Callan led me into a part of the compound I had not yet seen, a low stone building set apart from the main house, its shelves lined with ledgers and bound record books that smelled of dust and years nobody had bothered to disturb. The windows were narrow and set high, letting in thin bars of afternoon light that caught on drifting motes of dust every time either of us pulled a volume from its shelf.
This is everything Duskrail kept before your binding ever cracked anything open, Callan said, setting a stack of the oldest volumes on the table between us, each one bound in cracked leather gone soft and dark with age. Halden's confession told us what he did. It did not tell us how the original curse actually worked, or who taught him to do it. If we are going to understand what is still livi
