The evening corridor leading to Rheakar's office stretched before me in alternating pools of shadow and torchlight, each step carrying me deeper into the delicate manipulation I had rehearsed throughout the day.
The arguments for Korin's conditional release revolved through my mind with diplomatic precision—every word chosen to stroke Rheakar's ego while achieving my true purpose.
The collision came without warning.
An elderly man rounded the corner, his arms overflowing with papyri and scrolls, and we met with enough force to send his documents cascading across the marble floor like autumn leaves scattered by sudden wind.
He stumbled backward, his wire-rimmed spectacles sliding down his nose as papers continued their graceful descent around us.
"Forgive me, I should have been watching where I was going," I said automatically, already kneeling to gather the scattered parchments.
The old man dropped beside me, muttering continuously under his breath—half-formed thoughts about cataloguing systems and the proper ordering of historical texts.
"No matter, no matter, these things happen when one's mind occupies itself with more important considerations than mere physical navigation."
He rambled, his trembling fingers struggling to straighten pages that seemed determined to slip away.
"The correlation between lunar cycles and pack formation patterns requires such concentration that ordinary awareness becomes quite secondary, you understand."
His spectacles slipped again, requiring adjustment with fingers that never quite stilled, and I noticed how he never met my eyes directly—his gaze constantly drawn to some internal landscape where his true attention resided.
Something about this absent-minded scholar amid Grimhowl's brutal hierarchy drew an unexpected smile to my lips.
Here was someone who had found escape through the labyrinth of his own mind, creating sanctuary in distraction.
The smile died instantly as torchlight caught metal beneath his disheveled collar. A medallion swung free on its worn chain, and my heart stopped mid-beat.
The silver moon embraced by twin wolves, stars forming a crown above—the sacred symbol of Silvermoon Pack, supposedly erased from existence twenty years prior.
Propriety abandoned me entirely. My hand shot forward, seizing the medallion with desperate fingers, pulling it toward his startled face.
"Where did you get this?" The demand emerged harsh with shock, my carefully constructed composure shattering completely.
"I... that is... it's always been mine, though I suppose ownership becomes rather philosophical when one considers the transient nature of material possessions in the greater cosmic…"
"Enough." I studied his features with new intensity, torchlight revealing what distraction had hidden.
The particular angle of his jaw, the way his eyes widened behind those perpetually sliding spectacles, the nervous habit of touching his temple when confused—recognition struck like lightning through my entire being.
"Sir Tavric? Is that really you?"
The transformation was instantaneous. My name on his lips, my birth name, not Lyanna of Grimhowl but Lyanna of Silvermoon, silenced his endless muttering completely.
His trembling hands steadied his glasses as he truly saw me for the first time, color draining from weathered features as if confronting a ghost made flesh.
"That can't be..." His voice emerged as barely a whisper, twenty years of careful camouflage dropping away. "You were sent away. The marriage alliance with Grimhowl. You weren't there when…"
"Sir Tavric, it's me—Lyanna, from Silvermoon! I had a brother named Lucien. Do you remember me?"
His voice cracked with decades of suppressed memory:
"How could I forget the girl I constantly had to treat after her crazy games with her brother? Always climbing too high, running too fast, convinced she was invincible...”
My chin trembled, even though my lips stretched into a nostalgic smile. Sir Tavric continued to chatter.
“Your mother would lecture you while I healed scraped knees and bruised ribs, and you'd promise to be more careful, then appear the next day with new injuries."
The reunion collapsed us both to the corridor floor, dignity forgotten in the face of impossible connection.
My arms found him, this ghost from a life I'd thought completely erased, and we clung to each other while tears flowed freely.
He was frailer than memory suggested, bones sharp beneath threadbare robes, but he was real—tangible proof that Silvermoon existed beyond my own remembrance.
"How are you here?" I managed between sobs. "They told me everyone died. Every soul in Silvermoon perished that night."
"Not everyone," he said quietly, glancing down the corridor with sudden wariness. "Come, this isn't safe. My library—no one disturbs me there. We can speak freely."
He led me through passages I'd never explored, into a sanctuary of forgotten knowledge where dust motes danced through afternoon light and silence held secrets like a vault.
The library was vast but neglected, towering shelves holding volumes no one had opened in years, the perfect hiding place for a man who had made himself invisible through apparent madness.
"You survived," I said, understanding dawning as I took in his domain. "And now you're Grimhowl Pack's librarian..."
"After that night, after everything burned, I got here. The Grimhowl Pack recognized a healer's value and gave me a choice—to serve them or join the rest of Silvermoon in death."
Tavric moved between the shelves with practiced familiarity, fingers trailing across worn spines that had been his only companions for twenty years.
"I became useful in a different way, while my own was systematically erased. The transformation was complete—from Silvermoon's healer to this harmless eccentric whom everyone ignores."
"All these years," I breathed, struggling to reconcile this broken man with the healer who had tended my childhood wounds with such gentle precision. "You've been here all these years, and I never knew."
"You were Luna," he said simply, as if that explained everything. "Elevated beyond the notice of servants and forgotten librarians. And I... I had learned to be invisible."
"But you remember that night," I pressed, desperate for the answers that had haunted both Lucien and me for two decades.
"I remember everything," he confirmed, though his expression suggested those memories brought only anguish.
"The attack came with surgical precision. They knew exactly where to strike, when our defenses would be weakest. Your parents fought magnificently, Lyanna. They died as true Alphas."
"Who were they?" The question emerged raw with need. "You were there, you saw the attackers.”
Tavric closed the book of sketches with infinite care, his fingers lingering on the worn cover.
"A pack with tremendous resources. Warriors trained in systematic execution rather than honorable combat. They moved through Silvermoon like a plague, ensuring no one survived to bear witness."
"You saw them," I reminded him, searching his weathered features for the truth he seemed reluctant to voice. "You must know which banner they carried, which Alpha commanded such slaughter."
"Banners can be hidden in darkness," he said carefully, his eyes not quite meeting mine. "Wolves can mask their scents with blood and smoke. In chaos, even certainty becomes suspect…"
"Tavric, please." My hands found his, feeling the tremor that ran through his frail frame. "Lucien has spent years investigating, following every lead into walls of silence. You're the only living witness we know of."
He studied our joined hands for a long moment, as if finding courage in the connection to someone who shared his memories of Silvermoon before the fall.
"Some truths, once spoken, change everything they touch. Every moment backward and forward becomes tainted with the knowledge."
"I need to know," I insisted, my voice steady despite the fear building in my chest.
When Tavric finally raised his eyes to mine, they carried the terrible burden of witnessed truth.
His voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper, as if speaking softly might somehow lessen the devastating impact of his words.
"The Grimhowl Pack were the ones who exterminated the entire pack of Silvermoon."