Page 76

Ambrose leans against the wall, arms crossed like this is all just mildly amusing. “Do you feel that?”

“Like something's behind it?” I ask. “Watching?”

“No,” he murmurs. “Like it remembers being opened before.”

The glyphs flare once—just enough to make me step back. Whatever’s behind that door… it isn’t a file. It isn’t a book. It’s not knowledge in the form we came for.

It’shistory.

Buried. Bound. Hidden by someone who didn’t want it found.

“Blackwell,” I mutter, not meaning to say it aloud. The name feels wrong on my tongue.

Ambrose shifts. “What?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

He studies me for a beat, something too knowing in his eyes, and then—mercifully—drops it.

“We should get the others,” I say. “This… isn't for just us.”

He doesn’t move. “Or we go in now. And decidewhatthey need to know.”

I glare at him. “That how it works in your world? You decide who deserves truth?”

“That’s how it’s always worked,” he says softly, and this time, his voice isn’t sharp—it’s old. “You just never wanted to admit it.”

I want to punch him. I want to slam him into the wall and demand why he’s always five fucking steps ahead and never shares the map. But the door flares again—and this time, the glyphs stay lit.

I check the frame first, fingers skimming the outline of the door, careful not to brush the carved sigil pressed into its center. It’s dormant—silent in the way ancient things go quiet when they’re no longer worshipped. There’s no hum. No warning. And that, more than anything, makes my pulse rise.

It doesn’t feelalive.Not like the ghosts that came from the chapel. This isn’t haunted.

It’s waiting.

Ambrose doesn’t speak as I move back a step. He knows better. And when I tell him to be ready, he doesn’t argue—he just shifts, slow and practiced, drawing those twin blades from the ether like a magician with secrets instead of cards. The way he crouches slightly, weight on the balls of his feet, reminds me that he was a weapon long before he was ever a man.

And we’ve both been here before. Maybe not in this hallway. Maybe not in this school.

But we’ve opened doors we shouldn’t have.

I grip the edge, press my palm flat to the wood, and shove it open.

The hinges groan, loud enough to echo. Dust spills in light, but the inside… the inside isn’t abandoned.

It’s a room.

Wide, oval-shaped, with stained glass windows that shouldn’t glow this late, but they do—casting color across the polished black floor. No furniture. No desk. Just an altar at the far end, low and unadorned, and a symbol etched into the stone beneath it that looks too much like a binding circle.

I feel Ambrose step in behind me. His breath barely shifts.

“This is…” he trails off, his voice quieter than I expect. “This wasn’t Blackwell’s.”

“No.” I scan the symbols. “Older.”

He nods. “Much older.”

And we’d know. Because we were there.