Digging for answers

[Nora Saint-Clair]

The new Atharim Headquarters was perfectly reconstructed. Nora worked at the one prior to the fire, and nobody had questioned how she survived it. In the time it took for the HQ to reopen, she’d been staying at an Atharim owned apartment in the mid-city, someplace that didn’t attract attention and served a rotating guest list of Atharim needing someplace to stay. It felt more like a dressed up hotel room rather than a home. For that reason, Nora preferred spending her waking hours in HQ, but it just felt wrong now that she knew what she was.

But she had no other choice. The only way she could do her proper research was directly on the Atharim’s servers, with database access to Vatican digital archives. She brought Claude here a few days after his arrival. Being Saint-Clair’s he had no issue with admittance, and after a short tour of the newly finished Baccarat building, they were buried in the database room, and she was quietly showing him her findings.

She stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed, brows drawn together like she was daring the data to contradict her.
“This isn’t some mood-swing death spiral, okay?” she said, her voice firm, practiced, and maybe a little defensive. “I’ve been digging through the Vatican scans, translation records, all the flagged anomalies from the last decade. Everything they don’t publish but still track.”

She clicked something on the laptop and the screen split, showing a dozen digital entries, each tagged with variations of the same phrase: uncontrolled divine surge, fatality suspected. She didn’t look at Claude, but she knew he was there. Close enough to hear, close enough to catch her if her voice cracked. It didn’t.

“They’ve been cataloguing godmarked individuals since before the term even existed. No one talks about it in the open, but the data’s there. Every time one of … ahem… someone appears. Every time a god touches their powers, something follows. Something irreversible.”

She stepped aside, letting him look if he wanted. She didn’t wait to see if he did.

“The powers always escalate. Slowly at first. But no one fades out. No one stays the same. They either go dormant and self-destruct,” she pointed to one case file, “or they snap. Violently.”

She exhaled through her nose and pulled up another tab. A scan of an old illuminated manuscript, faded Latin text with annotations in three languages.

“I did a reverse search on godmarkings, abrupt endings, and cataclysms.. that sort of thing to try and understand whether it’s reversible. Can you prevent a god from … well, becoming what’s inevitable. I found this, and I can’t for the life of me figure it out, but it definitely doesn’t look promising.”[/color]

She enlarged the image. A hand-drawn wheel, stylized like a sunburst, formed the centerpiece. Around it were smaller glyphs—constellations, or possibly seals. At the center: a broken sword embedded in an open eye.

“It showed up in four different texts across three centuries. All referring to the gods. All ending in some kind of cataclysm.” She ran her fingers through her hair, letting her hand linger at the back of her neck where she squeezed the tense muscles. Her voice dropped lower, not quite a whisper but something conspiratorial, wary. She was looking for answers about herself. Can she suppress her power? Can she change herself? Did this mean she should avoid having children? It’s not that she wanted them now, but someday, she figured she would.

“I asked another Atharim scholar for their opinion. He said it’s tied to something called the Unseen Pattern. Supposedly a prophecy, but it’s written in what is called 'preconceptional language’… a kind of thought-form language. There’s no Rosetta Stone for it. Even AI doesn’t have a good interpretation.”

She paused, then glanced at Claude for the first time since she’d started speaking. Her expression wasn’t confident anymore. It was measured. Cautious.

“I’ve read every commentary I can access. None of them agree on what it means. But I swear it feels familiar. Like I’ve seen it before. Maybe in a dream, or…”

She trailed off, then gave a small shrug, forcing the moment back under control. She was no prophet. She next showed him the list of commentaries, some going back two-thousand years of scholars giving their opinions. “Look, I know it’s a long shot, but you’ve always been better with puzzles than I am. This one’s chewing a hole through my brain.”

She crossed back to the laptop and tapped a few keys, bringing the image into sharper resolution.

“I hate these damn prophecies. Do you see anything in it I don’t?”




Link to research information on Nora's wiki: Scroll to Nora's Research section.

[Claude Saint-Clair]

Claude woke up with a headache. It was nothing bad, at least it hadn't been, but it was getting progressively worse as the day went on. What had begun as a dull throb was beginning to pound. Claude hadn't yet shown any sign of discomfort with the possible exception of being slightly quieter than usual. Nora was invested in her work, and Claude was assisting. Another set of eyes never hurt.

As Nora spoke, he paid attention, looking at what she was showing. She was serious and he was too, this clearly meant a lot to her and as she spoke he understood. The word "reversible" stuck out to him. Knowing she was a reborn god, her words hit differently that they would if she hadn't. She didn't want her powers, and was seeking a way to reverse it. The word "cure" came to mind, and Claude felt himself barely hold back a wince at that thought. He had been down a similar path, even if it was different. But Claude could understand, even if that was little.

The image came up and Claude looked it over, hands rubbing his temples as he winced. The headache was becoming unbearable. Claude had never been one to complain about sickness or pain. Even as a child it was usually someone noticing he was sluggish, pale, or wincing in pain that caused people to notice, but he turned to the image, and thought.

"Stars, moon, and sun - astronomical symbols. First thing that comes to mind when I see this is that Mayan calendar that said the world was going to end a few decades ago," he said, pointing at the symbols as he spoke of them. "The dagger and the eye are throwing me - no idea what they mean. The wheel it..." he paused, wondering if it was the headache playing tricks on him. "It almost looks like it's spinning, subtle - but there."

Claude grew silent for a moment, reading the text as much as he could. "He who sees before the sealing may stand outside? Did I get that right?" He said pointing to the bottom. "This looks like ancient Greek here and this..." he pointed to another notation. "This is...odd. I've seen nothing like that before." He kept back from saying that it didn't look even human.

"Excuse me," Claude said, standing suddenly. The headache was still there. He went quickly to his bag and pulled out some ibuprofen and took a couple of pills. Taking pills was an oddity for him, and a statement of how much his pounding head was bothering him.

[Nora Saint-Clair]

Nora didn’t notice it at first. Not really. Claude had always been quieter than her: thoughtful, reserved, annoyingly capable of absorbing things before reacting. So when he didn’t jump in right away with his usual commentary, she assumed he was just mulling it over. Processing. And for a while, everything felt normal. Or what passed for normal these days.

She'd been in the zone, pouring her energy into the glyphs, the prophecy, the pattern. Her voice had been steady, focused on explaining what she’d pieced together. Showing him the scans, the translations, the way the same sigil kept resurfacing across time like a cosmic watermark. The fact that no one had figured out what it all meant drove her up the wall. Claude, though. Claude saw things she didn’t. His brain worked differently. Cleaner. More structured. She needed that. So when he finally spoke, she felt a small rush of relief. She wasn’t doing this alone.

She gave a half-smile when he brought up the Mayan calendar. Of course he’d go there, and nodded along as he traced the astronomical symbols. That was the point. The heavens. Cycles. Endings. It tracked. She leaned in, following his finger to the Latin line at the bottom of the page.

“You got it right,” she said, eyebrows raised. “I triple-checked that translation. It’s been annotated that way across four different sources. Always the same phrasing. He who sees before the sealing may stand outside. It’s the only consistent part.”

She was about to launch into a theory about the eye when he paused, and that’s when she really saw what was happening. The wince. The rubbing of his temples. The sharp, too-quick movement toward his bag. Nora blinked.

“Wait. Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer right away. He was already popping the pills. That, more than anything, made her stomach drop. Claude didn’t do painkillers. Not unless he was on death’s door. As a kid, he’d broken a toe and walked on it for two days before she noticed the limp. As an adult, he wore discomfort like it was a private badge of honor.

“Claude,” she said again, more firmly this time. Her voice softened, but her concern sharpened. “How long has this been happening?”

She moved toward him, abandoning the glowing glyphs on the screen. They could wait.

“You looked tired this morning, but I thought, I don’t know. I figured you were just being quiet. Not dying of a migraine.”

She hesitated, arms folding tight across her chest. Her brain flicked through a dozen possibilities. Stress. Light sensitivity. Something he ate. Or—No. That wasn’t what scared her. What scared her was the possibility that this—whatever was happening to Claude—wasn’t just physical. Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach for him but stopping halfway. She wasn’t great at comfort. She was better at problem-solving. Fixing. Finding meaning in chaos. But Claude wasn’t a mystery to be decoded.

“You’re not having weird visions, are you?” she asked, voice lower now. “Hearing voices? Feeling chills? Please tell me this is just a headache.”

[Claude Saint-Clair]

Nora was concerned - more concerned than he was used to seeing from her. She didn't just ask if he was okay. She abandoned the research she was working on. It was just a headache - a bad one - but still just a headache. That's what he told himself anyways.

"It's just a headache," he told her as well.

Claude could see the disbelief in her eyes. It was a look that said she knew there was more to this than he was saying. Claude sighed and tried to tell himself that he was searching for the words to say instead of trying to ignore the pounding in his head. "It started this morning and has gotten worse as the day has gone on. Nothing more than a headache, no visions, chills, nausea, or voices. Just a headache. I'll hydrate, go to bed early, and will be fine tomorrow."

He spoke the words, but belief didn't reach his eyes. This headache was odd, coming seemingly out of nowhere. If he had other symptoms or had an issue with headaches before he wouldn't have been worried about it. He would have dealt with the pain, and it would have diminished and life would continue as always.

Claude moved back to his seat and sat down, turning once more to the image on the screen. He tried to focus on it, but not for long. Nora was concerned about a headache. That told him something and he wouldn't so casually dismiss her concern. He couldn't. Claude turned back to face her.

"You're worried this is something serious. Maybe I should see a doctor or something?" Claude spoke, keeping his tone light. He wanted her to know that he was really listening and taking her concern seriously. "What has you so concerned?"