Aldrich Pembrose stood in the ruins of what had once been Gallery Seven. His hands trembled as he held a charred picture frame, the canvas inside long burned away. The Rothko that had lived here—those deep maroons bleeding into blacks—was gone now, just ash and memory. He set the frame down carefully, precisely aligned with the crack in the floor tiles. His museum would rise again. It had to. The city needed this place, needed art to make sense of everything that had happened. He wiped his eyes, then his nose, then his eyes again. "I'll bring you back," he whispered to the empty wall. He walked through the Forgotten Gallery, his footsteps echoing in the silence. The east entrance still stood, though the roof had collapsed nearby. Persephone's marble face watched him from beneath a pile of broken concrete. He needed to start somewhere real, something people could see and touch. The west wing might still hold the Chagall if he searched carefully enough. His chest tightened with the weight of it all—every painting lost, every sculpture cracked, every visitor who would never return. But he knew what this building could become again. A place where people gathered. A place where art helped them understand what words couldn't explain. He pulled out a small notebook and began to write, his hand steady now. Step one: clear the debris. Step two: find what survived. Step three: open the doors.

Aldrich stood at the museum's main desk, a stack of dust-covered logbooks spread before him. He needed to know what had been catalogued before everything changed. His finger traced down the inventory lists—each painting, each sculpture, each piece the museum had owned. The handwriting blurred as his eyes watered. So much was gone. But here, on page forty-seven, he found it: the Chagall's last known location, west wing storage room three. His heart jumped. He grabbed his flashlight and headed toward the darkened hallway, stepping over fallen plaster and twisted metal. The storage room door hung crooked on one hinge. Inside, wooden crates lined the walls. He pried open the first one, then the second. On the third try, his light caught the edge of a gilded frame. He pulled away the protective cloth. There it was—colors still bright, canvas intact. Aldrich pressed his palm against his chest and laughed, then cried, then laughed again. One piece saved. One small victory. The museum could rebuild from this. The next morning, he stared at the Chagall propped against the museum's front wall. Finding art was only the beginning. He didn't know how to fix damaged pieces or stop them from getting worse. His fingers drummed against his leg as he thought it through. He needed to learn proper restoration techniques before he touched anything else. Someone had mentioned a library across the city, a place where old books still waited on shelves. The Forgotten Tome Haven, they'd called it. Ivy covered its walls and broken glass littered the floor, but the books inside might hold answers. Aldrich tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket and locked the museum door behind him. The walk took an hour through streets he barely recognized. When he found the library, he pushed through the heavy wooden doors. Dust floated in shafts of light from the shattered windows above. He ran his hand along the spines until he found what he needed—three thick volumes on art conservation and restoration. He carried them to a reading table and opened the first one. The pages smelled like old paper and hope. He began to read.