Cian stepped into Archive Room 4 and stopped.
The room was larger than he had expected—twice the size of Room 7, with high windows set into the far wall that let in pale morning light. The light fell in long rectangles across the floor, illuminating motes of dust that drifted in the still air. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with scroll cases and ledgers, their spines cracked, their titles faded. A heavy wooden table sat at the center, and on it, a stack of books waited.
He set his swordspear against the wall near the door. He would not need it here.
The smell was different from Room 7. Older. Paper that had been wet and dried, ink that had burned and been saved. Dust, yes, but underneath it, something metallic—the residue of old ink, perhaps, or something else entirely.
He sat at the table and pulled the first ledger toward him.
The cover was swollen with moisture, the leather cracked, the title long since faded to illegibility. He opened it carefully, the pages crackling under his fingers. The handwriting inside was cramped, precise, the ink faded to brown. A supply ledger, he realized—rations, ammunition, tool counts. Decades old, if the script was any indication.
He took a fresh scroll, dipped his brush, and began to copy.
The work was tedious. Each line required attention: matching the faded script, filling gaps where the ink had run, preserving words that might otherwise be lost. His hand cramped after the first hour. He shook it out, kept writing.
He did not rush. Patience, he had learned, was its own kind of discipline.
The first ledger took most of the morning. When he finished the final page, he set his brush down and flexed his fingers. The copy was clean. He rolled it, tied it with a strip of cloth, and set it aside.
He looked at the second ledger in the stack. Its cover was scorched, its edges blackened, the pages buckled with heat. The damage was severe—fire, not water. Someone had pulled it from a blaze, perhaps, or salvaged it from a room that had burned.
He opened it.
The pages were brittle. He turned them with care, each movement deliberate. The handwriting here was different—older, perhaps, or written by a different hand. The ink was blacker, the script more formal. Military records, he thought. Reports. Inventory of something he did not recognize.
He was halfway through when he saw it.
The page was badly burned at the edges, the center barely intact. But the words that remained were clear. He read them once. Then again.
...the Void Shepherd Path, so named for its dominion over absence, its authority over that which is not seen. Unlike the Thousand Mirage, which creates false sight, the Void Shepherd does not deceive. It erases. It removes. It decides what is allowed to exist in the awareness of others...
His hand stopped. The brush hovered above the fresh scroll.
He read the fragment again. Void Shepherd. Dominion over absence. Authority over that which is not seen.
His pulse was steady, but his mind was racing. He looked at the door. It was closed. He was alone.
He took a fresh scroll and began to copy. Slowly. Carefully. Each word exactly as it appeared. The ink was faded, the edges of the page missing, but the fragment was intact enough to preserve.
When he finished, he set the copy beside the others. It looked the same as the mundane records—the same scroll, the same ink, the same careful hand. He could place it in the stack with the rest. He could bring it to the woman tomorrow and tell her what he found.
He did not.
He tucked the fragment into his uniform, against his chest, beside the badge.
He would keep it. For now.
He continued copying the scorched ledger. Page after page, the work steady, the rhythm returning. But the fragment was there, pressed against his skin, a weight that had not been there this morning.
When the light through the windows began to fade from gold to grey, he rolled the last scroll, stacked the completed copies neatly, and stood. His hand ached. His eyes were tired. But his mind was clear.
He collected his swordspear from the wall and walked to the door. He paused, looking back at the remaining ledgers. Three more in the stack. More on the shelves beyond. The woman had said begin tomorrow, but she had not said when she expected him to finish.
He stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind him.
The camp was settling into evening when he reached the barracks. The room was empty—most of his cohort had moved to division quarters, and those who remained were at dinner. He sat on his bunk, pulled the fragment from his uniform, and read it again.
...the Void Shepherd Path, so named for its dominion over absence...
He took out his journal, the one he had kept since the campaign, and opened it to a fresh page. He copied the fragment again, this time into its pages, where no one would see it. Then he hid the journal beneath his mattress, beside the badge, and lay back on his bunk.
He did not know what the fragment meant. He did not know why it was in a scorched ledger in a forgotten archive, or why the woman had given him this task, or whether she already knew what he would find.
But he knew one thing: the path required Void, Dream, and Dark. His attributes. The ones the intake officer had called unstable, complex, non‑standard.
He closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he would return to the archive. He would copy more ledgers. He would find more fragments, if there were more to find. And he would decide, slowly, what to do with what he discovered.
He did not sleep well. But he slept.