Elara smiled. She touched the wood, and for the first time in centuries, the Index did not add a new line.
The Index looked like a card catalog made of dark, oil-rubbed wood, but it had no drawers. Instead, it was a single, continuous slab, and on it, names appeared in silver script, one by one, line by line. Each name was followed by a date of loss, a location, and a single, quiet word: waiting . index of lost
But around it, a dozen new names had appeared. And at the very top, in letters that seemed to burn, a new heading had written itself: Elara smiled