The Concordium never admitted to having a sublevel.
Keiran found it by accident.
Or maybe it found him.
It began with the candle.
He'd placed Merin's stone at his chest, as instructed. Slept without dreams. But sometime near the deepest part of night, he woke with a jolt—
And realized the flame beside his bed had gone out.
That shouldn't have been possible.
Concordium candles were rune-etched, perpetual, self-repairing. They didn't die unless someone blew them out.
Or unless the flame forgot it was ever lit.
Keiran sat up, heart already pounding. The room was silent.
But not still.
There was a pull. A sensation just beneath his ribs—like a thread unraveling from the inside. Faint, but insistent. Drawing him toward the corner wall.
He rose.
No footsteps echoed as he walked, though the stone beneath him should have made sound. He pressed his hand to the wall. It looked solid.
But the mark on his wrist thrummed once.
And the stone shifted.
Not open. Not broken. It simply remembered being a door.
And so it was.
The corridor beyond was narrow and low-ceilinged, lined with extinguished torch sconces. No glyphs lit the walls. No scent of mana.
Just dust, and silence.
The kind that knew things.
He walked deeper.
There was no turning back. The wall behind him had sealed again.
This part of the Concordium wasn't listed in any archive.
No signs marked the path.
But something did.
A voice.
Soft.
Familiar.
Whispering just ahead of him.
"Keiran…"
He froze.
It was impossible.
It wasn't loud.
But it was hers.
Lys.
The name shuddered in his bones like a struck bell.
He followed the voice, pulse thudding.
The corridor bent, dipped, narrowed again.
Then it opened.
A small, circular chamber.
No torches.
No candles.
No light at all—
Except from a door across the room.
Or rather, not a door.
A frame.
Standing upright, free of wall or hinge.
Its wood was white, but rotted.
Its surface was cracked with thin, spiraled lines.
No handle.
No keyhole.
Just a door that felt… awake.
And behind it—
a whisper.
"You found me."
Keiran's throat was dry.
He stepped closer.
No hinge creaked.
No runes flared.
But the air around the door pulsed with memory, warm and wet and brittle.
He pressed his hand against it.
The door was cold.
And it didn't open.
But it leaned.
Toward him.
Like a sleeper stirring toward warmth.
"They sealed me," the voice said.
"Not because I was dangerous. But because I remembered you before the mark."
"I kept your name after mine was gone."
Keiran's chest tightened.
"Lys…"
He didn't know how he knew. But he did.
This wasn't just a memory. This wasn't a trick.
It was her.
But not alive.
And not gone, either.
"They said I was unstable," the voice went on. "That I was a wound in the Archive. That I wouldn't let go."
"But I did."
"I let go of everything."
A pause.
"Except you."
He pressed both hands to the door now. "Let me in."
"No," she whispered.
"Not yet."
"You're still being written. I'm already erased."
"If you open this now, we'll both be devoured."
"Wait for the moons."
Keiran stepped back.
Breathing hard.
The door vibrated faintly, then stilled.
Silence again.
He stood there a long time.
The mark on his wrist glowed softly.
Then faded.
And the thread inside his chest—that pulling, unraveling thing—
Went still.
He left the way he came.
Or perhaps the corridor reformed behind him.
When he returned to his room, the candle was relit.
Burning steadily.
No sign of Merin's black stone.
No crack in the floor.
Only one new detail:
Carved gently into the underside of his desk—
A spiral, drawn in her handwriting.