Chapter 69: The Elegant Lie
The forged logbook lay on their table like a sleeping viper. Its leather was supple, its pages creamy, the ink a deep, persuasive black. It was a more dangerous artifact than any pallid water or hollow fish. It attacked not the body, nor even the immediate mind, but the past. If the past could be rewritten, then the present had no foundation.
Elara did not touch it with her hands. She hovered her palm over the cover, extending the most delicate filament of her mage-sense. The book did not radiate the corrosive nullity of the blight. Instead, it emitted a low, seductive hum of certainty. It felt… authoritative. Complete. It offered the comfort of a simpler, less tragic story.
"It's beautiful," she whispered, horrified by her own reaction.
