Professor Aris Van-Thal did not sleep.
Jack had given him the east-facing guest chamber—one of the few rooms in Blackthorn with a proper writing desk and a window that didn't whistle—and by the time the fortress settled into the grey silence of three in the morning, a thin line of candlelight still bled under the door. Jack stood in the corridor and listened. The scratch of a quill. The faint, metallic chime of a tuning fork being struck and immediately silenced. Then a soft, involuntary sound: half groan, half laugh, the noise a man makes when the universe confirms his worst and most brilliant suspicions.
Jack moved on without knocking.
The crystal was doing what it always did. Breathing.
