Dust motes danced in the shafts of coloured light streaming through the library’s stained-glass windows. Adelinde traced her finger along an ancient tablet’s surface, following the grooves of script etched millennia ago. The inscription’s edges had worn smooth with time, making certain characters frustratingly ambiguous.

“‘The living link maintains the balance,’” she muttered, jotting down another possible translation. “Or perhaps ‘sustains’? Either verb would work…”

A shard of ravenglass lay beside her cramped notes, its surface darker than the deepest void. Unlike ordinary gemstones, it absorbed light rather than reflected it. Her research suggested the material’s unique properties stemmed from its resonance with wyvern magic, but the exact mechanism remained elusive.

Scrolls and reference texts surrounded her workstation like paper fortifications. Each bore her careful annotations, cross-references marked with red ink.

Six months of research, and still the fundamental question eluded her.

Why did ravenglass amplify the bond between rider and wyvern?

What made it essential to maintaining the Kingdom’s web of psychic connections?

Faint cheers drifted through the windows from the courtyard below. The naming day celebration was underway. Her sisters would be there, of course. Irmin leading the aerial display, Elana charming the noble houses. Meanwhile, Adelinde remained cloistered with her books and theories.

She pushed the thought aside, refocusing on the tablet. “‘Through the darkness flows the light,’” she translated, frowning at the metaphorical language. Ancient texts never seemed to state anything plainly.

The ravenglass shard pulsed once, so briefly she might have imagined it. She picked it up, studying its perfectly smooth facets. The material’s properties defied conventional alchemical theory—it couldn’t be shaped by tools, only with tremendous heat. Yet somehow, the ancients had crafted it into precise geometric forms.

“Another mystery for the endless list.” She set the shard down. Her fingers brushed against the tablet’s edge, leaving a smear of ink. She reached for a cloth to clean it, but froze at the sound of running footsteps.

The library doors burst open. A courier stumbled in, his face flushed and breathing hard. He whispered something to Master Archivist Sigmund, whose weathered face went pale.

Adelinde’s heart clenched. The master archivist approached her table with measured steps that couldn’t quite hide his trembling.

“Your Highness. There’s been an incident. Your father…the King is dead.”

The tablet slipped from her fingers. It struck the table’s edge and shattered, ancient clay splintering into a dozen pieces.

“No.” The word came out strange and hollow.

“Assassins. During the display. I’m so sorry.”

Adelinde stared at the broken tablet, whose fragments were scattered across her careful notes. Her hands shook as she tried to gather the pieces, to restore order to chaos. But they wouldn’t fit together properly. The edges refused to align.

“My research. I need to finish…”

“My lady.” Sigmund laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps you should—”

The floor trembled. Books shifted on their shelves, some toppling to the ground with dull thuds. The vibration carried a strange resonance, like a struck crystal goblet.

The ravenglass shard flared with sudden intensity, its void-black surface shot through with veins of sickly purple light. Similar flares rippled through the library’s display cases, where other specimens were stored.

“That came from the royal wyvern chamber,” Sigmund said, steadying himself against a shelf.

Adelinde pressed her hands to her temples. The air felt wrong—discordant, an instrument out of tune. Through the library’s windows, she glimpsed wyverns wheeling in agitated patterns above the city.

Golden scales flashed in the doorway. Gisela ducked her head to enter, her wings folded tight against her serpentine body. The wyvern’s presence filled the space.

Stolen novel; please report.

“The tremor wasn’t random.” Gisela’s voice carried its usual melodic quality, this time underlaid with urgency. “Something stirs in the foundations, tied to the bonds you study.”

Adelinde gathered her notes with trembling hands. “I don’t understand. The bond web has been stable for centuries. Even accounting for resonance variations, there shouldn’t be—”

“Theory must give way to action.” Gisela’s tail curled around Adelinde’s workspace, gathering scattered papers. “Your knowledge may be our only defence against what comes.”

“What use is knowledge now?” Adelinde gestured at her broken tablet. “Father is dead. The Kingdom needs warriors, not scholars.”

“Knowledge is a weapon,” Gisela said. “One you must wield before others turn it against us.”

The wyvern’s words struck home.

Adelinde picked up the ravenglass shard, studying its angry purple glow. Her research had suggested the possibility of corruption within the material, but she’d dismissed it as theoretical. Now she wasn’t so sure. “The vault. We need to check the primary storage.”

Gisela’s approval hummed through their bond.

Together, they hurried from the library, leaving the broken tablet behind.

The palace’s lower levels stretched into darkness, lit by alchemical orbs that cast more shadow than light. Guards stood at rigid attention, but their usual stoic expressions had given way to barely concealed fear.

“Something feels wrong down there,” one said as he unlocked the vault door. “Like the air itself has gone sour.”

Adelinde understood as soon as she entered. The vault’s usual background resonance had shifted to a discordant whine, just below the threshold of hearing. Row upon row of ravenglass specimens lined the shelves, each piece catalogued and secured.

She moved methodically through the collection, checking each specimen against her mental inventory. Most appeared normal, their void-black surfaces undisturbed. But here and there, pieces showed hair-thin cracks spanning their crystalline structures.

“Impossible.” She squinted at a particularly large specimen. “Ravenglass can’t crack.”

She reached the vault’s innermost chamber, where raw specimens were stored. The discord grew stronger here, setting her teeth on edge.

A large shard caught her attention near the back of the vault. Unlike the others, its surface rippled with dark energy, purple-black tendrils writhing beneath the void-black surface. Her stomach churned at the sight.

“This one.” Her hand hovered over the specimen, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it. “It’s…wrong.”

Sigmund leaned closer, squinting through his spectacles. “Fascinating. The surface perturbations suggest some kind of internal resonance shift, perhaps triggered by—”

“Don’t.” Adelinde grabbed his wrist as he reached for the shard. “Listen to me, Sigmund. Really listen. This isn’t an academic exercise. Something is happening to the ravenglass network, something that could destabilise every wyvern bond in the Kingdom.”

He blinked at her. “Surely you’re overstating—”

“Am I?” She pointed to the specimen. “When have you ever seen ravenglass behave like this? When has it ever shown signs of degradation, let alone active corruption?”

Whispers tickled the edge of her consciousness—fragments of thoughts that felt alien, twisted. She took an involuntary step back.

“The ancient texts,” Sigmund said, falling into his teaching cadence. “They speak of resonance disruptions during times of great upheaval. Perhaps your father’s death—”

“This isn’t about father!” The words echoed off the vault’s stone walls. She forced herself to lower her voice. “Or rather, it’s not just about him. The assassination, the timing of this corruption…they’re connected. They have to be.”

Sigmund’s expression softened. “My dear, I understand you’re looking for patterns, for meaning in all this chaos. It’s natural to—”

“Stop.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Stop treating me like a grieving child. I am a scholar of the Kingdom, and I am telling you something is fundamentally wrong with our foundation stone.”

Gisela approved of her firmness. The wyvern’s presence steadied her, helped her find the words she needed.

“The ravenglass network doesn’t just amplify the bonds between riders and wyverns. It maintains them. Stabilises them. If it’s becoming corrupted…” She met Sigmund’s eyes. “What do you think happens to those bonds?”

Finally, she saw understanding dawn in her mentor’s face. He turned back to the corrupted shard, his academic detachment giving way to genuine concern. “How long?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Hours? Days? The degradation pattern is unprecedented.” Adelinde pulled her notebook from her satchel. “But we need to document everything. Every crack, every resonance shift. And we need to warn the riders.”

Sigmund nodded slowly. “I’ll have the other archivists begin cataloguing changes across the entire collection.” He hesitated. “But Adelinde…be careful how you present this to your sisters. In times of crisis, people rarely want to hear about problems they can’t solve with steel or charm.”

“They’ll have to listen,” Adelinde said, straightening her shoulders. “Because if we don’t solve this, steel won’t matter at all.”

“The corruption spreads,” Gisela said, her golden scales dimmed in the vault’s darkness. “You’ve theorised about this.”

Adelinde nodded. Her most recent research had suggested ravenglass might be susceptible to corruption if exposed to sufficient psychological trauma. “We have to warn them.” She gathered her notes with shaking hands. “If the ravenglass network is compromised, the entire system of wyvern bonds could collapse.”

“Your sisters will listen,” Gisela said.

But Adelinde wasn’t so certain. They had dismissed her theories before, wrapped up in their own concerns. Why should now be any different?

The corrupted shard pulsed again, its whispers growing fainter but no less malevolent. She forced herself to focus on the technical details, the quantifiable data. Evidence they couldn’t ignore.

If the bonds that held the Kingdom together were breaking, she would not let them shatter completely. Even if that meant finally stepping out of the library’s shadows.

She squared her shoulders and headed for the vault door, Gisela close behind.

The time for pure research had passed.

Now, she needed to prove that knowledge truly could be a weapon.