Marcus Aurelius Venn touched his citizen's seal, feeling the warmth of the bronze disc against his chest. The metal glowed a soft, vibrant green. He'd made his tithe less than five minutes ago, and the exhaustion sat heavy on his shoulders.

  He could still feel the Draw; that moment when the Drawstone pulled magic from deep in his chest, like it was rolling down his arm into the bronze plate. Quick. Done. Just leaving him drained, as if he ran the whole way to the square.

  Thousands of Aeternans moved through College Plaza in loose lines before the Drawstones, their marks flickering with the warm hues of amber and, here and there, the sharp red of lateness. Those stepping away from the stones glowed a fresh, vibrant green like Marcus, their exhaustion evident in their posture. The air hummed faintly with magic, and the scent of heated bronze and incense clung to the morning haze, mingling with the murmur of voices and the soft thrum of the Veins beneath the marble.

  "There's Praetor Silvanus," his classmate Lucia whispered, nodding toward an older man whose mark blazed an unmistakable scarlet. The red glow drew stares from those around him, and the Praetor kept his head down. "He constantly loses track of time. That's the third time I've seen him overdue this year."

  Marcus watched as the Praetor hurried toward one of the Drawstones, trying to avoid the judgmental gazes. The whole process would take the man less than a minute. Thirty seconds on the stone, a walk home feeling wrung out. Most Aeternans barely thought about it. But the mark made sure you couldn't forget.

  "Come on, let's get you food before you collapse," Lucia said as they left the plaza. "The Toll takes its share, doesn't it?"

  Marcus rubbed his neck, the bronze disc still warm against his skin. "Seventy tolling percent of it."

  Lucia glanced down at her own mark; the metal had a pale yellow-green glow, the comfortable color of someone two days post toll. "You'll feel better once you eat," she said, tugging him toward the western archway. "The dining hall should still be serving breakfast."

  As they passed through, the city was shifting into full motion, the morning reprieve fading, as the streets roused. Merchants hawked cloth and copperware at those passing through for their weekly toll. Beneath the streets, unseen Veins of the Lattice carried the city's magic, surfacing only where their light met purpose: threading through gutters, doorframes, and the stabilizers that kept Aeterna thriving. Food vendors called from their stalls, and the scent of fresh bread, figs, and roasted chickpeas mingled with the tang of heated metal from the Veins beneath the surface.

  Lucia moved easily through the crowd, weaving between carriages and clusters of Aeternans in pale robes. Marcus followed in a daze. Around them, marks radiated in every hue of duty. The Aeternans heading toward the plaza still had their color, their step. Marcus just wanted to sit down.

  The further they walked from the plaza, the more the noise thinned, and the relief was almost physical. Street vendors gave way to bookshops and shaded courtyards, the shade cool against his skin. Students sat hunched over scrolls and half-finished assignments in the familiar way that meant exams were close. Banners bearing the sigil of the Imperial College hung from balconies above. The smell of roasted chickpeas faded, replaced by ink and old parchment. His stomach, unhelpfully, mourned what it'd rather have.

  Lucia glanced back to make sure he was keeping up. "The dining hall's not far," she said. "If we're lucky, they'll still have fresh fruit."

  "By Cass, at this point I'd eat anything."

  The street widened and the walls of the Imperial College rose ahead, pale stone veined with silver where the Lattice met the campus stabs. Marcus had seen it hundreds of times. Right now, it just meant food was close.

  They passed beneath the gate and the city fell away. The noise, the crowd, the heat; vanished, replaced by the familiar hum of the college stabs checking his mark as he crossed. The cool of the courtyard hit him like a reprieve. Paths of pale stone wound between elms and glass spires that caught the morning light, and for the first time since the plaza, his shoulders loosened.

  Students moved in pairs and small groups, blue-trimmed robes whispering at their heels. Some carried scrolls and brass instruments. Others murmured incantations under their breath, trailing faint threads of light that dispersed into the air.

  "We should hurry before the first years clean out the good bread again," Lucia said, her tone half amused, half resigned. "They think the dining hall is their personal paradise."

  Marcus huffed a laugh. "Let them, they'll learn soon enough, when they have to help make the food."

  "Don't remind me. The food always tastes the worst when probs take over."

  Marcus smiled. "I remember the food when you made it. It was slightly better than burnt toast."

  "Remind me what exactly you're hoping to see?" Lucia asked, adjusting the strap of her satchel. "I know you're viewing the Founding Era, but that's a span of years."

  "I'm trying to find a specific moment," Marcus said, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. "I want to see when Cassius first gets to the valley. We know the founding happened 2,347 years ago, that's not in dispute. But Cassius arrived about two to three years before that, and nobody can agree on the season, let alone the specific month."

  "That's ambitious."

  "Yeah, I've read several historical records about his arrival, but they contradict each other on exactly when it happened and what happened. I'll be starting with the date from the Chronicle of Cassius, which didn't shy from pointing out his mistakes."

  They wove through paths lined with marble columns that caught the morning sun, Marcus's mind already racing ahead to his experiment tomorrow.

  "The Chronicle puts his arrival in late autumn, right?" Lucia frowned. "But doesn't the Commentaries of Septima say it was spring?"

  "Exactly!" Marcus gestured animatedly. "Multiple accounts of that period give different explanations. I'm so excited to see which one is right, if the SERE works this time."

  "How many attempts will this be?" Lucia asked.

  "Since we stabilized the resonance spectral field, this will be our third attempt."

  "Right, good luck on your experiment." Lucia spotted students leaving the dining hall with fresh fruit in their hands. "Oh, look, they still have fresh fruit." She picked up the pace.

  The dining hall occupied the ground floor of the western dormitory, its vaulted ceiling supported by columns that doubled as Lattice channels. Floating orbs of soft light drifted near the rafters. Long tables stretched across the marble floor in neat rows, filled with students in various states of recovery.

  "There," Lucia said, steering him toward the serving counter with fruit.

  The counter ran along the eastern wall, staffed by a rotation of second years who looked absorbed in their own conversations. One of them glanced up as Marcus and Lucia approached, offering a distracted nod before returning to an apparently fascinating discussion about stab harmonics with her fellow server.

  Marcus grabbed a tray and began loading it methodically: bread, cheese, olives, roasted chickpeas, and a generous helping of fruit; figs, grapes, pears still beaded with dew. His body knew what it needed after the morning's toll, and he wasn't about to argue with it.

  They found seats at a table near the center of the hall, far enough from the serving counters to avoid the busiest traffic but close enough to hear the ambient hum of conversation. Marcus attacked his food with a single-minded focus, the first few bites already easing the hollow ache in his chest.

  "Marcus! Lucia!"

  A familiar voice cut through the general murmur. Felix dropped onto the bench across from them, balancing his own loaded tray. "Smart, tithing today."

  "Had to," Marcus said around a mouthful of bread. "Experiment's tomorrow. This way I'll be fully recovered and sharp."

  "Exactly what I'd do," Felix agreed, spearing an olive. "You'll be fine by tomorrow."

  "That's the theory," Marcus said. The empty feeling in his chest had started to fill in slow but steady, helped by the food he was devouring. By tomorrow morning he'd be ready.

  "Speaking of the experiment," Felix continued. "What happens if the Chronicle's wrong? If Cassius doesn't show up in late autumn?"

  "Then I write my paper proving the Chronicle's account is flawed," Marcus said. "Either way, I learn something. That's the point."

  "I still think it's wild that we don't know for certain when the Founder arrived," said a new voice. Mira, a fourth-year student dating Felix, settled next to him at the end of the table with her own plate. "Two thousand years of history, and we can't agree on spring versus autumn?"

  "So you're going to settle a two-thousand-year-old historical debate with one viewing spell?" Mira raised an eyebrow, but she was smiling. "Ambitious."

  "Well, I have to start somewhere," Marcus said. "And the Chronicle was written only eighty years after the founding, by someone who interviewed people who actually knew Cassius. Septima wrote three centuries later. If I had to bet, I'd trust the earlier source."

  "But you're not betting," Lucia interjected. "You're checking. That's the whole point."

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Exactly." Marcus took a long drink of water, feeling it help wash away some of the lingering toll fatigue. "Why speculate when we have the tools to actually see?"

  "Must be nice, being that close to finishing your thesis," Felix said with a theatrical sigh. "Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out my research topic. Professor Varro keeps rejecting my proposals."

  "That's because you keep proposing things that would require either forbidden magic or funding the College doesn't have," Mira pointed out.

  "Oh, toll — one time! One thing that was slightly prohibited..."

  "You wanted to summon a minor demon to ask it about pre-Imperial magical theory," Mira said flatly.

  "For academic purposes!"

  Marcus laughed, the familiar banter pulling him out of his own head. He'd miss this after graduation — the four of them crowded around a dining hall table, arguing about demons and thesis deadlines.

  "Anyway," Felix said. "Say it all works. You see Cassius arrive, you pin down the date. What then? What's left to study?"

  "Everything," Marcus said. "The date is just the starting point. What I really want to understand is the tithe. Why seventy percent? Why not fifty, why not ninety? Cassius designed the whole structure in those first few years, and we still don't know why he chose the numbers he chose."

  "All the fun stuff," Felix said with a grin.

  "It is fun," Marcus protested. "The entire tithe, the stabs, the Veins, it's all been built around that number. And nobody can explain why Cassius chose it."

  "And why it's lasted two thousand years when other magical cities have risen and fallen," Lucia added quietly.

  Marcus nodded. That was the real mystery at the heart of his research. Dozens of civilizations throughout history had attempted to build magically-sustained cities. Most had collapsed within a few generations — their magical infrastructure failing, their populations dispersing, their grand visions crumbling into ruin.

  Aeterna Lux endured.

  For two millennia, Aeternans had paid the Toll. For two millennia, the Veins coursed through the city. For two millennia, the stabs held the city together.

  Why?

  Was Aeterna Lux just lucky, or was Cassius that much better than the others?

  "You're doing that thing again," Lucia said, her voice amused. "Where you stare at your food and think too hard."

  Marcus blinked, refocusing. "Sorry. Just... it's a big question, isn't it? Why Aeterna, when others failed."

  "By Cass, because he was tolling brilliant?" Felix suggested with a shrug.

  "Maybe," Marcus said. "Valenna had brilliant mages. They invented resonance shielding and were conquered in three generations. Now they're just a province of Aeterna. Whatever he built into the design, the way the tithe feeds the stabs, the way it all connects..."

  "And you're going to figure it out by watching Cassius arrive in an empty valley?" Mira asked, not unkindly.

  "I'm going to start figuring it out," Marcus corrected. "Right now, we don't even know the basic timeline of events. Once I have that, I can start asking why things happened in that order, what problems Cassius was solving, how he decided on specific solutions..."

  "Alright, alright," Felix interrupted, laughing. "We get it. You're very excited about your experiment. Just promise you'll tell us what you find out?"

  "Of course." Marcus managed a tired smile. "Assuming I find anything, the SERE isn't easy to aim. I might just see the opposite side of the hill he arrives at."

  "Story of research," Mira said, raising her cup in a mock toast. "Here's to finding answers that lead to better questions."

  Marcus touched his cup to hers, then Lucia's, then Felix's.

  They finished their meal with easier conversation. Upcoming exams, a third-year's disastrous summoning attempt in Advanced Conjuration, whether the dining hall would serve fish again this week (opinions were divided on whether this was desirable).

  By the time Marcus pushed his empty plate away, his head was clear and his limbs had stopped feeling like wet clay. He ran through the list: calibration check with Kaeso, review the spectral field alignment, confirm the target date calculations one last time.

  "I need to meet with Professor Kaeso," Marcus said, standing carefully. "Final review before tomorrow."

  "Good luck," Felix called after him. "Try not to get too lost in SERE theory!"

  "No promises," Marcus replied.

  Lucia walked with him as far as the dining hall entrance. Early afternoon light streamed through the high windows, painting the marble floors in warm light.

  "The field held stable last session," she said quietly. "Worst case, you adjust the anchors and try again next week."

  Marcus touched his mark absently. "I know. But if it works, tomorrow I actually see him."

  "The man behind the legend," Lucia said.

  "Exactly."

  They parted ways at the junction — Lucia toward her afternoon seminars, Marcus toward the SERE wing.

  Professor Kaeso's office was on the third floor of the SERE wing, a cluttered room where stacks of journals competed for space with brass instruments and half-dismantled spectral arrays. The door was open. Kaeso sat behind his desk, reading glasses low on his nose, a spread of parchment charts in front of him. He looked up when Marcus knocked on the doorframe.

  "Ah, good. Sit."

  Marcus dropped into the chair across from him, and for the next hour they went through everything. The spectral field calibration. The resonance anchors. The target date calculations (late autumn, 2,347 years prior, based on the Chronicle's account). Kaeso checked each figure against his own notes, nodding, occasionally circling a number and writing a correction in the margin.

  "The field is stable," Kaeso said at last, setting down his pen. "Strongest we've achieved. The anchoring should hold for a viewing window of four to six minutes at this distance."

  "That's more than enough."

  Kaeso pulled one of the charts closer. "There is one thing." He tapped a line of readings near the bottom, a column of numbers Marcus recognized as the spectral resonance measurements from their last calibration session. "The return signal from the target date. It's stronger than I'd expect."

  Marcus paused his review, looking up from his notes. "Stronger?"

  "The resonance is... responsive. As if something at the target coordinates is already aligned with our frequency." Kaeso frowned at the numbers. "It could be an artifact of the distance. We've never attempted anything at this range. I have no baseline for comparison."

  "Or it could mean the viewing will be clearer than we thought," Marcus said.

  "Possibly." Kaeso didn't look up from the chart. He was quiet for a moment, then removed his glasses and set them on the desk.

  "Marcus." He settled back. He'd heard this part before. "You understand the theory of what we're doing tomorrow. You're observing. The resonance field creates a window, not a door. But at this distance, the field will be drawing from your reservoir to maintain the connection. That's unavoidable."

  "I know. That's why I tithed today. Full depth by morning."

  "Good. That's good." Kaeso folded his hands over the parchment. "If at any point during the viewing you feel the pull becoming physical — not observation, not the normal drain of maintaining the window, but something pulling *at* you, like the connection is more than visual... you shut it down. Immediately. Don't hesitate, don't try to hold on for a few more seconds of viewing. You close it."

  Marcus nodded. "Same as last time. I know the drill, Professor."

  "I mean it." Something in Kaeso's voice made Marcus look at him properly. The professor's expression was careful, measured — the same face he wore when delivering a bad grade, trying to be honest without being harsh. "We are attempting something that has never been done. The theory is sound. The calibration is right. But theory and practice are not the same animal, and I would rather we abort a successful experiment than push past a boundary we don't fully understand."

  "Understood, Professor."

  Kaeso held his gaze for another moment, then put his glasses back on and the careful expression folded back into his usual scholarly distraction. "Eight bell, then. Get some sleep. And eat a proper breakfast. You'll need the depth."

  Marcus stood, gathering his satchel. At the door he paused. "Professor. The strong return signal. Does it worry you?"

  Kaeso looked up. "Worry is perhaps too strong a word. It's... unexpected. And I prefer my experiments predictable." He waved a hand. "It's likely nothing. Go. Sleep."

  Marcus walked back through the corridors of the Imperial College, the late afternoon light catching the silver Veins in the walls. His mind kept turning over Kaeso's words — *something at the target coordinates already aligned with our frequency* — but the excitement was louder. Tomorrow he would see the valley before the city. Tomorrow he would see Cassius.

  The man behind the legend.

  He barely noticed the hum of the Veins beneath his feet, steady as a heartbeat, as old as the stones.