The board was fuller now.
Not complete.
But no longer empty.
Fragments of meaning sat beside the symbols—carefully written, cautiously interpreted. Nothing final. Nothing certain.
Just enough to suggest direction.
Marshall stood in front of it, silent.
Behind him, Eliza closed the manuscript gently, as if even turning the page too quickly might damage something important.
"We're not stuck," Marshall said after a while.
Eliza didn't respond.
"We're just… not moving fast enough," he added.
"That's because we're not supposed to move fast," Eliza said. "Not with something like this."
Marshall turned slightly. "We have a name. We have a language. We even have fragments of meaning."
"Yes," Eliza said. "Fragments."
She stepped forward, glancing at the board again.
"Everything we've done is reconstruction," she continued. "We're interpreting shapes, guessing roots, filling gaps."
Marshall nodded once. "That's how this works."
"Not entirely," Eliza said.
He looked at her.
She hesitated for a moment, then said:
"We're missing context."
The word settled.
Marshall exhaled slowly. "Context as in… history?"
"Context as in intent," Eliza replied. "Who wrote it. Why it was written. How it was used."
Marshall glanced at the manuscript on the table.
"We assumed it was just a fragment," he said.
"It is," Eliza said. "But fragments come from somewhere."
Silence followed.
Marshall's eyes shifted slightly—thinking, connecting.
Then—
He straightened.
"The scholar," he said.
Eliza looked at him. "What?"
"The one who gave us this," Marshall continued. "He didn't just find it. He studied it."
Eliza's expression changed slightly.
"You think he knows more?"
"I think he didn't tell us everything," Marshall said.
Eliza didn't argue.
Instead, she walked back to the table, resting her hand lightly on the manuscript.
"When we spoke to him," she said slowly, "he avoided specifics."
Marshall nodded. "Gave us just enough to take it."
"And just enough to leave," Eliza added.
Marshall let out a quiet breath. "That's not someone who's clueless."
"No," Eliza said. "That's someone who's careful."
They both fell silent.
The kind of silence that comes when a direction becomes obvious.
Marshall grabbed his jacket from the chair.
"We go back," he said.
Eliza didn't move immediately.
Her eyes were still on the manuscript.
"You think he'll talk this time?" she asked.
Marshall paused.
Then:
"He will," he said. "One way or another."
Eliza looked up at him.
Not questioning.
Just measuring.
Then she nodded once.
"Then we don't go in blind," she said.
Marshall raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
She gestured toward the board.
"We don't ask him what this is," she said. "We show him what we already know."
Marshall's expression shifted slightly.
A faint, knowing look.
"Force him to react," he said.
"Yes."
Eliza picked up a notepad and began writing quickly—copying down the key fragments they had identified:
The name
The root patterns
The partial meanings
Nothing excessive.
Just enough.
Marshall watched her.
"We're not accusing him," he said.
"No," Eliza replied.
She tore the page cleanly and held it.
"We're giving him a chance to explain."
Marshall took the paper from her.
"And if he doesn't?"
Eliza met his eyes.
"Then we'll know that's not an accident."
Marshall nodded slowly.
He glanced once more at the board.
At the name written at the top.
At the fragments beneath it.
At everything they had managed to pull from something that wasn't meant to be understood easily.
"It's been hard," he said quietly. "But we're not starting from nothing anymore."
Eliza didn't respond.
She simply picked up the manuscript and closed it properly this time.
Carefully.
Like something that still had more to reveal.
"Let's go," she said.