The note was on the door of Seris's session room on Thursday morning.
One line. Her handwriting — precise, no wasted strokes, the same quality as everything she produced.
Thursday session cancelled. — S
Lysander read it twice. Looked at the door. Looked at the note again.
In the months he'd been attending her Thursday sessions she had not cancelled once. Had not been late. Had not sent a replacement or a reading assignment in lieu of attendance. The sessions happened because she chose to make them happen and she chose to make them happen every week without exception.
He stood in the corridor for a moment longer than necessary. Then he walked away.
He found out where she was through the library's restricted access log — not by reading it, just by noticing that the restricted section's inner door was slightly ajar when he passed the library at midday. It was never ajar. The lock required a faculty key and closed automatically.
She was inside. He could hear the sound of documents being moved — the careful, methodical quality of someone going through materials they had been through before and were checking against something new.
He didn't go in. Didn't knock. Just noted the door and kept walking.
That evening he went back.
The door was closed. The light inside was off. He tried the handle — locked, as it always was.
But on the reading table closest to the inner door, visible through the narrow window set into the wall, was a single document left face-up. Whether deliberately or accidentally he couldn't tell from the angle. The handwriting on it wasn't Seris's.
He could see two words from where he stood.
Ashfield agreement.
He stood there for a long moment. The Ashfield agreement — the one from the Seven Wars history chapter, the one whose language had been removed from the official record. The one Seris had told him to apply the four questions to. The one that sat at the center of everything the restricted records pointed toward without naming directly.
Something in the document had changed. Or something new had arrived that connected to it.
He walked back to the dormitory and sat with that.
Taro was at his desk when he arrived, working through combat analysis notes with the focused energy of someone who had decided studying was now something he did properly. He looked up.
"Thursday session cancelled," Lysander said.
Taro's pen stopped. He knew enough about what the Thursday sessions meant — not the content, just that they mattered — to understand that this was significant. "Is she okay?"
"I don't know." He sat on his bed. "She was in the restricted section at midday. The session was cancelled this morning."
"Something she found."
"Something she found, or something that arrived." He looked at the ceiling. "The Ashfield agreement. I saw the words on a document she left on the table."
Taro was quiet for a moment, working through what he knew. "That's the thing from the Seven Wars history. The one with the removed language."
"Yes."
"And something changed with it."
"Something connected to it arrived. Or she found something that connects to it that she hadn't connected before." He paused. "Either way she cancelled the session to deal with it privately. Which means it's significant enough that she didn't want to navigate it with me in the room."
Taro looked at him. "That's either because she's protecting you or because she's protecting herself."
Lysander looked back at him.
"Both," he said.
Taro nodded slowly. He put down his pen. "The thing in the gates. The student who lost thirty-six hours. Now this." He said it without alarm — just the calm accounting of someone who had been watching pieces accumulate and was naming what he saw. "These are all connected."
"Yes."
"How close is it."
Lysander thought about the thing moving through the gate network with purpose. The two months until the Year-End Formal. The fixed marker that had vanished from the eastern forest gate two weeks ago. The Ashfield agreement and whatever had arrived to sit on Seris's table tonight.
"Close enough that she cancelled the session," he said. "That's the most accurate measure I have right now."
Taro absorbed this. Then he picked up his pen again and returned to his notes — not dismissing it, just filing it in the place where he put things he couldn't do anything about yet and continuing with what he could do. That was how Taro handled things. Lysander had come to find it steadying.
He opened his own notes.
The Ashfield agreement. The removed language. Whatever Seris had found.
He would find out when she was ready to tell him. Or he would find out another way.
One thing at a time.