Chapter 169: The rune with no key (2)
The stone beneath the bloodstained floor was older than the rest of the lab. I could tell by the grooves, by the feel of it when my boots touched down. Someone had carved runes into the foundation, then patched over them—layers of stone, then a thin mesh of illusion. But magic ages. And illusion, especially the lazy kind, peels like old paint.
It took me two minutes to undo the false floor entirely.
Felix stood a few paces behind me, arms crossed, still pale but more steady now. He hadn’t said much since we left the core chamber. Understandable. He’d just destroyed a piece of his family legacy.
"Professor," he said finally, voice low. "That rune... it’s not Dorne work."
"I know."
I crouched, tracing the edge of the circle. The symbols didn’t match Dorne family structure—too delicate, too precise. This was runic architecture of the older schools. Pre-Empire era, maybe older. The style reminded me of something I’d seen in a forgotten annex of the Academy’s restricted library. An old sketch copied from a dig site in the Xuntai Basin.
Rites of containment. Rites of severance.
"You see that anchor line?" I pointed to a faint break in the rune, where the stroke should’ve curled inward but instead cut off mid-loop. "That’s not a mistake. It’s a keyhole."
Felix tilted his head. "A keyhole for what?"
"Not a what. A who."
He frowned. "That makes even less sense."