Page 135 of The Alien in the Archive

Administrator Kyral rises, his expression unreadable, and the guards step forward again. Thorne straightens, turning toward them, and I feel like I’m being dragged out of my chair with him, like I’ll fall apart if they take him from me again.

“The Tribunal will deliberate,” Kyral announces, his voice ringing through the room. “You will have our decision soon.”

I can’t breathe.

The guards clasp their hands on Thorne’s arms, leading him back toward the exit. For a moment, just before the doors close, his gaze finds mine. It’s only a second—barely that—but it’s enough.

He sees me.

And I know he’s holding on.

As the doors shut behind him, the silence crashes down again, heavier than ever.

We wait.

52

THORNE

The world narrows to a single moment.

I stand in the holding chamber behind the Tribunal’s doors, the faint hum of the psycho-suppressive cuffs gnawing at the edges of my thoughts. The guards flanking me say nothing, their silence as heavy as my own. I barely notice them. My mind is a constant hum of Page—Page, Page, Page.I can’t feel her yet, but I know she’s close. I know she’s waiting.

The doors creak open.

Light spills in, bright against the cold stone of the walls, and the guards gesture for me to move. My legs are stiff, my muscles aching from hours—or days?—of stillness, but I walk forward anyway. Every step reverberates, impossibly loud in the vast Tribunal chamber.

The room is just as I left it—vast, echoing, filled with faces I don’t care to see—but my eyes land on one thing.

Page.

She’s sitting near the front, on the edge of her seat, her hands clutching the edge of her coat so tightly her knucklesare white. Thalara and Riley sit on either side of her, but it doesn’t matter. She’s the only thing I see. Her gaze meets mine as I’m led into the center of the room, and I swear I feel it—her—just beyond the edges of the suppression field.

Almost there.

Administrator Kyral rises, his silver robes catching the light. The room quiets, the low murmurs dying like wind snuffed out by a storm.

“Thorne Valtheris,” he says, his voice measured and grave. “The Tribunal has reached a decision.”

My focus sharpens as I stand in the center of the room, the psycho-suppressive cuffs still digging into my wrists. I don’t move, but every muscle in my body tenses as though bracing for a blow.

The Merati administrator stands tall as he surveys the room. “The case presented to us over these proceedings has been…unprecedented,” he says. “The crimes of the Borean Empire are not forgotten, nor are the scars they left on the Pact species. And yet, history—true history—is rarely simple.”

His gaze shifts toward Kaelion Rhyss, whose presence has loomed over the Tribunal like a storm cloud since this began. The Nyeri’i scholar sits motionless, his tendrils still, his glowing blue eyes locked onto Kyral. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel his attention as sharply as if he had.

Kyral continues, “Professor Rhyss has proposed a compromise that reflects both the gravity of the charges against Thorne Valtheris and the potential value of his knowledge. He will remain on M’mir under strict supervision. His movements and activities will be monitored, and he will work under the guidance of Professor Davina Ferhalda to document and translate the texts discovered in the Obscuary.”

A murmur rises through the crowd, questions and opinions buzzing in fractured waves of thought. I ignore it all, my mind latching onto one word.

Supervision.

I’ll be free—conditionally.The cuffs are no longer permanent.

“And this proposal,” Kyral continues, his gaze still on Rhyss, “has been influenced not only by the arguments presented by Professor Ferhalda and Lady Seviris, but also by the…persuasion of Professor Rhyss’s own students.”

The murmur swells louder, and my gaze snaps to Kaelion Rhyss. For the first time since this began, I see something other than stoic in his expression. Frustration, maybe. Fatigue. He stands slowly, deliberate as ever, and when he speaks, his voice is calm but not as cold as before.

“When Thalara Seviris presented her findings,” he begins, “I could not deny the truth of her words. History has painted the Borean Empire as a monolith of villainy—but that oversimplification blinds us to the nuance that must be uncovered. We, the Nyeri’i, are no strangers to the cost of silence.”

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