Description
Chapter 1: The Impossible Coordinate
The smell of the Royal Archives was a blend of dust, iron-gall ink, and the slow, dry decay of history. To Elara, it was the scent of home.
At twenty-three, Elara was the youngest Junior Cartographer in the kingdom of Aethelgard. While others sought glory in the knights’ tilting yards or the bustling merchant docks, Elara found her adventures in the tip of a quill. She understood the world through lines of latitude, elevation contours, and the precise triangulation of landmarks. The world was a known quantity, measured and bounded.
Until the night the ink refused to dry.
She was working late, restoring a rotting sea chart from the Third Age. Her candle sputtered, casting long, dancing shadows against the high stone shelves. As she dipped her quill to re-trace the coastline of the jagged Serpent’s Reach, a droplet of black ink fell from the nib.
It hit the parchment. But instead of spreading into a blot, it sizzled.
Elara pulled back, watching in disbelief as the ink drop bored through the paper like acid. But it didn’t stop at the table. It hung suspended in the air inside the hole it had created, spinning rapidly.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.