ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Chapter 783: Within The Archives

After nearly an hour, Tharionson’s patience began to sharpen into anger. He stood over a table with three open ledgers before him, tracing a finger down an index of suspended decrees, when his eyes stopped on a thin entry half-faded near the bottom of the page.

Severance Authority, Joint Ratification, Restricted Moral-Bloodline Statute, Ref: SD-20-C/S.

His pulse slowed.

The title was not exact, perhaps deliberately softened, but the reference code carried the kind of classification used for documents removed from public circulation without being destroyed.

"Zion," he called, his voice controlled but immediate.

Zion looked up from the opposite row and crossed the chamber. Tharionson turned the ledger toward him and tapped the entry. Zion read it once, then moved to the shelf marked by the corresponding code. The folio was not where it should have been at first glance, which only deepened the silence between them, but after checking the lower section, Zion found a narrow black-bound volume tucked behind several broader records, as though it had been stored without concern for easy access. He carried it to the table, placed it down, and carefully opened the cover.

The first pages were official, clean, and brutal.

Tharionson read them in silence, though every sentence seemed to scrape against something inside him. The decree had been jointly ratified by Crescent and Solara under the authority of King Valemir Granger and King Tharion Magna. The language was cold enough to feel inhuman.

It defined dark mage intimacy as any confirmed romantic, sexual, marital, reproductive, protective, or oath-bound relationship with a dark mage, whether publicly acknowledged or concealed. It extended guilt to any noble, royal, military, or administrative figure who aided the preservation of such a bond.

It declared that the involved party would be executed upon confirmation, with no exemptions granted for rank, gender, pregnancy, noble blood, royal blood, coercion, claimed ignorance, political status, emotional attachment, or prior service to the kingdom. It gave authority for immediate containment of any offspring, suspected offspring, or protected bloodline issue pending investigation by royal and Crescent-appointed examiners.

Tharionson’s hand slowly curled against the edge of the table. He could feel the anger, but beneath it was something worse.

Grief had many forms, and this one felt like discovering a hidden blade still lodged in a wound everyone had insisted was already scarred over. His sister had not merely been condemned by rage. She had been processed through this. A decree written to be merciless before it ever reached her. A document designed to remove humanity from the decision so no one would have to hesitate when the accused had a face, a name, a family, a brother.

Zion said nothing beside him, and Tharionson appreciated that. Any apology would have insulted the moment.

He turned another page. "Article One, definitions. Article Two, scope of accusation. Article Three, authority of inquiry. Article Four, execution of judgment. Article Five, nullification of rank exemptions. Article Six, offspring containment and examination." His eyes moved lower, and his brow tightened. "Article Eight, burial of record and inter-kingdom sealing."

Zion leaned closer. "What is it?"

Tharionson turned back one page, then forward again. "The index lists Article Seven."

Zion took the volume and checked the index himself. There it was, placed between offspring containment and burial of record. Article Seven, restricted supplemental authority. But when he turned through the body of the decree, the text moved directly from Article Six to Article Eight.

"It may be a transcription issue," Zion said, though his voice carried little confidence.

"No," Tharionson replied at once. "Royal decrees are not copied carelessly. Not ones ratified by two kingdoms. Not ones used to execute noble and royal blood. If the index lists Article Seven, then Article Seven existed when this was catalogued."

Zion’s face darkened. "Then this copy was altered."

"Or copied from an altered one," Tharionson said. "Find another."

They searched again, faster this time, but with more care rather than less. It took them another stretch of time to locate the second version, this one stored under Crescent-Solara cooperative security correspondence rather than domestic law. It had the same index. It had the same jump. Article Six to Article Eight, with no Article Seven between them.

A third copy turned up in an obsolete legal compendium used for internal court reference. The same. A fourth, preserved in a sealed summary collection of decrees removed from active systems after dark mages were declared extinct. The same. Every public or semi-public version carried Article Seven in the index, but every body text had been cut cleanly around it.

By the fourth version, Zion no longer suggested transcription error.

Tharionson stood over the table, surrounded by open books and copied pages, feeling the shape of something deliberate pressing closer.

"It was removed after cataloguing," he said. "Not before. Whoever handled this did not erase the index references because those were scattered through too many copies, or because they assumed no one would care enough to compare."

Zion’s eyes moved toward the shelves. "If Article Seven was removed from public versions, then it should still appear in case files where it was applied. Unless those were altered too."

Tharionson’s gaze sharpened. "Serah’s file."

They moved to the restricted trial records. Zion knew the classification section better than Tharionson expected, which might have bothered him under other circumstances, but right now it saved time.

Princess Serah Magna’s case file was not stored with ordinary criminal proceedings. It was sealed under royal internal judgment, dark mage association, and bilateral decree execution. The box was narrow, black, and stamped with three marks: Solara’s royal crest, Crescent’s crescent seal, and a red restriction band that meant unauthorized viewing had once been punishable by imprisonment or death depending on rank.

Tharionson stared at the box for a moment before opening it.

Inside were legal summaries, witness attestations, sealed orders, court notes, execution authorization, and correspondence between Solara and Crescent representatives. He forced himself to read without turning away. He had known Serah had died under judgment. He had known the official story.

But knowing and touching the paper of it were not the same thing. Here, her life had been reduced to proceedings and determinations, to violations and authority claims, to conclusions written in ink by people who had likely slept well afterward.

Then he found it.

In the margin of one legal summary, beside a paragraph discussing the classification of the dark mage relationship and the matter of unresolved paternal identity, there was a notation in an older clerk’s hand: Refer to Article Seven, supplemental directive, before final closure.

Tharionson’s body went still.

Zion leaned in and read it. The air between them changed.

"There," Tharionson said quietly.

The page after the summary was gone.

It had not been torn out in haste.

That would have left rough edges, fiber damage, something obvious. This had been removed cleanly, likely by someone who knew how to separate archive bindings without ruining the surrounding record. The remaining pages had been pressed back into order carefully enough that an ordinary reviewer might never notice unless they were already looking for absence.

Zion exhaled slowly. "Serah’s execution record was altered."

Tharionson did not immediately answer.

A violent part of him wanted to reject the words because accepting them meant accepting that even now, years later, the truth of his sister’s death remained incomplete. Another part of him, colder and more useful, seized onto it. This was a missing page inside a royal case file, connected to a missing article inside a buried decree, connected to a phrase his mother had repeated while trapped inside terror.

"Someone removed something," Tharionson said. "From the decree and from Serah’s file."

"Someone with access," Zion added.

Tharionson looked at him. "Ledger."

Zion understood immediately.

They searched for the archive authorization ledger next, the one that tracked who had been permitted to view, handle, transfer, or copy restricted materials tied to the Severance Decree. It took longer than either of them liked.

The ledger was not stored beside the decree itself, but in an administrative clearance section used to record sensitive access across several reign-level legal matters. When they found it, the book was thick, leather-bound, and dry at the edges, its pages filled with dates, signatures, seals, and coded classification notes.

Tharionson turned to the Severance entries with a growing sense that every page had been waiting for him in silence for years.

The list was short.

Only a small number of people had been authorized to view or handle the full version of Article Seven across the last twenty years. Some were dead from age. Others had died during old political purges, stripped of influence long before the current unrest.

Several belonged to Crescent and would require separate inquiry. A few were Solarian legal officers, court archivists, royal advisers, and members of noble houses entrusted with sensitive enforcement proceedings during the decree’s brief active life.

Then Tharionson saw the names that made the room go silent around him.

Lord Avaron Selk had been one of the authorized witnesses to supplemental closure during the first Crescent case. His grandson, Marek Selk, had been found dead three weeks ago after publicly accusing a royal tax office of forged orders.

Magistrate Helion Varce had handled legal copies during Serah’s case; his direct descendant, Lorian Varce, had been arrested after a noblewoman’s suspicious death in Zone 16, then killed in holding before a formal confession could be secured.

Archivist Dema Orlan had signed one transfer entry nineteen years ago; the Orlan family’s current head had collapsed during a private dinner two weeks ago, his death officially attributed to sudden core failure though no healer had been able to explain why.

Another name, Caed Morven, was connected to a lesser branch recently wiped out in what had been called a property dispute turned violent.

Tharionson stared at the ledger, and his mind began to work too quickly for his body to move. The unrest was no longer scattered in his thoughts.

Lines began forming between old authorization and new death, between legal concealment and present elimination, between the missing Article Seven and the people who had once been close enough to know what it contained. He did not know whether the victims themselves knew anything. Descendants inherited names, estates, grudges, and locked cabinets. Sometimes they inherited secrets without knowing their weight. But the connection was there.

"These deaths are not random," he said.

Zion’s voice was low. "No."

"Someone is eliminating people connected to the hidden portion of the Severance Decree," Tharionson continued, his eyes still fixed on the names. "Or eliminating those who might have inherited access to something related to it. But why now? Why after all these years? Why after Zone 19? Why my mother?"

He pushed away from the table and began pacing, not from panic, but because stillness could no longer hold the pace of his thoughts. The first Crescent woman. Serah. Article Seven. Paternal identity. Bloodlines. Missing pages. Dead descendants. Court fracture. Queen Seralyne seeing things in mirrors. Zone 19’s lone survivor dying without trace. Every piece touched another piece, but none yet revealed the full design.