Laurelyn and Evelyian watched as I descended the stairs. They hadn't said anything about me taking the texts or tried to stop me. Indeed, I wondered if there was anything they actually could do, if it came down to it.

I thought of my mother, walking down these stairs all those years ago, after leaving me that note. How did she know I would do this?

Walking down at a controlled pace, my mind couldn't help but think back to my brother. My fingers found his scalpel in my belt and I played with it as I walked. How had he lost it? How had those strangers captured him? Luktor wasn't just anyone. He didn't just get...surprised.

Reaching into the other side of my belt, I removed my stylus. The fine metal pen beside my brother's thin blade. The pen and the sword.

Our key differences.

And the reason we didn't get along.

We'd always argued. All siblings do, I supposed. But Luktor and I weren't just any pair of siblings. We were hunters' orphans, raised to rely on ourselves. But Eurykhan had so wanted us to be able to count on each other, too.

"You're blood," he'd tell us, over and over again. "Blood means something down here where nothing else does."

Luktor and I had both agreed to disagree with him.

Eurykhan would hate to see how we'd acted toward each other. How we'd seemed to forget about our childhood, about that day in the Drain when we'd heard our parents were dead.

I'd never been told why my parents had taken Luktor and I with them into the Drain that day. All I knew was that we were there.

Swinging down into the Drain, tied to my mother's back, the gutterfalls had been smaller then. Perhaps there was less water to drain in the past, perhaps it was one of the slower days, but the gutterfalls wasn't as loud or powerful that day. It wasn't hard to make it across into the Drain tunnel without getting completely soaked.

I felt no fear. I should have, with where I was, but I had absolute faith in my mother. There was nothing she couldn't do.

I shook my head. Except live past that day.

Eurykhan had given my parents a disgruntled look when he saw Luktor and I running by their sides. He hadn't entered the Drain with us, but had already been there. Then I had wondered why. Now I realized he lived in the Drain.

"It's about stark time," he told them. "I told you they could make it."

My father had given Eurykhan a steady look. "I wasn't raising them down here."

I hadn't thought much of that conversation. Now, I thought about my parents' safe house.

They were taking us there.

But we never got there.

Neither Luktor nor I saw the Library tower. We didn't see them die. We never even saw the bodies. Just heard about it, when Eurykhan stood by us and told us they were gone.

What was it he'd said? "They lost to darkness."

Everything's dark down here. It's always dark. Now I get it. The darkness always strives to take you. If you lose, you lose for good.

I hit the main floor of the tower. I stopped and looked at the door. Then I continued down onto the lower flight of steps.

I looked at my stylus and Luktor's scalpel, side by side. So different, yet with the same bent. The same slenderness. The same narrowing at the tip. Used for different jobs, but in the end, too similar to be placed in completely separate categories.

They have too much of the same blood in them.

Luktor and I always argued over who was better in their trade. As an operator, Luktor was the best in his business. He was very proud of that.

"I'm the best there is. What about you, Sable? How's the copyist business?"

I gritted my teeth.

Luktor noticed my annoyance and smirked. But before he could speak again, I said, "Oh, you know. The only reason your business is making any money."

His smirk slipped.

We'd argued over this many times before. About which of us was the better Huntris. A strong name, my parents had left us, and both of us wanted to be worthy of it.

I placed the scalpel and stylus in my belt pouch, pursing my lips. It didn't help I resented him for Eurykhan giving him extra training and his book, as well. Since I didn't have our mentor, I had to have our name.

Luktor didn't see it that way, however.

I thought of the note from my mother. She had addressed it to me. Not Luktor. Sable. She had written to me, eighteen years in the future. She knew I would find the texts, would be looking to build the Muse 9.

How?

I didn't know. It wasn't like I was destined for the copyist trade. Or if I had been, I knew nothing about it. But yet she had written the letter, storing it for me in the one place I would never have thought to go to unless Luktor had been captured, thereby coercing me into going on this stark quest in order to save him.

She wrote it that day, the day she died.

That drew me up cold. Why did she write me that letter? She was in the process of taking me to the safe house. So why did she pen a letter she didn't think I would ever need? And why did she detour to the Library in the first place?

Maybe it was time I read the rest of Eurykhan's entry about my parents.

We were hunting....

I shook my head savagely. Did I want to read it? I thought of the Librarians, telling me my mother died facing the darkness. I thought of Eurykhan writing that my father perished trying to save her body. I thought of my own memories, and of the note.

I needed to read that passage.

Stopping, I sank down onto the step right behind me and reached into my pack. I withdrew Eurykhan's book and flipped through the pages, looking for the one which was practically engraved with my parents' names.

We were hunting reptiles. The big, nasty ones, that like to stick you with their claws if they get a chance. But their hide is tough, and makes good leather if treated right. The rex's meat's not bad, either.

Megana and Herc had their kids with them. Luktor and Sable. We were heading to the safe house after the hunt. We were leaving the Grid behind for good.

But the hunt hadn't even started before Megana said she needed to see something. She wanted to go to the Library. I told her it was a bad idea, but she was insistent. She needed to see something there.

"Something that can change us," she said.

So we left Luktor and Sable in one of my hideouts, locking them in. Then the three of us headed down to the Library. It was quiet. The animals knew we were here. We were too close to the entrance for them to be brave yet.

I wanted to head deeper in, where the hunt was better. But Megana wanted this so bad. So we went to the tower where the Librarians guard the texts.

Megana ran, from the tunnel all the way to the tower. She was prepared. The Shadows fought her every step, but she didn't let them catch her. She used a grappling line to swing across the moat and then she was inside the tower.

Herc and I waited an hour.

The last time I saw Megana, she was racing from the tower and then the darkness converged on her. They had been waiting. They took her.

Herc ran in. I couldn't stop him.

The page was smudged by what looked like a watermark following these words. I rubbed the mark with my finger. I would never have thought Eurykhan capable of tears.

He died, trying to save her body. They took him, too. The emotion...it overcame him. He drowned in darkness.

Sable and Luktor – I took them back to the Grid. I couldn't take them to Megana and Herc's safe place after they'd just died before my eyes. No. Sable and Luktor will have to prove themselves worthy before I take them there.