The thread shimmered in the stranger's hand. Two glyphs were etched into the fibers—one shaped like a looped tear, the other like a fractured mirror. They pulsed faintly with the kind of energy Lucian had only felt at two points in his life: when a rite was just beginning... or when one had already gone dangerously wrong.
He stepped forward slowly.
"You followed the erased mortician?" Lucian asked.
The stranger nodded. "He called himself the Archivist of Threads. But the Queen... she had another name for him. One she later burned from the Grimoire Index."
+
Before Lucian opened the Echoheart System, Merry opened her Grimoire and conjured a large white tent. "No reason to do this under the hot sun."
The Echoheart's pages flipped toward the oldest recorded rites—those that predated even Alaric—and stopped at a warped section, paper faded and stained with something darker than time.
