Aelara NightwingShelly's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Morning light cut through the bars of the pawn shop windows. Aelara opened her weathered journal on the counter. Its margins were crowded with crossed-out names and pressed leaves marking dead ends. Every lead had rotted. The trail was going cold, and she knew it. She flipped to the back, where an older book lay tucked between the pages. It was a leather archive her grandmother had kept, soft with age and stuffed with forest leaves. Aelara had skimmed it before. Today she read it slowly. A faded line near the spine named a moss-covered stone library where old scholars still gathered. She shut both books and grabbed her coat. She had no other thread left to pull. The library stood half-swallowed by ivy, its shelves carved into living oaks. Aelara asked the keeper for anyone who remembered Owl Shift. The keeper went still. Then she pointed to a back room, where an old man sat copying runes. He looked up at the name and nodded once. "I knew it as a child," he said. Aelara sat down across from him. Her hands were shaking. She had a witness at last. But the old man's eyes were tired, and his voice was thin, and she understood that memory alone would not be enough either.