- Name
- Return to the Lantern Archive
- Date
- Mistcall 12, Year 698
- Description
- Mira arrives at the Lantern Archive as the storm closes in, rain hammering against the archway like fists demanding entry. Orlan Vey meets her in the threshold, his face drawn and unreadable. When she names herself, speaks her father's name, something flickers across his weathered features—a recognition he does not voice. He claims he never knew her father, but his eyes betray him when she produces the compass. His gaze fixes on it like a man confronting a ghost.
In the Map Room, dust motes hang suspended in the dim light filtering through rain-streaked windows. Among the countless charts and cartographies, Mira finds one that stops her breath: a map drawn in a hand she has learned to know better than her own. Her father's hand. The ink is fresh, still faintly gleaming. The date written in the corner is tomorrow's date, rendered in careful script as if Edran knew exactly when his daughter would stand here, tracing the routes he had already mapped.
The implications settle over her like the storm itself—pervasive, inescapable, drowning.