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The archives were silent as a tomb.

Lindsey moved through the darkness with practiced ease, her eyes providing enough light to navigate the narrow aisles between towering shelves. She had worked here as an apprentice before her mother's death, cataloging the city's spiritual records. She knew every hidden corner, every loose floorboard, every route the night guards took on their rounds.

She knew where the forbidden texts were kept.

How long did the boy have? Hours? Minutes? Every second she spent picking this lock was a second stolen from him.

The main archive was a vast circular chamber beneath the Temple of Memory, its walls lined with centuries of accumulated knowledge. The real power lay in the restricted section, behind a door marked with warning sigils that would burn anyone without Scribe blood who tried to touch it.

Lindsey pressed her palm against the cold iron. The sigils flared briefly, recognizing her lineage, and the lock clicked open.

The room beyond was smaller than she expected, its shelves holding perhaps three dozen volumes. These were the texts the elders wanted buried. Rituals too dangerous to practice. Histories too dark to remember.

She found what she needed on the third shelf. The Codex of Anchors, bound in leather so old it had turned black. She laid it carefully on the table and opened it to the chapter she had memorized years ago.

The Rite of Eternal Communion.

Her hands trembled as she read. The instructions were written in her great-grandmother's precise hand, but there was more. A warning written in red ink.

“This bond cannot be broken. The Scribe becomes the Guardian's anchor to the mortal world. Their fates are entwined. Their souls are merged.”

As she read, she swore she heard a voice, ancient and male, whisper from the pages. "Finally."

Lindsey's head snapped up. The room was empty. She was alone. But the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

She turned the page and found what she was looking for. The Guardian was a warrior named Justin Blackwell, who sacrificed his mortal life in the year 1235. His last words before the transformation were recorded in faded ink: "I will protect them. Even from beyond death. Even from myself."

A floorboard creaked outside the door.

Lindsey froze, her heart suddenly pounding. She doused her small lantern and pressed herself against the wall. Through the narrow gap, she could see a flickering light approaching. The night guard, making his rounds.

The footsteps paused outside the restricted section. If he opened the door, if he found her here, the elders would lock her away. The boy would die.

The footsteps moved on.

Lindsey waited until she heard the distant sound of the cathedral bells. Shift change. She had perhaps twenty minutes before the next patrol.

She finished copying the invocation onto parchment and returned the codex to its shelf. Her hands were shaking now, but not from fear. From determination.

According to the text, the ritual had to be performed in a place where the barrier between worlds was thin. She found the entrance behind a false bookshelf in the eastern wing. The mechanism was simple once she knew what to look for.

Stone steps descended into darkness.

The air grew colder with each step, thick with the smell of mineral and ancient stone. The walls were carved with symbols she recognized. Protection wards. Containment circles. Warnings that had faded with age.

The stairs ended in a circular chamber, perhaps twenty feet across. A natural spring bubbled up in the center, its water crystal clear despite the darkness. This was a place of power. She could feel it pulsing beneath her feet.

Lindsey set down her supplies and began drawing the circle.

The work was precise, meditative. Each line of salt felt like a countdown. The chamber itself seemed to be watching, waiting, hungry for what she was about to unleash. She could hear water dripping somewhere in the darkness, her own breathing, the distant sound of the city above.

When she finished, the circle was perfect.

Forgive me, she thought. Or do not. But I am done being afraid.

She picked up Marta's obsidian knife and positioned herself at the center of the circle. All that remained was the blood offering and the invocation itself.

Behind her, stone ground against stone.

She spun around. The sealed door was opening, inch by terrible inch. Through the widening gap, she glimpsed a figure in an elder's robes.

They had found her.

In seconds, they would stop the ritual. The boy would die. Unless she finished it now, without the proper preparation, without knowing if she would survive the incomplete rite.

Lindsey made her choice.

She slashed the blade across her palm. Blood hit the rune. The elder in the doorway screamed, but his voice was drowned out by something else. Something vast. Something that had been waiting eight hundred years for this exact moment.

The chamber door exploded inward in a shower of splinters.

Power detonated through the chamber, and the last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her was the elder's body thrown against the wall like a rag doll.