Page 160 of The Last Remaining Light

The man in question looked up from where he sat against the wall. Confusion crossed his face when he realized people were staring at him, and he adjusted his spectacles as though trying to determine what he had missed.

“Which scholar?” the engineer asked.

“The older man with the cracked spectacles,” Caelyn said without hesitation, nodding in his direction. “Him.”

A murmur moved through the shelter before heads turned automatically to follow Caelyn’s gaze.

“He went into the lower tunnel while everyone slept,” Caelyn continued, his voice rough from pain and lack of rest. “He walked as if he knew exactly where he was going. I followed him to an old observation gallery beneath this level, one built before the relay shelter or the transit system. He knelt at the center of it and… well, I don’t know what he was doing. It looked like he was listening to something below.”

Chills erupted over her skin.

Not like hearing, Caelyn had said. Feeling. Whatever called to the Starless was not a sound, and yet all of them kept reaching for words that belonged to ears because language had not been built for this kind of terror.

The scholar blinked. "What gallery?"

The question cut through the shelter more effectively than a shout. Caelyn turned toward him, a flash of uncertainty crossing his face. "The one beneath the relay levels,” he said, then pointed at the tunnel. “Down that tunnel. You were staring into a black chasm.”

The old man gaped. It took a moment before he shook his head. "Young man, I haven't left this shelter since we arrived."

The engineer looked between them. "He was asleep when I woke for my watch."

The statement quickly drew attention.

"I remember because he was snoring.” The engineer paused. "Loudly."

Elowynn found herself looking at the scholar again. He appeared genuinely bewildered, not defensive or embarrassed. The thought should have reassured her; instead it reminded her how many strange things had happened since Blackwake began—people standing where they should not be, knowing things they couldn't explain, and now a man who might have walked into the depths of the city without remembering a single step.

“What did he do after?” Alyra asked, pushing the conversation forward.

“He left,” Caelyn said. “Returned the way he came. I don’t know whether he understood what he was doing or whether he was only checking to see something was still there.”

Lora rubbed both hands over her face, smearing soot across one cheek. “I really dislike that those are our two options,” she mumbled, her words muffled behind her hands.

Korvel looked toward the engineer. “You know the gallery.”

The engineer’s jaw worked once before he answered. “I know of it.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” the man said. There was a hint of irritation beneath his fear. “It’s not. The old foundations were sealed long before I was born. We maintain structural maps, sure. Pressure diagrams, too. Oh, and drainage routes. We don’t wander into forbidden observatories for sport.”

Elowynn’s attention focused on the word forbidden.

Veylspire had always been full of closed doors. But closed and forbidden were not the same. A closed door suggested ownership or privacy. A forbidden one suggested that someone, somewhere, had decided knowledge was dangerous enough to bury and then build a city over it.

“What is beneath the gallery?” she asked.

The engineer looked toward Korvel.

Korvel’s expression didn't change, but that glance told Elowynn more than either man wanted it to.

The Council knew something.

Perhaps not everything. Perhaps only enough to be afraid, but there were records, maps, sealed reports, decisions made behind doors while scholars like Elowynn debated publicly over fragments and theories.

Her anger burned cold. “Do not look at him,” she said to the engineer. “I asked you.”

The man swallowed before rubbing the back of his neck. “Old observatory foundations. Pre-Vigil, some say. Others say early Vigil. No one agrees because no one with authority wants anyone studying them closely enough to find out, I guess.” He ended his explanation with a shrug, which infuriated Elowynn.