The only sound present in the archives was the soft turn of parchment from a table in the south corner.
Dust swam lazily between the shards of light cutting through the high, narrow stained glass windows. Valen's eyes traced the looping script in front of him for the third time. He was a bit distracted, gaze shifting between focus and daze. His mind kept slipping back to Orion's words, calm, certain, yet edged with a slight sense of sorrow. Their conversation took place days ago, but its weight still sat heavy in his chest. Orion had urged patience, restraint. Valen had promised it, but the moment he stepped away, he knew he wouldn't keep it.
That was why he was here now.
The notes before him weren't academy records—at least, not the kind filed neatly for students to access. These were fragments pieced together from old reports, academy gossip, and records "misplaced" in the vaults. All of them led to the same name: Nostradi Santos.
Valen's eyes narrowed as the image of that day returned to him—the chaos of the Jester's intrusion during Orientation. The crowd had panicked, fear rippling through even the most seasoned among them… except for Nostradi. He had stood not far from Valen, lips curled in a smile far too slow, far too measured, to be the reflex of a man caught off guard. A predator's patience in a room of startled prey.
Valen flipped a page. The ink here was faint with age, but the words carried the same unease that had lodged in his ribs:
Dragon's Maw raid. Tactical success. Casualties: unacceptable.
He read on. Despite the army's victory, the empire's citizens had flooded the streets in outrage. Rumours spread—of strange formations, of soldiers sent forward in ways that made no sense. Of deliberate attrition.
The record ended abruptly. No trial. No inquiry. Just a quiet note in the margins: Stripped of title—Divine General, but reassigned to service.
Valen's fingers tightened on the page.
The man had walked away from a battlefield of unnecessary graves with nothing more than a change in title. And now, years later, he still commanded authority… and influence. Too much of both.
Valen leaned back in his chair, the heavy air of the archives pressing around him. Somewhere deep inside, he felt the same resolve Orion had tried to temper harden instead.
Another reason for Valen's suspicions lay in Nostradi's role after the Jester's intrusion. The man had been appointed to lead the investigation — a position that should have placed him under a sharper lens, not granted him more leeway. Following Orion's suggestion that the intruder might have cast their workings from the Chained Tower, Nostradi had personally ordered the ancient seals undone and entered its depths.
When he emerged hours later, his expression was as unreadable as when he'd gone in. The official report claimed nothing was found. No residue. No trace.
Empty-handed.
Valen didn't buy it. The odds of Orion's theory being wrong were slimmer than the chance of Nostradi bending the truth.
His pen tapped the page as the decision formed in his mind. Direct confrontation would be reckless — dangerous, even — against a man with the authority to make inconvenient people vanish in silence. Better to vanish himself. To fade beneath the corridors' lamplight and watch from the margins.
If Nostradi had threads to pull, Valen would be there, hidden in the weave, to see where they led.
If no one else was going to drag the truth out into the light, then he would.
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The academy's streets thinned out as the day's last flicker of gold slipped into the deep indigo of evening. Valen kept to the edges, letting the tall cloisters and angled buttresses break his outline against the stone. Far ahead of him, Nostradi Santos emerged from the Hall of Records, his posture regal, almost casual, yet his eyes swept the emptying square with the precision of a hawk's.
Valen took cover under the broken column carved out of white marble. He held his breath with unshakeable stillness until the man's gaze had passed over him completely.
Once satisfied with the view ahead of him, Nostradi turned to follow a faintly lit corridor, making way through the amber lanterns that barely even casted a shadow on him. His cloak swayed in rhythmic confidence, letting every gaze on him know that the man didn't leave room for a single flaw in his defense.
They passed the fountain in the courtyard, now dry and shallow, its guardian statues staring down with eroded faces. Nostradi never glanced back.
They approached a closed off corridor that sloped downward, stone steps catching hints of moonlight through narrow slits in the wall. Valen hesitated at the top, watching the man's cloak vanish around a bend.
Where was he going at this hour?
Suddenly, the man. almost instinctively, cast an offensive chant across his trail. The passageway shuddered with a whirling sound of the wind crashing against its walls. With that, he looked satisfied, a grin appearing in his face again.
Valen turned around in panic, pressing himself against the wall just behind the bend. He felt the surge of Solence brush past him. However, nothing followed it. He realised that Nostradi didn't notice him and that it was just a precautionary casting, perhaps even a warning for what awaited those that did follow him.
His eyes pierced back into the corridor and noticed the man summoning a different chant, but this time with that same sinister smile wrapped around his lips. Valen's mind replayed his Orientation, the curve of the man's mouth when chaos bloomed, that fraction of a second where his mask slipped.
After casting a combination of glyphs ahead of him, Nostradi made his way inside a room and closed the door behind him.
Then—
A faint crunch of gravel behind him.
Under the moonlight, the boy named Damien Everwinter was stood behind him.
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Valen tried his best to keep his composure. His golden eyes narrowed to contain the sudden surprise and confusion.
"Someone's out late," Valen said, voice pitched low, as if he was reluctant to break the silence.
Damien forced his shoulders to relax. "Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd walk the grounds—clear my head a bit." He gestured vaguely toward the lantern-lit courtyard behind him. "Didn't expect to run into you."
Valen's gaze darted past him toward the faint silhouette of Nostradi.
"I could say the same." His tone held an edge—hesitation, then resolve. "Look, Damien. We're in the same guild, right?"
Damien felt a bit startled. He responded with a confused tone, "I suppose we are, by fortune or not."
"So I can trust you, correct?"
"Well—yeah. If you want to. I can keep a secret or two." He added further, "What's going on here, Valen?"
"Right, I'm following this man. Nostradi Santos. He's actually the one handling the Jester investigation."
With a slight pause, he continued,
"I've heard he unlocked the chained tower after Orion suggested the caster's vantage point. Claimed he found nothing."
Damien raised an eyebrow, feigning curiosity. "And?"
Valen's jaw tightened. "I trust Orion's judgement more than Nostradi's honesty. If the Jester's magic came from there, and Nostradi says the place was clean… he's either incompetent or lying. I'm betting on lying."
For a moment, Damien let the words settle. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. "So I presume you're tailing him to confirm your suspicions."
"Yes. Exactly that."
"Alright, I'm with you."
"You are?" Valen raised a brow, considering this sudden engagement with a new ally.
"I mean, you are my fellow guild members. Plus, I'm sure doubting the one titled Sainted counts as some form of blasphemy."
A faint smile appeared on Valen's face. He didn't say much else. As for Damien, he too matched his delight, but for a different reason.
His efforts to find himself an alibi in this chase couldn't have possibly gone better.
Together, they melted back in the shadows, closing the distance between the glyph-tuned door the man holding the key to this mystery had slipped through.