Page 67 of The Last Remaining Light

This was her current obsession. Where once it had been crystals, now it was this. The inconsistencies she found were bothering her.

The more she studied pre-Vigil records surrounding resonance stabilization, the more contradictions she discovered buried within them. Entire observatories once considered stable collapsed despite harmonic projections claiming otherwise. Aethercurrent fractures appeared in regions previously mapped as balanced. Some records even described fluctuations beneath the aethercurrents generations before the Great Vigil.

And absolutely none of the theories aligned with another. Elowynn hated inconsistencies! Especially historical ones. It made her question why these were never fixed over the centuries. Why did scholars allow for these inconsistencies? What was the purpose?

She felt frustration mounting, and Lora's increasingly impatient expression suggested her silence wasn't helping.

“You do realize most first-turning scholars struggle to simply survive introductory harmonic theory, right?” Lora muttered while scanning one of the pages. “Meanwhile you’re voluntarily reading restricted Vigil-era records. How did you get these anyway?” she asked, picking up one of the records with sugary fingers.

Elowynn snatched it back and gave her a scathing look. She didn't answer the latter question. Explaining to Lora how she acquired restricted Vigil-era records would inevitably lead to conversations involving stolen archive keys, distracted archivists, and one fortunately unsecured catalog room that she really needed to remain unsecured so she could return the records later.

“They all contradict themselves,” Elowynn said while brushing sugar off the corner of a page.

Lora had popped another piece of fruit in her mouth and spoke around it. “That’s because most of the scholars who wrote them died.”

Elowynn had a flat look on her face. “Very inconvenient of them,” she mumbled.

Lora snorted, promptly inhaled sugar, and broke into a fit of coughing.

A brow lifted, and Elowynn peered at Lora. “You good?”

Lora waved a hand between coughs. “Mm-hm.” Cough. “Nearly died.” Another cough. “Worth it.”

With a roll of her eyes and a sigh, Elowynn leaned back within her chair, exhaustion pulling at her shoulders, making them ache. She had spent three consecutive nights within the upper archives comparing current instability charts from before and after the Ash Wars.

Something was wrong. Not catastrophically wrong. Not yet, anyway; but enough discrepancies existed throughout the records to disconcert her.

The aethercurrents beneath Aetheris were repositioning themselves. Their shifts were so subtle that one would not know unless they had taken the time to really connect all the dots and cross-examine all the records as Elowynn had done. What really troubled her, however, was no one seemed willing to discuss it openly.

Or perhaps worse—they had not noticed these changes at all, which was concerning in itself. Because it posed the question: why hadn’t they?

“You need to start presenting your findings publicly,” Lora said once her coughing was under control.

Lora had been the only one Elowynn had told about what she had found, and she had taken it seriously. She believed Elowynn and encouraged her to bring it up to the higher archivists with her evidence.

Elowynn looked horrified. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not, Lora.”

“Everyone already knows you’re brilliant, Elowynn.”

The words landed awkwardly on her conscience because despite everything she accomplished academically within the Spire, part of her still expected someone to eventually realize she didn't belong there at all. She knew that in the logical sense it was a ridiculous notion, but every lecture hall she entered still filled her with anxiety. Every symposium felt like standing beneath scrutiny, waiting to fail in the eyes of the Spire. Half the scholars surrounding her had trained within Veylspire their entire lives while she still often felt like the frightened girl arriving in Lumenshire with ash in her hair and grief stitched into her bones.

Lora regarded her thoughtfully. “There it is again,” she murmured.

“What?” Elowynn asked, her brows pulling down, confused.

“That look.”

Elowynn stared at her, waiting for an explanation.

Lora wiggled sugar-coated fingers at Elowynn’s face. “The one where you start doubting yourself despite being smarter than most of the scholars teaching here!”

Elowynn felt her cheeks warm all the way to the tips of her ears. “I do not doubt my intelligence has its place.”

“No,” Lora agreed. “You doubt whether people will allow you to have that intelligence.”