Argent Stag's Mark was a still, cooling caress on Felix's forehead, a compass magnetized to a truth beyond any he had ever pursued. Over the next few days after the Festival, a necessary transformation came over him. The exhaustion was dispelled, replaced by a steady, buzzing lucidity. The Codex of the Unseen Tide, that had lain dormant after the sheer exertion of remembering the Stag, was alive once more. Yet it was not the same.
It was no longer a tool of utilized analysis. The link to the Stag, a mystery. That was itself a story with flesh put upon it, and had been a catalyst. The Codex had adopted a new precept, a new function that had lain latent, waiting for a turn of a key in a lock it did not know it held.
He sat in his rented room, the chaos of the Festival a distant recollectio
