Jeran materializes from the shadows beside me. The light halos him in silver. He looks questioningly at me, waiting for my cue on where to go.

I nod, then close my eyes, trying to remember the paths I used to take. Then I turn down a hall, and he follows.

We make our way past old doors salvaged from early Karensa and conquered Reo, plates and dishes and silverware taken from the rubble of destroyed homes in Benton, rugs depicting Azaran folk tales that must have once decorated the walls of their libraries. As we go, I can feel a flicker of my boyish self in here, taking these same steps, walking these same corridors. I’d seen these same displays back then. I’d lift my sister so she could get a better look at paintings and artwork on the walls. Laeni would let out purposefully loud laughs just to hear the way it echoed down the corridors. I can almost hear her now, some memory of her voice still preserved in this space.

I nod at a table set that we pass by. “See that?” I whisper so quietly that my voice seems to dissolve into the air. “I remember the soldiers bringing that into the museum for the caretakers to polish. They’d brought it back on a train from Carreal.”

“Did you have happy memories here?” Jeran asks.

We reach the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor. “So many,” I whisper.

Jeran gives me an understanding smile. “It’s okay to keep those memories, you know,” he whispers. “Even here.”

“I know,” I murmur back as I look up. Then I make my way up the same steps I used to take as a child.

We emerge onto a second floor dedicated entirely to relics from the Early Ones.

Jeran sucks in his breath. Rows and rows of artifacts are on display—archways from ancient halls, shards of twisted metal, gadgets that must have once worked, old engines and intricate gears, metal and glass polished to such a fine sheen that they look like nothing that exists today. One display is a series of charts drawn inside an old notebook, meticulously spelling out the life spans of various persons. They seem impossibly long: 140 years, 151 years, 160 years. Another is a line of glass jars containing curiosities preserved inside murky liquid, pieces of something organic that must have been alive a long time ago.

Goose bumps rise on my arms. No matter how many times I see these objects, I’m always haunted by them.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jeran whispers as he stops in front of a glass display case showing what looks like a rectangle covered with rows of slim, shiny metal. “Does the Federation know what it’s for?”

I glance at the placard with it. Another long-lost memory returns: I was a little boy standing beside my father, pointing at this exact object, and asking him what it does. He stooped down to my height, his hands warm on my shoulders, and said, We think it was an engine of sorts, something that could power a metal machine and tell it what to do.