Page 30 of The Last Remaining Light

Caelyn nearly dropped the lantern component in his hands, fumbling with it while Elowynn looked genuinely offended.

“Sister!” she hissed.

Agatha finally glanced upward, entirely unrepentant. “If you two become any more obvious, the bells themselves will start gossiping!”

Caelyn covered his face briefly with one hand and said nothing while Elowynn wished very deeply for the floor to open beneath her.

Unfortunately, salvation didn’t arrive.

Instead, Agatha closed her book with a solid thump! and stood from her seat, her old bones creaking as she moved. “Enough suffering for one morning. Gather your things. We are going below.”

Elowynn blinked, straightening in her seat. “Below where? To the archives?”

“The undercroft chambers.”

Caelyn’s posture stiffened almost imperceptibly, but Elowynn noticed as she moved her wide gaze to his.

“The old resonance halls beneath the abbey require inspection,” Agatha continued. “Several of the lower stabilization systems have begun failing again.”

“But I thought the undercroft was sealed,” Caelyn said warily.

Elowynn thought so, too, and was still staring at him before she looked over toward Agatha. Her curiosity had been piqued.

“Most of it,” Agatha answered.

Silence followed that admission. Something uneasy curled its tendrils beneath Elowynn’s ribs.

The undercroft chambers beneath Lumenshire Abbey were rarely discussed openly. Sections of the abbey foundation extended deep into the cliffs below the monastery; they were carved centuries earlier atop old aethercurrent convergence points. Portions remained accessible for maintenance and archival storage, but the deepest halls had long since been sealed following collapses during the Ash Wars.

Or so Elowynn had always been told.

“And… you are bringing us because?” she asked.

Agatha gathered several resonance instruments into a satchel before answering. “Because you are both intelligent enough to assist me.” Her amber gaze turned briefly toward Caelyn. “And because I no longer trust the younger scholars not to accidentally explode something.”

Elowynn perked a brow and looked over at Caelyn, who stared back, grinning like a fool.

The deeper corridors beneath Lumenshire felt entirely different from the warm upper libraries Elowynn loved so dearly.

The air grew colder with every level they descended while the scent of damp stone and mildew thickened around them. Narrow astrylite lanterns glowed weakly along the walls, their light barely reaching the edges of the winding stairwells. Far above them, the abbey bells rang, but they were heavily muted through stone.

By the fifth descent hall, even that sound had faded away. Elowynn tightened her grip on the lantern she carried.

“You’re nervous,” Caelyn remarked from beside her.

“I am being reasonably cautious,” she countered.

Caelyn squinted down at her. “Two moons ago you touched a containment sigil to ‘see what it did.’ Your idea of caution is questionable.”

Elowynn’s tone remained haughty and composed. “In my defense, the warning inscription was unnecessarily vague.”

“El, the warning inscription said Do Not Touch. How much more clear could it have been?” he asked, his tone incredulous.

“It lacked academic detail. It could have said what would occur if touched. Or at the very least, probable outcomes,” she debated.

Caelyn made a sound that was suspiciously close to laughter. The memory had become infamous throughout the abbey after Elowynn had pressed her hand directly against a buried containment sigil hidden beneath the lower archives. The glyph had erupted instantly in a violent burst of blue resonance light strong enough to rattle the surrounding shelves and extinguish every lantern in the corridor. It had sent Sister Hannah into such a panic that she nearly struck Agatha with a broom while attempting to “dispel whatever demonic force had awakened underground.”

Elowynn still maintained the opinion that the reaction had been excessive.