Corin Thistle // Aetheria Heights

The lower archives were silent, except for the soft shuffle of parchment and the occasional clink of glass. Corin Thistle sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, an oil lantern casting a weak halo around him. The air smelled of old ink and powdered stone, a private cathedral of forgotten knowledge.

He hunched over a spread of diagrams, his messy scrawl covering half the margins. The ancient scrolls lay open in a careful semicircle, their runes pulsing faintly in recognition of his curiosity. A small, clockwork beetle whirred along the edge of a vellum sheet, its thin legs ticking against the faded, dragon-hide surface.

Corin muttered to himself, as he often did when Peige wasn’t there to call him out. “If the resonance is offset by seven degrees, the stabilizer will collapse. But if… no, no, you have to calculate for the wind shear at altitude…” He sighed, rubbing at a smear of ink on his cheek.

The archives felt different without her. He could almost hear the echo of Peige’s nervous tics, her overthinking voice turning fear into equations. Now it was just him and the low, rhythmic hum of the mountain’s buried heart.

He slid a small, amber vial across the floor, watching the light refract through the liquid. “She’s going to need this,” he whispered to no one, his voice soft but certain. “If the academy won’t see her, the sky will.”