The envelope arrived without a return address.
Cream-colored, hand-sealed with wax in the shape of a lunar eclipse, and written in perfect calligraphy:
To Elara Thorne.You are cordially summoned to the Eclipse Archive.New York City, midnight.Come alone. Bring no thread. The stars will know.
Cassian read it three times before grunting, "This is either a trap or a very pretentious party."
"Possibly both," Elara muttered, fingers already brushing the raised sigil. But her heart beat faster—not in fear. In recognition.
The wax smelled faintly of sage. Of thread. Of... home.
The Archive was not a building.
It was a threshold.
She found it beneath the New York Public Library, past a restricted door disguised as an electrical panel, and down eighty-seven silent marble steps that did not exist on any architectural record.
At the bottom: a mirrored chamber of impossible scale, with constellations inscribed into obsidian walls and an elevator that didn't move—but shifted her anyway.
When the doors opened, she was no longer in New York.
Or Earth.
A silver-haired man waited for her in a velvet-lined hall lit by hanging spheres of starlight.
"Elara Thorne," he said, voice both ancient and amused. "Child of split skies. Welcome."
She blinked. "Do I... know you?"
"Only by memory. I was there when the Loom frayed the first time."
Her breath caught. "You're from Cassian's world?"
He smiled. "Among others."
The Eclipse Archive, he explained, was not a place but a convergence.
Founded by travelers, maintained by keepers, hidden between calendars and reality. A sanctuary for those who had slipped through.
"There are more?" she asked.
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands," he said. "Most never make it back. You did."
"Because of the thread. Because of—"
He held up a hand. "Because you're not only from Earth, Elara."
Her knees nearly gave.
"What?"
"You are tethered by dual sky-rights. A child of balance. Born when the veils aligned."
"No," she whispered. "That's not possible. I was born during a meteor storm—"
"Exactly," he said.
They showed her the records.
Glass discs inscribed with timelines from multiple worlds. One featured her name. Another bore a sigil like her mother's locket. A third—blank, pulsing—waited for her touch.
"You're not just a traveler," said the silver-haired man. "You're a Key."
Elara stood in the archive, thread humming at her wrists, Cassian's voice echoing in memory:
Let's go forward instead.
She turned to the gathered keepers and lifted her chin.
"Then tell me what comes next."