The air inside the study alcove was hushed, the kind of hush that settled into your bones when the world outside moved too quickly, and you had no choice but to find stillness or be crushed beneath it. Callum and I had been at it for over an hour now—two bent heads, one page, and a shared frustration toward the stubborn logic of ancient glyphwork. The candle beside us burned low, its flame flickering weakly against the draft seeping through the high arched window. Outside, I could hear wind dragging across the northern courtyard, but inside, there was only the sound of parchment and the soft scratch of Callum’s pen as he traced a correction in the margin.
“Wait,” I murmured, leaning closer, pointing to the edge of a binding glyph. “That curl—doesn’t that change the suffix? Wouldn’t it alt
