The writing style is, of course, insufferably full of itself. Most of it is boring day-to-day details of what it takes to keep the royal polymaths operating. Lists of materials like copper, silver, acid, and base, notes rife with equations and numbers on hundreds of experiments pursued in the name of making the Vetrisian army stronger against witches. Even more of it is inane notes scribbled about certain nobles: their weaknesses, their “uses,” things Gavik can employ to manipulate them. Dated two weeks ago, he talks about insinuating to the Priseless twins that I needed to be “taken care of.” It lines up perfectly with when the Priseless twins tried to tie me and scarify my face during my very first banquet. Malachite saved me that time.

Scoffing, I move on. Gavik’s hatred for witches and Old God worshippers permeates it all, calling them every bad name under the sun. One page utterly shocks me; it talks about how Y’shennria refused Gavik’s hand for marriage once, a long, long time ago. That’s why the old rancid arsehole hated her so much. I always thought his vitriol was excessive toward her—more than just a hatred for her religion. My own hatred for him burns even hotter now.

There are some pages I just can’t read at all—written in some sort of glyphic code. And there are other pages entirely covered in numbers that are too long to be equations. More code, maybe.

Finally, finally, I find what I’m looking for.

It’s a page tucked away at the very end of the journal, faded and water stained. It looks like it was torn out of another book, a book much older than this journal. The letters are unreadable, but I recognize a few of them. They look exactly like the beneather runes I saw in the pipe with the valkerax skeleton. Old Vetrisian runes, like the ones carved over the arches of each one of the four gates of Vetris. Mercifully, between every line, Gavik has scribbled translations:

An empire of untold greatness, a rich land built in mirth,

Made strong in the ashes, of the wyrms sealed at birth,

By the bones that reach sky, magic wrought clear

Glass made as a blade, to defy the deaths of those we hold dear,

Two trees grown, great roots between the stone crawl,

The happiness of the once-great empire they did maul,

A funeral for the hands held, our Vetrisian flags at half-mast,

The tree of bone and tree of glass, will sit together as family at last.

I gape, my mouth fishing for the words I can’t find. I read the sentences over and over. This is the “Hymn of the Forest” Yorl talked about. I can gather the bare gist of it; Old Vetris seals the valkerax with the Bone Tree. But then, glass? Glass made as a blade, to defy death?