“Missing?” Anja’s voice cut through the stunned silence, sharper than she intended. The warmth from Ohto’s accidental touch still lingered, a faint echo against her skin, but it was quickly overshadowed by the cold dread coiling in her gut. She glanced at Ohto, his dark gaze now fixed on Teppo, a predatory glint in its depths that sent a tremor through the air. “The Great Grimoire of Astel?” Ohto’s tone was low, dangerous. “Are you certain, Teppo? It has been sealed for centuries.” Teppo wrung his hands, dust puffing from his tunic. “My Lord, I swear! I went to catalog the older volumes, as you instructed. The pedestal was empty. The seals… they were broken, yes, but not by age. It looked like someone pried them open, clumsily. There were fresh scratches.” Anja’s mind raced. Valtteri. It had to be. That surreptitious signal to his man, the one who had slipped away during their confrontation. Valtteri wasn’t just a jilted suitor; he was ambitious, cunning, and now, armed with a stolen tome of forbidden lore. His ‘rescue’ was a flimsy pretext; he wanted power, and the curse of Kivikallas, or its undoing, would grant it. “Valtteri,” Anja murmured, more to herself than to the others. “His man. While he distracted us with his theatrical performance.” Ohto’s head snapped towards her. “You think he took it? What use would he have for an ancient book of curses?” “Knowledge, my Lord,” Anja said, closing the distance between them. “The earlier journal hinted at the grimoire’s true significance. It details the affliction's mechanics, maybe even its frailties. If Valtteri deciphers it, he will not merely try to purge Kivikallas—he will try to harness the pestilence.” Teppo sucked in a ragged breath. “The Duke would never allow it! Such dark arts…” “The Duke values order above all else,” Anja countered, steadying her voice. “If Valtteri presents a scheme to bottle the rot while playing savior to the province, the court will reward him. He will return with soldiers, spinning a tale that paints you as a monster and me as his captive. We must find our own path first.” Ohto studied her, dark brows knitting. “What path, Doktor Pihla? That text was our sole prospect of parsing the affliction, and now it sits in a thief’s saddlebag.” She remembered Master Pihla's rasped farewell in the parlor, the dried seed pods pressed into her palm, and his parting riddle: *“The remedy is a lie. Remember the silvery ore.”* As an herbalist, he rarely spoke in metaphors. The seeds were a distraction; the mineral was the point. “My elder gave me a warning before the bailiffs took him,” she said. “He spoke of a stone called silver-wood, insisting any spoken remedy was false. It was a cipher regarding this affliction.” Ohto frowned. “Silver-wood? No timber bears that name in Aurinko, nor does any local chronicle mention it.” “It is likely not timber at all,” Anja mused, sifting through memories of her father’s apothecary cabinets. “The main stacks are corrupted, but subterranean vaults must remain from before the rot took hold. If this substance matters, the manor's early naturalists cataloged it.” “The crypt vaults,” Teppo piped up, twisting his hem. “Beneath the eastern foundations. Decades of damp grit, but that is where the old masters stored their earliest ledgers and estate trunks.” “Take me there,” Anja said. “My Lord, grant me leave to inspect those lower vaults. I must identify this mineral.” Ohto hesitated for a moment, his gaze searching hers. He saw no fear, only a burning resolve. “Very well. Teppo, light the way. Ensure Doktor Pihla has everything she needs.” Teppo bowed quickly, eager to be useful. “Immediately, my Lord!” *** The lower corridors smelled of wet lime and mildewed hide. Teppo held a tin lantern aloft, illuminating damp shelves crowded with moldering folio boxes. Anja trailed her fingers across chalked spine labels, hunting any reference to the silver ore. Two hours slipped past in the chilly gloom. Her fingers grew blackened with soot as she pulled down estate manifests, boundary surveys, and timber tallies. Nothing referenced the stone. “It’s a fool’s errand,” Teppo mumbled, wiping sweat from his brow. “If it were here, it would be in the main library.” “He never wasted breath on fables,” Anja murmured, shifting aside a bundle of rotted charts. Her boot struck a plain ironwood crate wedged beneath an archway. It lacked decorative brass or registry tags, resting silent beneath grey lint. “Be careful, Doktor Pihla,” Teppo warned. “Some of these old things can be brittle.” Anja ignored him, her fingers finding the latch. It clicked open with a faint groan, releasing a puff of stagnant air. Inside, nestled amongst bundles of letters tied with faded ribbons, lay a small, heavy rock, dull grey and slightly iridescent, unlike any mineral she had ever seen. Beside it lay a flattened botanical specimen: a bell-shaped Kielo, dried between sheets of wax paper, its petals bleached bone-white. Beneath the specimen rested a calfskin ledger. Its flyleaf bore a spidery script: *The Aurinko Geologies: A Compendium of Earth’s Gifts and Curiosities.* Her fingers tightened against the cold stone. She lifted it, noting the dense heft, and opened the ledger where a faded cord marked an entry. *“Silvery-timber,”* she murmured, tracing the faded ink. *“A dense silicate seam quarried along northern fissures. Its crystalline density repels ethereal resonance entirely. It offers neither fuel nor passage to unnatural rites, acting as an impenetrable seal against arcane decay.”* She weighed the rough specimen. A barrier, not an antidote. Her father had grasped the truth: the creeping stone could not be unmade through simple pharmacology, but it could be cordoned off. The mineral offered a way to halt the petrification without trading a human life to feed it. She peered back into the crate. Beneath the botanical pressing lay a parcel of correspondence, the topmost envelope addressed in faded sepia: *To My Dearest Ohto.* Anja paused, her thumb brushing the brittle paper. The bell blossom alongside it could not be a coincidence; the manor's hourglass mirrored this very plant. She broke the wax wafer. *“My dearest son,”* the letter ran, *“forgive what I have done. The plague that took your sisters came for you next. The old physician offered an exchange: my life pledged in devotion to arrest your fever into stone. Yet the ward demands reciprocal devotion to stay dormant. If no soul chooses to shoulder that weight out of true tenderness before the enchanted blossom sheds its final petal, the grey rot will awaken to swallow the estate. I pray someone will love you enough to bear the cost willingly.”* The paper rattled against Anja’s fingers. The enchanted bloom in the glasshouse was not a simple countdown; it measured the devotion bound into the spell. The curse had been born from a mother's refusal to let her child perish. A surrender of life meant nothing unless given freely from love. Anja stared at the cold granite floor. Her private softening toward Ohto—the protective sympathy she kept trying to analyze away—was precisely what the enchantment fed upon. If she allowed herself to care for him, she was walking straight into the altar's trap.

The Silverwood Secret