Nyx Evenfall's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

The door opened before Nyx's knuckles fell twice. The old benefactor stood in the lamplight, gray and small, the winged lion cloth still folded on the table behind. Nyx stepped inside. Sera waited near the door, watching the flats. The letter with Nyx's name lay where Sera had seen it. Nyx wanted answers about the lost night. Instead the old one smiled and spoke in circles. "You came the long way," the benefactor said. "But the long way is the only road back to the night you dropped." Nyx asked plainly what happened. The answer bent away. "A tree with golden fruit marks the safe branch. A well marks the flats. What marks a man who forgets himself?" Nyx clenched their jaw. Each question earned another riddle. The thread stayed just out of reach. Boots crossed the floor behind them. Marina Waverly ducked through the door, wet hair dripping, the same woman who had fought off the striped predator days ago and shown Nyx the hidden spring. She had no patience for waiting. "You're getting nowhere," she said. She pointed at the old one. "Their words won't work. Their eyes will. Watch what they guard, not what they say." Marina crossed to a low shelf and dragged out a weathered chest, its metal bands worn, its lock old. The benefactor's calm broke. One hand shot toward the chest, then stopped. Nyx saw it. The riddles had never guarded a secret. This box did. "May I?" Nyx asked. The old one drew a slow breath and nodded once. Nyx lifted the lid. Inside sat a smaller case, its facets throwing sharp white light across the walls. Nyx opened it. No jewels. A single scrap of paper lay on velvet, torn at one edge, stained. On it, a drawing in a child's hand: a person walking, holding food in a bright bag, a burger raised, a soda in the other fist. Nyx stared. The picture cracked something loose. A memory came, whole and fast. Not the desert. A city. Nyx as a child, walking out of a bright shop, food in both hands, laughing beside this same person, younger then. The old benefactor was no stranger. "You raised me," Nyx said. The words shook. "That night. You were there." The benefactor's eyes filled. "Now you can follow the thread," they said, plain at last. "I could not hand you the memory. You had to hold the key yourself." Marina crossed her arms, satisfied. Sera let out a breath at the door. Nyx held the torn drawing tight. The riddles were done. One true thread had surfaced from the shattered night, and it named this old one as family. But the picture was torn in half. The other half was missing, and with it, whatever had ripped Nyx from this person and left them alone on the mesa. Nyx looked up. "Where is the rest of it?"