Frustration gnawed at Elara. Days blurred into a relentless cycle of deciphering the Vance archive’s celestial chart. Cassian’s impatient glares were a constant pressure. His raw vulnerability had briefly humanized him, but the steel quickly returned to his eyes, sharpening her awareness of her precarious position. Hours bled into the night. Her workspace, a chaotic sprawl of star charts, ancient texts, and digital projections, mirrored the turmoil in her mind. The coded lines, once an impenetrable puzzle, now felt like a taunt. A familiar tremor of despair threatened to set in. She pushed it back. Cassian’s story, fragmented and haunting, still echoed. He might be ruthless, but his quest was undeniably personal. Shoving aside a stack of irrelevant star catalogues, Elara’s gaze snagged on a recurring pattern. Not a constellation, not a known astronomical event. It was a sequence, a rhythm within the chaotic scattering of stars, almost like a celestial Morse code. Then, a spark. A memory from an obscure historical text, a footnote on a long-forgotten astronomical cult that used stellar alignments to mark earthly coordinates, not just predict fate. A faint tremor ran through her. Could it be? This wasn't a prophecy. This was a map. A key. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Fingers flew across the holographic interface, cross-referencing, extrapolating. The ancient Vance method, combined with modern stellar cartography, began to yield results. Lines converged. Numbers materialized. Coordinates materialized on the screen: specific, precise, undeniable. Latitude and longitude, clear as day. Elara stared, her mind reeling. Eyes scanned the digital map, zooming in on the indicated location. It was tucked away in a remote, mountainous region, far from any major city or known landmark. An isolated spot, almost deliberately forgotten. Her breath hitched. A faint outline shimmered on the digital terrain: the unmistakable footprint of a sprawling estate. Grand, ancient, yet utterly absent from any modern survey or historical record she possessed. A Thorne estate. It had to be. The sheer scale, the architectural style suggested a powerful, long-standing lineage. Every official document, every historical gazetteer, every land registry Elara had access to, remained silent. The estate simply did not exist. It had been systematically erased. A chill snaked down her spine. Someone had gone to extreme lengths to purge this place from history. Cassian’s presence was a ripple in the air before she even heard him. He moved silently, a predator in his own domain. His shadow stretched long across the illuminated charts. He stood in the doorway, arms crossed, jaw tight. His eyes, sharp and demanding, immediately found her, then darted to the screen displaying the coordinates.

Chapter 15: The Purged Estate