library beneath the eastern ruins.”

My pulse steadied into purpose. “Then that is where I will go.”

The Tidecaller’s voice softened. “If you return,” she said, “we will lock whatever you bring back under House Elavorn’s watch. No heroics. No private vengeance. Not again.”

I nodded once. “Agreed.”

As we left, Alarion touched my elbow. “You’re not alone,” he murmured.

I wanted to believe that. But as we stepped into the fog, I felt the lake listening, patient and polite, like a needle waiting for cloth.

Chapter 9: The Stitcher in the Fog-Library

302 AE. Eastern ruins, submerged archive chamber.
The fog-library was not a place meant for breathing. Even before we reached the drowned stair, the air grew cold and damp, thick with the smell of old ink and algae. The Mist-Dragon’s hum guided us, faint but steady, vibrating through stone like a song remembered by ruins.

Sirell met us at the entrance, her hair dripping though the sky was dry. “You shouldn’t be here,” she told me, voice tight.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I am.”

Alarion checked the lantern, shielding the flame from mist. “We go in, we speak, we leave,” he said. “No bargains.”

Sirell’s laugh was thin. “Spirits love vows. They taste like promises.”

We descended. Water rose to our knees, then our thighs. Shelves appeared beneath the surface, warped and broken, books swollen like drowned lungs. Fog clung low, drifting in ribbons that caught the lantern light and turned it into pale halos.

Then the humming stopped.

In the silence, a voice spoke, clear as a quill scratch.

“You’ve brought such loud hearts into a quiet room.”

The fog in front of us gathered, folding and unfolding like cloth. Something took shape, not fully a body, but a suggestion of one. Hands, delicate and precise. A posture like a court scribe. No face. Just a smooth blur where features should be.

“The Stitcher,” I said, and my voice did not tremble. I was proud of that.

The presence inclined its head. “A name given by those who fear mercy.”

Alarion stepped forward, lantern held high. “You’ve been stealing memories,” he said. “You’ve harmed people.”

“I have mended,” the Stitcher replied, polite as a teacher correcting a child. “I remove the barbs from grief. I smooth the raw seams so the living do not tear themselves apart.”

“You emptied my page,” I said, stepping closer until cold fog licked my cheeks. “You took my brother’s last words.”

A pause. The fog tightened, as if thinking.

“Ah,” it said softly. “That one was sharp. It cut you every time you reached for it.”

“It was mine,” I said. “Pain included.”

Sirell’s hand gripped my sleeve. “Naelira,” she whispered, warning and plea braided together.

The Stitcher’s tone remained gentle, which made me want to scream. “You are a historian,” it said to me. “You preserve wounds and call it honor. But what do your people do with preserved wounds? They trade them. They display them. They drown in them.”

Alarion’s voice hardened. “You don’t get to decide what we carry.”

“I do not decide,” the Stitcher said. “I respond. The Court hungers. The living bargain. I lessen the offering by softening the stock.”

My stomach turned. “So you stitch us shut to make us cheaper.”

A ripple of amusement moved through the fog. “Listen to you,” it murmured. “Revenge makes poets.”

I clenched my fists. “Give them back.”

“I cannot return what has been unthreaded,” it said. “Only what I have kept.”

Kept. The word snagged. “You kept my brother’s last words,” I said, voice low.

The Stitcher’s hands lifted, palms outward, as if showing emptiness. “I hold many sharp things. I keep them from cutting children. I keep them from being used as coin.”

Sirell whispered, “It’s lying.”

Or was it? The politeness felt like truth wearing gloves.

Alarion leaned close to me. “We destroy it,” he murmured. “Now.”

I stared at the Stitcher’s blurred face. Destroy it. Bind it. Listen.

My revenge wanted destruction. My historian’s mind wanted understanding. My heart wanted my brother’s voice.

“If you’re mending grief,” I said, “why frame a diver with dreamweave? Why plant knots in my stitch?”

The Stitcher’s hands lowered. “Because you needed a trail,” it said simply. “You would not stop writing. You would not stop digging. I gave you something to chase that was not me.”

“You manipulated us,” Alarion growled.

“I guided you away from the deeper wound,” it replied, unbothered. “But you followed anyway.”

I swallowed hard. “Tell me what he said,” I demanded. “Tell me his last words. If you truly kept them safe.”

The fog leaned in, close enough that the lantern flame guttered. The Stitcher’s voice softened to something almost kind.

“If I give them,” it said, “you will bleed again.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “And I will heal honestly.”

Silence held. Then the Mist-Dragon’s hum returned, faint, as if urging me to remember true.

I made my decision in that humming. Not to destroy blindly. Not to bargain with someone else’s memories. But to set a trap with my own.

“Come,” I said to the Stitcher, and opened my journal with hands that finally stopped shaking. “If you love mending, mend this.”

Chapter 10: Revenge, Written in Water

302 AE. Elavorn’s Rest, archive chamber under watch.
We did not fight with blades. We fought with ink, breath, and the stubborn fact that I could still choose what was mine to offer.

Back in the archive, the Tidecaller waited with two wardens and a basin of warding water. Her face was set, as if she had already decided how much guilt she could afford to carry.

“You brought it,” she said, and her voice did not rise.

The air behind me chilled. The Stitcher moved like fog through a doorway, silent and polite, as if entering a salon instead of a sanctuary of records.

Alarion stood at my shoulder, tense. Sirell lingered near the window, fingers pressed together as if in prayer.

The Tidecaller lifted her chin. “You will not touch my people,” she told the Stitcher.

“I touch only pain,” it replied. “And pain touches them first.”

I stepped forward with my journal open. The pages fluttered slightly, though there was no wind. Anchored ink glimmered in the lamplight, threaded with warding shimmer I had borrowed and would repay with careful tending and sleepless nights.

“I wrote you a story,” I said, voice steady. “A story of my rage.”

Alarion’s eyes widened. “Naelira, don’t.”

“I’m not sacrificing anyone else,” I said. Then, to the Stitcher, “You want sharp memories dulled. Here is mine. Come and take it.”

The Stitcher tilted its head. “You offer yourself.”

“I offer my anger,” I corrected. “Not my joy. Not my brother’s face. Not my mother’s song. Just the part of me that wants to become you.”

Sirell whispered, “Clever girl,” but her tone held sorrow, as if cleverness were only another kind of bruise.

The Stitcher drifted closer, drawn like thread to needle. “Anger is a jagged thing,” it murmured. “It tears hands that hold it.”

“I know,” I said. “Take it anyway.”

It reached toward the journal. Fog-fingers brushed the page, and I felt a tug behind my eyes, the familiar pull of something trying to unwrite. My vision blurred. For a heartbeat, I feared I had misjudged everything, that I had only offered myself up neatly.

Then the anchored script held.

The letters on the page darkened, not dissolving but tightening, as if the ink became rope. The warding shimmer in the strokes flared faintly, a pale light like moon on water.

The Stitcher paused. “What is this?”

“A knot,” I whispered. “Tied with my stitch.”

Alarion grabbed the basin of warding water and flung it in a practiced arc. Droplets struck the fog-body and hissed softly, not burning but clarifying, forcing its shape into the page’s pull.

The Tidecaller spoke a containment phrase under her breath, old and careful, the kind of words leaders hate to use because they admit failure. The wardens echoed her, voices low, and I felt the warding stones beneath the floor answer with a steadying thrum.

The Stitcher’s politeness cracked. “You would bind mercy into paper?”

“I would bind theft,” I said, and my voice shook with all the pain I refused to trade away. “You took my brother’s last words to soften me. Now you will live inside the record you tried to erase.”

The fog surged, trying to flee, but the journal’s pages fluttered like hungry wings. The anchored ink pulled harder, and the Stitcher’s presence narrowed, compressed, drawn into the lines as if poured into a mold.

In the final moment, its voice slipped into my mind, quiet as a needle entering cloth.

“Do you truly want them back?” it asked. “Do you want the sharpness?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Because it was love.”

The pull snapped shut like a clasp. The air warmed. The lantern flame steadied. The journal lay heavy in my hands, and for the first time since the blank page, it felt full.

I staggered, and Alarion caught me. “Are you still you?” he asked, voice rough, as if he feared my name might slide away.

“I think so,” I breathed, and opened the journal to the page that had been blank.

Words bloomed there, not newly written, but returned. My brother’s last words, in my own script, dark and unwavering.

Naelira. Write me where the water cannot reach. And when you hate, hate for what you love.

I pressed the page to my chest and sobbed, quietly, so the archive would not have to carry the sound.

The Tidecaller took the journal with reverent care. “This will be sealed,” she said. “One volume. Two locks. House Elavorn will watch it. No one opens it without three witnesses: a warden, a scribe, and the Tidecaller, or her sworn voice. The warding stones will be fed on schedule, and the seal will be checked at each new moon.”

Sirell’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, as if she had been holding her breath for years.

Alarion did not look away from me. “And you,” he said softly, “you will sleep.”

“I will try,” I answered, and meant it as a promise, not a surrender.

No empire rose. No world healed. Only one guarded book gained weight in Vaelorien, like a stone placed carefully so it would not tip the whole shore.

As I wrote my final entry that night, my hand still trembling, I did not call what I had done justice. I called it contained revenge.

And I promised myself, in ink the water could not dissolve:

I will remember true, even when it hurts.