Jules's apartment was a testament to organized chaos, located in a perpetually dim corner of the Marais. It served as both his home and his office—a space cluttered with teetering piles of police reports, historical records, and empty coffee cups.
"Welcome to the nerve center of paranoia, Mademoiselle Dubois," Jules said, clearing a space on a dusty wooden table. "Rule number one: no names, no official contacts, and we only communicate in person. Dubois is playing at being a curator, but he runs a network. We have to assume the phones are listened to."
Elara nodded, placing the journal photographs and the silver key on the table. "Rule number two: we stop treating Vance like a mythological figure. He was a scientist who made a dangerous discovery. The key to 'Loss' is in his history, not folklore."
They began their work. Jules dug into a battered filing cabinet, pulling out yellowed papers he'd gathered four years prior. Elara, meanwhile, used her knowledge of 17th-century intellectual circles to search for Vance's contemporaries.
"I was right," Jules announced, slapping a handwritten note onto the table. "An anonymous source—a disgraced genealogist—claimed the Argentum Society originated not from a religious cult, but from a 'Gentlemen's Club of Philosophical Pursuit' in 1701. They were founded three decades after Vance vanished."
"They are inheritors, not founders," Elara confirmed, looking at the date. "This ties in. Vance was a master of transmutation, but he also wrote extensively on the concept of 'ethical load'—the belief that any great power must be counterbalanced by a great personal sacrifice, or 'loss,' to remain stable. That's what they despised."
Jules frowned, pushing his spectacles up his nose. "So, the Society was founded by people who wanted the power without the ethics. They wanted forever without the cost."
Elara pulled out a photograph of an obscure historical pamphlet she had cross-referenced. "Look at this. The Folly of the Ascetic Alchemist, a critique published in 1705 by a man named Elias Argent. He mocks Vance for burying his greatest work because he believed the world was 'unworthy of the sacrifice required.'"
"Elias Argent," Jules repeated, a slow grin spreading across his tired face. "The Argentum Society. They named themselves after the man who fundamentally rejected Vance's philosophy of loss."
This was the schism. The key of Loss must be tied to Elias Argent, the man who founded the Society dedicated to its rejection.
Elara pointed to a specific passage in Argent's rebuttal, which she quickly translated: "Vance claimed his most grievous failure—the thing that proved his principle of loss—was not a hidden vault, but a public marker of our rejection, buried deep in the common place of common sorrow."
"A marker of sorrow," Elara repeated. "Argent's rejection of Vance's ethical principle. It must be a specific, small monument, likely commissioned by Elias Argent himself, to symbolize the death of Vance's 'folly'."
Jules grabbed a worn, century-old map of Paris. "Argent was a magistrate, extremely wealthy. He owned property near Les Halles—the old central marketplace. A common place of common sorrow, indeed. Where people went hungry, where true loss was visible every day."
Jules circled a tiny, unmarked square on the map, near a former municipal cemetery site. "There. A small obelisk, built by a magistrate in the early 18th century, supposedly dedicated to 'Public Spirit.' But everyone knew Argent was obsessed with philosophy, not public spirit."
Elara's breath hitched. She checked the coordinates against her knowledge of Parisian geography. "The Obelisk of Public Spirit. It fits the anonymity, the subtlety, and the association with Elias Argent's wealth and contempt for Vance's ethics."
"Then the Key of Loss rests where the Society began: at the grave of the principle they rejected." Jules stood up, grabbing his coat. "It's after midnight. Time to visit the Obelisk of Public Spirit before Dubois figures out his Society's namesake just handed us the next lock."