Elias did not sleep.
He sat hunched over his desk, the candle burned low to a stump, his quill scratching furiously across the page. The word refused to leave his mind.
Kaelith.
He wrote it a dozen times, shifting the letters, rearranging them, testing their shapes against the half-remembered scripts of dead languages. Greek roots, Mesopotamian glyphs, runes from the northern isles. None fit. The sound itself clung to him, an aftertaste of metal and cold.
At some point, his head dropped onto his arm. The whisper followed him into uneasy dreams.
He woke to light bleeding through the warped window. His back ached, his mouth dry. The notebook lay open before him, the same single word repeated across half a page, his own handwriting growing sloppier each time.
With a bitter laugh, Elias pushed it away and reached for the morning Gazette Mrs. Penwick had slid under the door. The paper reeked of ink and cheap pulp.
The headline: "Dockside Accident Claims Worker's Life."
No mention of a glowing shard, no Bureau intervention, no crowd. Just a "fall into the Crater Sea while intoxicated."
Elias's lip curled. They were covering it up. Efficiently, ruthlessly.
He flipped the paper, scanning. At the bottom of the classifieds, a strange line caught his eye:
"Seeking glasscutters. Apply by lamplight when the green crescent wanes."
His pulse quickened. Too strange to be coincidence. A message—hidden in plain sight.
The bell of the street door rang then, followed by quick footsteps on the stair. A small hand rapped timidly on his attic door.
Elias straightened his coat and opened it. Young Samuel, the grocer's son, peered up at him with ink-stained fingers and a slate tucked under his arm.
"Ready for sums, Mister Graye."
Elias waved him in, trying to mask his exhaustion. The boy clambered onto the stool, swinging his legs as Elias chalked numbers onto the slate.
"Add these, then carry the—" Elias stopped. The boy was humming. A low, droning hum. The same vibration that had thrummed through the docks last night.
"Where did you hear that?" Elias asked sharply.
Samuel blinked, startled. "Nowhere. Just came to me." He tapped the chalk idly on the slate, muttering, "Kaelith… Kaelith…"
Elias dropped his own chalk, the stick snapping in two as it hit the floor.
The boy frowned. "Is it a bad word?"
Elias forced a smile, throat dry. "No… just not a word you should repeat outside this room."
He dismissed Samuel early, pressing a copper penny into his hand to soften the dismissal.
When the boy was gone, Elias sank onto his chair, trembling. The word was spreading. Somehow.
Knocks came again. Three, firm, deliberate. Not Mrs. Penwick's impatient rap.
Elias opened the door a cautious crack. A tall man in a neat coat stood in the hall, hat in hand. His face was blandly forgettable, but his eyes were sharp.
"Mr. Graye?" the man asked with courteous detachment.
"Yes?"
"I'm with the Bureau of Safety. Just routine inquiries." The man smiled, though it never reached his eyes. "Were you present on the docks last night?"
Elias's heart pounded. "The docks? No. I was here. Working."
The man studied him for a moment, as though measuring the weight of the lie. He inclined his head slightly. "Of course. A respectable scholar such as yourself wouldn't have reason to loiter among dockhands."
Elias bristled, but the man tipped his hat, already turning. Over his shoulder, he added lightly, "Do take care with your health, Mr. Graye. The city is not always safe for the… curious."
The footsteps faded down the stairwell.
Elias shut the door and pressed his back against it, cold sweat gathering at his neck.
He turned back to the desk. His notebook lay open where he had left it. But a fresh page now bore a word in thick black ink, jagged as though carved into the paper:
Kaelith.
He hadn't written it. He was sure.
As he stared, the letters shivered—rippling as if alive, their edges softening, twisting into unfamiliar shapes.
Elias stumbled back, knocking over the chair. The whisper returned, not in his ear but inside his skull, low and patient.
Kaelith.
The candle guttered.