It was, Aether thought, the loneliest place he had ever stood in.
He was still absorbing that thought when one of the shelves ahead of him began to glow.
The light was soft at first, then brightened steadily, drawing every eye in the chamber. From the empty space where a name had been engraved but no book had ever rested, something began to take shape — coalescing out of the silver light like mist gathering into form. A book. Small, plain, bound in a cover with no title, no author, no mark of any kind.
It drifted free of the shelf and floated toward Aether, weightless, patient, as though it had been waiting specifically for him.
He reached out and took it.
The moment his fingers closed around the cover, Living Memory surged through him — not gently this time, but like a door thrown open onto a hurricane. The Vault around him dissolved into light, and then into something else entirely.
