.The study smelled of old paper and cedarwood, the kind of scent that had soaked into the wallsover decades and could never fully be aired out. Serena had come to associate it with stillness,with the particular quiet that only existed in the hours after midnight, when the estate stoppedperforming and simply breathed. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the low table, themedallion resting in her open palm, a lamp pulled close enough that its warm light caught everygroove and faded edge of the engraving.She had been staring at it for the better part of an hour.The symbol pressed into its face was unlike anything she had seen before,not a family crest,not a religious emblem. It was circular, layered, like one ring inside another, with a smallanchor-like figure at its center. The metal itself was old, darker at the edges where hands hadworn it smooth over years of handling. Someone had loved this object, or at least kept it closefor a very long time, and that fact al
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