The Library of Arcanea

“The sea remembered things the town had forgotten. Kael knew this the way you know anything you've never been taught — in the soles of the feet, in the way the back of the neck prickles before lightning, in the way the tide sometimes came in speaking a language older than words.”

“He had been building alone his entire life. He built walls. He reinforced structures. Foundation was not about building alone. He had thought it was. He had needed it to be, because building alone meant the damage was contained. But a foundation without walls above it was just a floor. And walls without a foundation were just collapse waiting.”

“Aurora light shifted, a column of gold moving across the table between them. She picked up her fork and ate with the focused efficiency of someone who had decided that conversation was over for now. He was nineteen years old and he was very tired of already knowing what he was.”

“What had endured, he had learned on the fourth floor of a Dungeon that had been trying to break them, was not what any one person built. It was what they built together, each piece doing the work only that piece could do. You can rebuild. Takes time. But you can.”