Cobalt strolls the pavilion of the palace library, hands tucked deep into his pockets. The sun is high, and he lets it spill onto his skin until it glows faintly, until the marble-pale surface of his body mirrors the light back like a mirror. He comes here when his thoughts refuse to quiet, when his thoughts are churning restlessly in his head. The open air helps, as does the bright and pure sunshine of Hell.
The pavilion sprawls around him in graceful arcs, carved stone older than even documented knowledge can anchor. Golden sunlight illuminates ivy that hangs lazily from every surface, climbing into ornate crevices, curling along columns, spilling from high terraces in cascades of green. The foliage seems deliberate, almost intelligent, as if the vines themselves know where to grow to please the eye. Even here, artifice meets nature in a seamless marriage—the hallmark of Hell itself.
Cobalt pauses at the balustrade, gazing out at the courtyard gardens where courtiers sometimes gather in the afternoons. He closes his eyes and sees her—sees her talons sliding from her fingers, sees the red flare of her eyes. He should have known. He did know.
"Kludde," he murmurs under his breath, the word bitter as iron on his tongue.
The word hangs in the open air and goes nowhere.The palace is a monument to absence now—sunlight, stone, ivy, and a lonely silence.
Cobalt turns from the balustrade and slips through the tall doors. The library's familiar warmth greets him. Stained-glass windows ladder color over marble. Dust floats in slow spirals. The only movement comes from the rats trotting the baseboards like they own the place. Cobalt notes with affection that they actually do.
He crosses the main hall without slowing. He knows exactly what he needs in this moment. The memorystrands hum behind glass—thousands of them, each coil a mind split open and stored. Their faint light thrums in his chest.
Tome jobs to the edge of a chair and looks up at him like a little sentinel.
"Enjoy your time outside?" He asks Cobalt.
"Mmm," Cobalt mutters, his hand skims the rat's back. Tome chitters, springs down, and scurries into the stacks, leading the way as if reading Cobalt's mind.
They pass reading tables coloured with ancient ink stains, cabinets that still smell of oil and vellum, and a set of iron gates carved with wards that have long since dimmed. No lock remains. No ward sings. He nudges the gate with two ringed fingers, and it swings open on a dull hinge.
The restricted wing is darker. Cooler. The shelves bow with age. Here, books are wrapped in linen and tied with twine. Memory is stored like contraband.
He reaches the alcove, his feet having carried him here too many times to forget. His alcove. A table. A chair. He sits. The chair squeaks loudly in protest.
On the desk, a codex bound in cracked hide sits. The cover is rough under his palm, as familiar as scar tissue. He opens it.
The same brittle whisper. The same stained pages. The same account of a night no one else talks about, but he knows by heart.
The words within are scribbled and scattered. An archivist's hand recording facts and then recoiling from them. "Domestic quarters compromised. Witness reports shadowed form entering by no visible threshold. No bodies recovered. Residual heat. Residual soot. No life source found." Each short line is a refusal to say what it is.
He doesn't come for the text. He comes for what was hastily depicted in the margins.
Frantic drawings. Over and over again: the same figure sketched by a hand shaking heavily. Broad shadow. Curved wings. Claws scything down. Ember eyes. Behind that figure, others. A family screaming. Then nothing.
Kludde. The shape is unmistakable.
He drags his thumb along one drawing until the ink warms under his skin. He keeps his breathing even. He has done this a hundred times.
He looks up at the cabinets of memorystrands. Their light presses against the glass like breath. He has bled time into them before. Hours. Months, even. The memory he needs still won't come free.
Cobalt shuts the codex hard enough for dust to lift from its edges. Tome darts beneath the table and then pops up by his elbow incredulously, whiskers twitching.
"I will find you," he says. He hasn't let himself stop saying it. The vow never sounds old when it leaves his mouth. Not to him, at least.
Silence settles back down like a heavy cloth. He lets it sit for three breaths. Then he stands.
He crosses to the memory cabinets. Each jar sits in its own shallow cradle, wax seals cracked or uncracked, labels in the steady hand of royal scribes who have not drawn breath in a long time. He scans rows he knows by heart until he reaches a lower shelf whose glass has darkened from age and neglect.
Tome leaps onto the lip of the cabinet and noses a single jar with a broken seal. Cobalt angles his head. The label is faded to almost nothing. Only a single glyph remains: an upside down triangle.
He knows that mark. It sits in the codex margins like a brand under several of the Kludde sketches. The scribe used it when words gave out. What it stands for, what it represents, he's never known, but has always sensed its significance.
Cobalt slides the jar free. The coil inside is dim—memory light drained low. He sets the jar on a table and checks the room out of habit. He doesn't know why he does it. No one is here to stop him. No one ever has been.
He softens the wax with a touch and peels the seal back. Cold slips out. The coil unfurls with reluctance. A thread of pale light rises and trembles in the stale air. It hums, thin and sharp.
He lets it brush his fingers.
Images hit his mind like ice water.
A hallway in half-shadow. Plaster walls. A table with a bowl of fruit and three cups. The cups are ringed in silver. The fruit smells lush and warm, and for a split second he can taste it—sweet with a winter bite.
He jerks his hand back. The thread flutters, then steadies when he reaches again—palm down first, careful this time.
The hallway scene returns. The view tips, as if whoever held the memory was turning their head, listening. He hears it too: a soft laugh from another room. A woman's voice makes his bones relax. Familiar. Everything in him leans toward that sound.
Then the pressure changes. The air in the memory pulls tight. The hallway dims without a light source changing in brightness. Shadow pools at the far end of the corridor where there is no door.
The view lurches. Running. A shoulder clips the table. A silver cup tips and dents, ringing the wood with a hollow note that rings through him.
The shadow at the far end thickens. It doesn't come forward, but instead opens, yawning, towards him.
The memory jumps. He swallows hard and keeps his fingers level. He knows this is the part that always falls apart. He holds still and lets the thread choose its path.
A child's voice. A wooden bead bouncing and rolling, hitting a baseboard, invisible now. The sound of bare feet. The earthy scent of clay.
The shadows gain form now. Wings. A curve of something that could be shoulder or horn. An eye that does not reflect the room's light but generates its own.
He can't move. He can't breathe. He has watched this memory a dozen times and he cannot move now. His body knows.
Another jump. Wind sucks at the hallway. The cups rattle and the table skids an inch. A hand appears within the memory, open and reaching—a woman's hand with a scar he recognizes on the thumb. He knows because the ache in his chest comes from a deep, old place that only opens for one thing.
Mother.
The seam pulls again. The hand vanishes into it.
The memory unravels in a ragged stutter—sound tearing, light flickering. The thread shakes, then collapses back into itself and falls limp in the jar like a spent wick.
Cobalt stares at the glass, eyes watering.
He hears his own voice. "Again." The word comes out hoarse.
He shouldn't. Memorystrands are not meant to be dwelled in. There are many documented accounts of scribes losing themselves in their worlds. But he can't resist. Feeling that sense of familiarity, hearing that laughter, even for a moment, is worth it.
He sits back, reclining into the memory as it repeats itself. It's fainter this time, as though the memorystrand loses power with each consecutive use. It doesn't matter. The image plays out again in full, then the memory gutters and dies. The thread blackens at the edges and won't answer him when he tries to replay it again.
He seals the jar. His hands are shaking. Tome looks at him with softness and concern.
Cobalt touches his ring with his thumb without thinking. The stone warms. A faint pulse answers his skin—steady, red, comforting.
He sets the jar aside and goes back to the codex. Not for the words, but for the sketches. He drags the book toward the edge of the table so the light hits the margins cleanly. Tome hops up and crouches like an inkpot with eyes, nestling himself into Cobalt's chest.
Each Kludde sketch is marked with that upside down triangle. Each line is made with precision, and appears to be identical in length. How was that possible?
He pulls a scrap of vellum and a graphite stick from a drawer, measures with his fingernail, then makes a grid with quick, exact lines.
Regardless of the page, the lines of the triangles are always identical in length.
He flips pages. Sketch after sketch. The lengths never waver. Always identical.
"What does it mean?" he says to the absent scribe, exhaling loudly.
The lines stare back at him, cruel in their sameness. He presses harder with the graphite, smudging the vellum until the shapes blur into one dark band.
"Lengths that don't change," he mutters. "Lengths that mean something."
Tome chitters at his elbow, as if mocking him for not seeing what should be obvious. Cobalt drops the stick and rubs his temples.
His eyes drift back to the codex margin. The triangle. Always the triangle, stamped like a brand beneath each frantic sketch of wings and claws. A mark that meant nothing to anyone but the scribe who drew it—and yet it recurs, steady as the lines.
Cobalt traces it once more with his finger. He half expects the ink to flare, or the page to finally surrender a secret. It doesn't. Only the silence answers, thick and stubborn.
He pushes to his feet. He takes the vellum, the codex, even the dead strand, and sets them in a neat stack at the table's center. His vow is quieter this time, but sharper for it:
"I will find you."
His family.
The words echo, swallowed quickly by stone and silence.
He leaves the alcove without looking back. Tome scurries after him, claws ticking faintly against the marble as they vanish into the dark.
Behind them, the codex waits. Its margins hide their orderly triangles like teeth pressed together, a riddle smiling from the page.