The Keeper, who had accompanied her once again, drawn as always by the pull of whatever significant truth the ancient system revealed, stared at the key with an expression of genuine astonishment.
"I know this key," it said slowly. "From legends so old they had faded to little more than rumor even in my earliest ages of service."
"What legends?" Liora asked.
"The Key of Conclusions," the Keeper said, its voice carrying reverence. "It was thought destroyed long before the First Revision ever began. A relic capable, according to the oldest accounts I ever encountered, of granting an ending to any story, no matter how thoroughly it had resisted resolution."
Liora stared at the key resting quietly upon its pedestal, feeling the weight of its significance settle over her, and understood, with growing certainty, that whatever role it was destined to play in the confrontation ahead, it would matter more than almost anything else they had discovered within the Vault's countless secrets.
