Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Bastien pulled an LED lantern from his bag and started down.
The passage was narrow. Stone walls on both sides, worn smooth by water seepage more than tool marks. He kept one hand on the wall as he descended, counting steps. The texture under his palm told him what his eyes couldn’t yet confirm—pre-colonial construction at minimum, possibly older. Limestone porous enough to absorb Mississippi groundwater but dense enough to hold structural weight.
Sound behaved strangely here. His footsteps should have echoed. Instead they came back muffled, dead. The stairwell drank noise rather than reflecting it.
Twenty steps down, the stone under his hand pulsed once.
Not vibration from traffic above. Not settling. Recognition. Charlotte’s workings had always responded to his presence this way—awareness built into the architecture, wards that knew the difference between authorized entry and intrusion, although over the years since her death, Bastien had learned it wasn’t necessary. There had yet to be a ward his celestial resonance hadn’t allowed him entrance regardless.
But he’d walked through her constructions before. This felt familiar.
Fifty steps, and his boot struck level ground.
The chamber opened ahead. Bastien stopped in the doorway, lantern held forward and let his eyes adjust. First impression—volume. Space larger than the stairwell suggested, carved from bedrock that predated everything above it. Then details resolved—curved walls, surfaces that reflected light at wrong angles, alcoves set at regular intervals around the perimeter.
The air smelled of standing water and silver.
He stepped across the threshold. The pressure changed—membrane between passage and chamber, the particular resistance of walking through water without getting wet. His ears popped with the adjustment.
His boots struck water. Black, still, ankle-deep. The surface absorbed light rather than reflecting it and held an unnatural and unending darkness.
The chamber was circular, maybe thirty feet across and made of limestone blocks fitted without mortar, eighteenth-century technique. The ceiling arched into a dome with symbols carved at the apex that pulsed faint blue in his lantern beam. And lining the walls in alcoves carved at precise intervals—
Glass. Dozens of pieces, frames warped by moisture and time, surfaces darkened by oxidation.
Bastien waded deeper. This was Charlotte’s vault. Had to be. The construction matched her methods, the placement deliberate, the integration of celestial and mortal elements unmistakable. She’d been trying to create something here—not just storage but active working, a space where observation and preservation intersected.
At the chamber’s center, an altar rose above the waterline.
Stone platform, four feet square. Carvings covered its surface—botanical patterns intertwined with geometric forms, decoration that doubled as documentation. And at the exact center, standing in relief three inches proud of the surrounding stone:
The Lacroix family crest.
Gold and silver inlaid into stone. Celestial marks in gold that still held its luster despite submersion and time. Mortal glyphs in silver tarnished black. The two sets of symbols intertwined, braided together in patterns declaring what Charlotte had been attempting.
Connection. Between incompatible realms. Between elements that cosmic law said should remain separate. Their connection.
Bastien photographed it from multiple angles, then pulled out his notebook and sketched. The dome’s symbols next—astronomical patterns, star positions, celestial mechanics all rendered in stone. Evidence of planning that spanned generations, preparation that considered variables across timelines.
This connected to what Delphine had found in the Archive. Those eighteenth-century Lacroix inventories, commissioned pieces that predated Charlotte’s death by decades. She’d been building toward something specific, laying groundwork that clearly outlasted her lifetime.
Movement caught his eye.
His reflection stood in the glass directly ahead. Not quite synchronized—the image showed him holding the lantern in his left hand when his right gripped it. Small displacement, the kind of lag demonstrating active magic rather than passive reflection.
The reflection spoke first.
“You’ve brought her back into the light.”
Not his voice. The words bypassed his ears entirely, arriving directly in his mind. Sound without acoustic vibration, meaning transmitted through observation rather than air.
Bastien had encountered echo imprints before. Charlotte’s magic had included some techniques for sealing memory fragments in reflective surfaces—consciousness preserved beyond biological death through confession and intention. She’d been experimenting with methods that most practitioners refused to consider. It would have been a way for them to communicate; to find each other beyond her mortal life.
Apparently she’d succeeded.
“Charlotte’s work?” He kept his voice level. Professional.
The glass took on an energy with purpose, almost like life as it responded. “Memory fragments sealed during creation. Observation preserved beyond the observer’s death.” The reflection somehow influenced him to look beyond toward the darkness. “She worked here for three years. Binding pieces of soul to glass through rituals that cost blood and sanity.”
Other alcoves brightened. More reflections appeared, each wearing his form but with subtle differences in posture and expression. Individual perspectives despite shared template.
They spoke in sequence, overlapping into a chorus.
“The crest marks the collaboration between realms.”
“Divine power channeled through mortal determination.”
“Gold and silver intertwined as you and she were bound.”
“She knew you would return here.”