Page 38 of The Viking in the Vault (Galactic Librarians #2)

ELENA

T his data…it could change everything.

While Ragnar explores the room—the archive—I linger at the console, fingers hovering over the shifting interface as glowing script flickers like embers on ice. My translator, now outfitted with updates from Thorne that allow me to read ancient Skoll, slowly makes sense of what I’m seeing.

Centuries-old research on planetary stabilization, ecosystem bootstrapping, adaptive biosphere layering. Actual, functioning terraforming theory.

I could spend weeks here…I want to.

“Ragnar,” I whisper. “You…I didn’t know your crew was working on terraforming. This stuff…remember when I told you about the hurricanes back on Earth? This could help my planet, it could save my home. I’m?—”

“Someone has been here,” Ragnar interrupts, entirely in his own world.

His words make my skin crawl, giving me big horror movie vibes—not that he knows that. “Wait,” I say. “Like…bad someone or good someone?”

His eyes dart toward me then back to whatever he's looking at. “...someone.”

I blow out a breath. “Very helpful, Ragnar.”

He kneels and brushes his hand over the floor, and I trek over to join him. Fenrik is sniffing the spot and wagging his tail, looking up at me as if to say, ‘Hey! I found friends!’

“Do you think it's your crew?” I ask.

He hums. “Perhaps…but there are multiple tracks here and they don't appear to have been headed toward an exit. They would have been trying to find a way out.”

I frown. “What if they didn't know there was a way out?”

We're interrupted by the sound of a loud climb from behind us, and I turn to find a rope spooling down from above. A moment later, Dr. Kallisto’s hiking boots appear, then her legs as she shimmies down to join us.

Her eyes go wide when she hits the ground. “Allmother above…this is remarkable.”

She turns in a slow circle, taking in the glowing starmap, the ice-encrusted shelves, the frost-dusted interface I’d been reading from. “I thought we were looking at a standard fissure in the ice” she murmurs reverently. “But this…it's just like the one in Mythara.”

I blink. “Wait, you really had no idea this was here? But you're like…the expert on the Eiskammer.”

“I’d heard rumors, but I don't think anyone realized these things were here before last year.” Her hands move toward the console like she’s afraid it’ll vanish if she touches it too quickly. “This predates the rest of the Eiskammer by at least two centuries. Possibly more.”

Behind her, Ves drops down next, their boots crunching softly in the frost. “Whoa,” they breathe, eyes immediately snagging on the swirling data on the table. “That’s terraforming theory, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say, voice still hushed. “And it’s real. Not aspirational. Functional. They did it. Or they were trying to.”

Kallisto looks at me sharply. “Do you understand what this means for your dissertation?”

I nod, but it feels distant. Abstract. Because even as the academic part of me wants to weep with joy, another part is tangled up in Ragnar, who hasn’t moved from the edge of the room.

He’s staring into the tunnel beyond—where the footprints disappear, vanishing into a deeper darkness.

“I think someone went that way,” he says, barely loud enough to hear.

“Should we follow them?” Ves asks.

“I’m going to,” Ragnar replies. “You don’t have to come.”

He glances back at me then, and something unspoken passes between us. I know what it is. He won’t force me. He never would.

But he wants me with him.

I look back at the data. At the miracle glowing on that console. Then down at my gloved hands, which are itching to stay and keep reading.

But I already know what I’ll do.

I reach for Ragnar.

“Let’s go,” I say, my voice steady even though my heart isn’t. “We’ll come back, but I’m not letting you go alone.”

His fingers close around mine.

“Fenvarra,” he murmurs. “You are a blessing.”

I smile. “You're not so bad yourself, big guy.”