Arlo stopped in front of a gate.
Not a small one.
A tall wrought gate with polished metalwork and a crest at the center—clean, expensive, and quiet in the way wealth always was. The stone walls on either side were high enough that you couldn't casually glance in and see what was inside.
It wasn't the Vonel estate.
It didn't have that same overwhelming weight, the sense that the ground itself had been purchased.
But it was still… big.
Bigger than any place I'd ever lived.
Lina made a small sound. "Oh."
Mya clutched her bag tighter.
Arlo stood straighter, suddenly in familiar territory.
The gate swung open before Arlo even touched it.
A butler stepped out—tall, neat, dressed in dark formal cloth that looked like it had never seen dust. His posture was perfect. His smile was practiced.
"Master Arlo," he said warmly, and the warmth sounded genuine. "Welcome home."
Arlo nodded, confidence returning like he'd put it on with his uniform. "Hello. We're going to the Deltadyson Library."
The butler's eyes slid to us—Lina bright and curious, Mya shy and tense, me with a sling and a face I tried to keep neutral.
He bowed slightly. "Welcome, young guests."
His voice was polite.
His eyes were sharp.
"Please, follow me," he said.
We stepped through the gate.
Inside, the air changed.
Less street dust. More flowers.
A massive garden spread in front of the main building—trimmed hedges, stone paths, a small fountain glinting under the sun. The house itself was wide and elegant, but what drew my eyes wasn't the house.
It was the second structure.
A tower-like building that rose tall and square, built like it expected storms and time and war and planned to outlast all of them.
The library.
It looked less like a place for reading and more like a fortress for paper.
I couldn't help it. Wonder slipped out of me.
"How many books are in there?" I muttered.
Lina heard and gasped happily. "Enough to crush Arlo under them if we stack them."
Arlo frowned. "Please do not."
We followed the butler down the stone path toward the tower.
My eyes kept drifting upward, tracing the height.
Then something else snagged my attention.
"Deltadyson," I said, carefully. "Is that your family name, Arlo?"
Arlo glanced back, then nodded with a small, proud lift of his chin. "Yes."
The butler spoke smoothly as we walked, as if he'd been waiting for someone to ask.
"The Deltadyson family was able to establish this estate thanks to significant contributions to Great Abyss research and to the Bazlance Academy," he said.
I blinked. "Bazlance Academy… and Seagate Academy—what's the difference?"
The butler didn't hesitate.
"Seagate," he said, "was built to accommodate exceptional talent and focuses primarily on the study of miasma. Bazlance Academy is part of Bazlance's territory and was built specifically to study the Great Abyss—its structure, its ecology, its dangers—because Bazlance sits on a direct route to the dungeon."
The explanation was clean and clipped—like he was used to giving it.
And it made my skin prickle again.
A city with direct access.
A place where Expedition news would arrive faster.
I kept my voice casual, but my heart sped up.
"So… does Bazlance know what happened in Expedition Forty-Three?" I asked.
The butler stopped.
It wasn't dramatic.
He simply stopped walking, and the entire world seemed to pause because of it.
Lina stopped too, suddenly very quiet.
Mya's breath hitched—and she stepped closer behind me, like she wanted to hide in my shadow even though I was small and injured and not a shield at all.
Arlo froze beside the butler, eyes dropping to the stone path like he'd suddenly found something fascinating down there.
The butler turned his head toward me.
His smile was still there.
But the warmth was gone.
"Matters regarding Expedition Forty-Three," he said politely, "are not for children."
His eyes held mine.
Not angry.
Not shouting.
Just… firm.
Like a locked door.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.
"Yes, sir," I managed.
The butler's smile returned—thin, controlled—and he resumed walking as if nothing had happened.
My legs moved automatically to follow.
My heart did not.
Lina smacked my right shoulder—the one without bandages.
Not hard enough to hurt.
Hard enough to startle.
"Ow—!" I hissed.
Lina leaned in, whisper fierce. "Trey! What are you doing?"
I blinked at her.
"You'll get us killed!" she hissed.
It was ridiculous.
And yet her eyes were wide with real fear.
Ahead, Arlo heard the whisper anyway—because Lina whispered like she wanted everyone to hear, apparently.
He looked back with a tired sigh. "Lina stop it. No one is going to kill anyone here."
Lina jolted, then laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head. "Hehe. I didn't expect you to hear that. Sorry. Sorry."
Mya's fingers brushed my sleeve lightly.
"Trey," she whispered, worried. "Are you okay?"
Her eyes flicked over my face the way Nerissa's did when she asked about coin—like she was searching for cracks.
She knew.
Not the details.
But she knew Myrina's name was tied to that number.
Forty-Three.
I forced a small smile. "I'm fine," I whispered back. "Thanks for asking."
Mya's shoulders eased a fraction.
Then Lina, who seemed incapable of letting a quiet moment live, leaned in and declared loudly:
"Stop flirting. It looks disgusting."
My face heated so fast it felt like my ears might catch fire.
Mya squeaked, mortified.
Arlo spun his head back toward Lina, offended. "We are children. Do not use the word 'flirting.'"
Lina gasped like he'd insulted her personally. "What do you mean? You were totally—"
"You were also talking closely with Trey earlier," Arlo shot back, voice sharper. "So stop."
Lina's jaw dropped. "WHAT?"
Mya made a tiny sound like she wanted to vanish into the garden.
The butler continued walking as if our banter was background birdsong.
I followed, cheeks burning, pretending my ribs didn't ache, pretending the warning hadn't landed like a stone.
But inside my head, the question I'd asked—too blunt, too obvious—kept echoing:
Does Bazlance know?
And right behind it, another question waited, sharper, more dangerous:
How much does Arlo know, and why won't he look up?
***
The library building was even more imposing up close.
Its outer walls were smooth stone reinforced with metal bands that ran vertically, like ribs. Ornamental carvings framed the doors—elegant, but not delicate. Everything about the structure said this was built to endure.
We stepped up to the entrance.
Another butler waited there—slightly older, with silver at his temples and a calm expression that made him look like nothing surprised him anymore.
The first butler bowed. "Beris. Young Master Arlo requests materials on miasma, dungeon ecology, and monsters."
Beris bowed back, then looked at us.
"Welcome," he said, voice gentle. "I am Beris Totales—the Deltadyson family's librarian. You may call me Beris."
Lina's eyes widened. "Totales? That sounds like… total."
Arlo made a small noise of disapproval.
Beris's lips twitched. "I have heard every version of that joke. Please, come in."
The doors opened smoothly.
And the world inside swallowed us whole.
It was a single vast chamber—so wide my eyes didn't know where to rest. Bookshelves lined the walls in towering layers, stacked upward into floors I could barely count. The center of the building was open, a square cut that let you look up through levels like peering into a canyon made of knowledge.
Above us, balconies wrapped the inner walls, each lined with more shelves, more ladders, more light crystals embedded in the stone.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
The light was bright and clean, filling the room despite the minimal windows. It wasn't sunlight. It was steady illumination, as if the building refused to allow darkness to hide anything inside it.
The air smelled like old paper and worn leather and ink that had soaked into binding over decades.
Mya inhaled softly, eyes wide, hands clasped in front of her like she was entering a temple.
Lina looked like she might explode.
"Whoa," she breathed. "This is—this is—"
"A lot," I finished quietly, because the word came easy.
Arlo looked almost… relaxed. Like he'd stepped into a place that belonged to him. Like the library wasn't intimidating; it was familiar.
Beris led us to a reading table near the center of the ground floor—sturdy wood, polished smooth, lit by a crystal lamp that hovered above it like a patient moon.
"Please wait here," Beris said politely. "I will retrieve appropriate volumes."
Arlo nodded as if this was routine. "Thank you."
Beris glided away, disappearing into the shelves with the ease of someone who knew exactly where everything lived.
For a moment, none of us spoke.
Even Lina.
The building was too big. Too quiet. Too full of stored thought.
Then Lina whispered, reverent. "Do you think there are monster drawings on every floor?"
Arlo sighed. "Not every floor."
Mya asked softly, "Can we… really read all these?"
Arlo's eyes flicked upward toward the higher balconies, then back down.
"No," he admitted. "Only the first floor."
Lina blinked. "What? Why?"
Arlo's mouth tightened. "Because rules."
He pointed subtly toward a plaque mounted near the base of a staircase.
I leaned slightly, squinting.
The writing was clean and formal, carved into stone.
FLOOR ONE: OPEN ACCESSFLOOR TWO AND ABOVE: RESTRICTEDAUTHORIZED: DELTADYSON FAMILY / VONEL FAMILY / APPROVED SCHOLARS
My stomach dropped.
Vonel.
Even here.
Even in a house that wasn't theirs, their name sat carved into stone like it belonged.
Lina read it too—and her excitement dimmed into a confused frown.
"They can go up?" she whispered. "The Vonels can just… go up?"
Arlo nodded stiffly. "They have influence."
Mya hugged her bag tighter. "That's… scary."
Arlo looked annoyed at the word scary, like calling power scary was childish.
But he didn't correct her.
He just stared up at the second-floor balcony, eyes narrowing the way they did when he was thinking hard.
I stared too.
Not at the books.
At the idea that answers might be sitting just above our heads—within reach of stairs, blocked only by a family name and a noble name.
My tongue felt heavy.
A question pressed against my teeth.
It wasn't about monsters.
It wasn't even about miasma.
Not directly.
It was about Forty-Three.
About what Bazlance knew.
About what Arlo's family knew.
About what I wasn't supposed to ask.
My hands curled slightly, then I forced them to relax.
I could still hear the butler's voice from the garden path, polite and firm:
Not for children.
I could still feel the way his eyes locked mine like a warning.
But standing in this place—surrounded by books that smelled like truth—made it harder to swallow my questions.
Arlo turned back to us, trying to sound normal again.
"We'll get enough from floor one," he said, almost like he was convincing himself. "There are introductory texts here. Bestiaries. Miasma primers."
Lina's excitement flickered back to life, weaker but still there. "Okay! We can start with monster pictures."
Mya nodded shyly. "And… miasma."
I nodded too, forcing my face calm.
Because miasma was the safe question.
Miasma was what kids were allowed to be curious about.
Forty-Three was the question that got you stared at by adults with locked-door eyes.
Beris was still gone, his footsteps silent somewhere among the shelves.
The table waited.
The books were coming.
And in my chest, the decision sharpened into a thin, bright edge:
When Beris returned… when the first books opened… when there was finally a quiet moment—
Would I ask again?
Would I risk it?
Or would I swallow it like I always did, and hope answers could be found without naming the thing that haunted me?
I stared toward the direction Beris had disappeared, listening for the soft sound of steps.
My throat felt dry.
My heart beat too loud.
And I didn't know—yet—whether my next question would save me…
Or paint a target on my back.