She carried the memory of that broken vision with her as she finally withdrew from the dim, neglected section of the Garden, and found herself, for the first time in longer than she could remember, genuinely frightened of what she might uncover if she continued searching. Whoever had reached back far enough to silence that ancient debate before its conclusion had possessed power that unsettled even her understanding of what the Compass of Understanding was capable of revealing. She resolved, walking back toward the brighter paths she recognized, that she would return. But she would not return alone.
In the restored archives, Lyra and Elara had continued their own search into the mystery of the First Revisionary, and what they found this time reshaped everything they had assumed about the figure's original purpose. Contrary to every darker suspicion the earlier fragments had suggested, the records now revealed something far more sympathetic buried at the root of it all.
