I spent the night in the chapel with the foundation record and a lamp that kept going out.
Elias stayed nearby, but we didn't speak much. He repaired a c***k in the doorframe with a strip of iron. I sat on the floor with the tablet across my knees and copied every line I could understand onto a sheet of paper.
The system wanted me to marry Elias. The old ward required two willing witnesses. The abbey's record said the mountain accepted the vow of the remaining keeper if one partner disappeared.
I'd read that as a warning about marriage. Now I wondered whether the system was asking for something much older.
At dawn, I found the missing part of the record etched into the underside of the tablet.
The mountain had been opened by the first keepers, not sealed. Its power flowed into the val
