The Corban Grand Athenaeum had been closed to the public since the merging, its doors sealed by order of the new Magical Oversight Council. At 2:13 a.m., those doors opened for the first time in weeks, and five shadows slipped inside.
Reed carried the mountain-stone scale in one hand and Elias's Crimson Wyvern in the other. Laken walked beside him, frost trailing from her fingertips like wedding lace. Harold moved ahead in near-human form, wings folded tight beneath a long coat. Luca and Wade brought up the rear, each carrying a duffel of arc-reactor fragments and phoenix-gold wire.
They were hunting a book that didn't officially exist.
The main reading room stretched three stories high, shelves warped into impossible geometries where gothic stone met circuit-board copper. Floating o
