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I crossed my arms. "Show-off."

"You used your shadows the other day for the void-letting. This isn't so different." His voice was steady, patient. "Instead of imagining them pouring out of you, imagine becoming them."

I took a step back, eyeing the door before closing my eyes. Drawing the shadows in was easy now, but this was different. Instead of letting them flow out, I had to let them consume me. I focused on becoming intangible, letting the shadows spread from my core outward until they filled every part of me.

The sensation was bizarre—like losing all my weight at once while still maintaining my shape. When I opened my eyes, everything looked slightly darker, edges bleeding into shadow.

I moved forward towards the door, bracing for impact that never came. Instead, I felt the grain of the wood pass through me—or maybe I passed through it, I couldn't quite tell. The smell of cedar filled my nose as I slipped past, and then I was on the other side, reforming into solid flesh with a strange tingling sensation, as if spider webs clung to my skin.

My heart thundered in my chest. I had just walked through a door. Actuallywalkedthrough it.

"Impressive," Aether's voice came from behind me, his shadows still whipping around him.

I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how thrilled I actually was. "Let's find those missing pages."

Aether simply turned and began walking through the tall shelves.

The archives felt different after hours. The usual shuffle of feetand whispered conversations had been replaced by absolute silence. I pulled out the compact Raven had given me, studying its polished surface before snapping it open.

"I don't know how this works," I whispered to my reflection, feeling slightly foolish, "or if you can even hear me, but if you're interested in some late-night debauchery at the archives, we're waiting." I eyed the door once again, and twisted the lock.

I followed Aether through the maze until we found a table near one of the brass lamps, its light barely reaching the edges of the wooden surface. I set down Vindskald's memoir, the leather binding making a soft thud against the table as I opened it to the chapter about siphons.

Aether moved behind me, his chest nearly brushing my back as he leaned over my shoulder to examine the faded text. His breath stirred loose strands of my hair as he squinted at the pages, clearly struggling to make out the words.

"Do you require your spectacles?" I asked, trying to ignore how his proximity made my skin tingle.

Instead of answering, he reached around me to lift the book, his arm brushing mine. He turned and leaned his back against a chair, shooting me a narrowed glance from behind the pages. I couldn't help but notice how the lamp light caught the gold in his eyes, how it traced the sharp angles of his jaw. He was almost devastating to look at, that statuesque beauty almost too perfect at this angle, backlit and shadowed against the archives. The silence stretched as his gaze moved across the words, broken only by the occasional rustle of paper.

Eventually, he turned to the section that was torn out, a thoughtfulhmmescaping his lips. The sound vibrated through me, reminding me just how close he still stood.

"It's something," I said, my voice soft, but I couldn’t hide the eagerness creeping in. "I can feel it."

"It could be." His tone remained carefully neutral.

I snorted, ignoring his skepticism. "Where should we start from here?"

"If it's some kind of spelled or enchanted item, it would be somewhere along those shelves." Aether pointed to the back of the archives, where rows of books stretched into shadow. "Or," his voice dropped slightly, "it could be in the restricted section."

A creak of the door cut through the quiet. We both turned to find Raven in the entrance, one eyebrow arched as he took in the scene before him.

"You made it." I turned to Aether. "You remember Raven?"

Something in Aether's presence seemed to make Raven smaller, his easy confidence from earlier replaced by something more hesitant.

"Our new Archivist." Aether nodded before walking back to the section he had previously pointed to, running a hand through his dark hair.

"So," Raven said once Aether was out of earshot, "breaking into the archives after hours? I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one."

"Technically, I never said that. Simply an assumption on your part."

"Fair point." His eyes fell on the open book. "Found something interesting in Vindskald's memoir then?"

"Maybe. If we can find anything about siphons in the rest of these texts." I gestured to the towering shelves ahead of us.

"Well," Raven grinned, his confidence building, "you've got an Archivist on your side now. Where should we start?"

That first night stretched into early morning as we combed through dozens of texts. Raven's knowledge of the archives was a saving grace. He knew exactly which sections might hold relevant information, which authors had written about magical artifacts, which historical periods to focus on. But despite our efforts, we found nothing more about siphons.