"For those who come after!"

Onethrîn
Feb 18
7 min read

Updated: Feb 20

The cold winter sun lit up the workshop with a soft glow, casting a few rays of light onto the worn wood of the shelves that lined the room. I was wandering between the workbenches, mechanically putting a few volumes back in their place, when my gaze fell on a notebook with a worn binding lying among other books on my worktable. As I ran my fingers over its weathered leather cover, it seemed strange to me that I had never recorded its origin in my own journals.

Yet I remembered the circumstances in which it had been entrusted to me, so to speak, during a journey that had begun with an old story heard on the road. It spoke of an isolated manor house, abandoned for generations, where it was said that certain artworks refused to die. That was enough to pique my curiosity, and naturally I mentioned it to my sister Lyraën, the Chromarch, mistress of colours and harmonies in painted worlds, who was just as intrigued by this kind of story as I was. So we set off in search of this manoir with its immortal works of art...

The journey had taken us to Lumière, a city much more modern than those I was used to exploring. In one of its old neighbourhoods, where some houses seemed to have been forgotten by the city itself, stood a massive mansion, set apart from the busiest streets. Its dark façade, still marked by its opulent architecture, hinted at a once prestigious place, now frozen in time. Its tall windows, opaque with dust, gave no clue as to what lay inside.

Inside, the space was organised around a vast hall of impressive proportions dominated by a richly decorated coffered ceiling. A wide staircase rose in its centre, framed by ornate balustrades, while wall lights diffused a warm, almost golden light, which was strange for an abandoned place. There were many paintings there, finished works and old sketches, as if several generations of painters had succeeded one another without ever really leaving the place, making it a showcase for their work. Lyraën lingered in front of each canvas, probing the very energy of the pigments.

From the hall, several corridors branched off, leading to the different wings of the mansion. We wandered through them at a leisurely pace, discovering cosy living rooms with bookcases laden with books and bedrooms whose furniture seemed to be waiting for a return that would never come.

After climbing the wide central staircase, we took the main corridor on the upper floor. Wide open, it retained a certain solemnity. At the end of this row of rooms was the one we were looking for.

The door opened onto a space that seemed to defy the proportions of the rest of the house. Here, the ceilings rose so high that they were almost lost in the darkness. Thick panels of crimson velvet hung from invisible peaks, framing openings of dizzying verticality. Beneath our feet, the dark floor, marbled with cobalt reflections, was strewn with a few blank canvases and solitary easels, while a small low table, cluttered with vials and paintbrushes, bore witness to work that had been abruptly interrupted. No one could say how long ago, however.

In this absolute silence, the room felt more like a sanctuary than a studio. In its centre, in a sort of chiaroscuro, an imposing canvas sat enthroned on a large stretcher. Surrounded by an antique, heavily carved frame, it was made up of deep blues, milky whites and charcoal blacks, which formed an unstable composition. The shapes seemed to overlap without ever quite settling, as if the landscape refused to be captured. At times, a dark mass appeared to rise up in the centre, dominating the scene, while at others it dissolved, giving way to other lines and uncertain structures. A small stool was placed just in front of it, a humble invitation to sit down to create or, perhaps, to lose oneself in the abyss of the painting.

My sister described the work in great detail. Being a paintress herself, Lyraën was skilled in the art of seeing beyond the paint and brushstrokes. She could easily distinguish between simple representations frozen in time and embodied works, where the sketched world came to life. Unsurprisingly, this canvas was of the latter kind, which is what led us to explore it.

Attentive to the invisible threads of the artwork, Lyraën perceived this world as much as it perceived her, and so she seemed to be conversing with the vast and changing landscape that opened up before us. The pale, windswept plains gave way to darker, almost mineral-like areas, then to expanses saturated with unreal colours, where even the light itself seemed altered. For several days we explored this fantastic place, discovering its different biomes, eagerly scanning our surroundings and the horizon. We had travelled through these places as one travels through an ancient country, careful not to disturb what lay before us.

The exploration had been generous: we had gathered precious ingredients along the way, taken sparingly. Whether they were plants with unstable properties, mineral fragments charged with a dull energy, or residues impossible to observe outside this world, I already knew, without yet naming them, that they would join the reagents in my workshop.

As we continued on our way, our eyes were constantly drawn to the north, where a dark mass of monumental proportions stood. This monolith, which seemed to dominate the entire landscape, did not seem to elicit any reaction from those we believed to be the only indigenous people; they went about their business with disconcerting indifference, as if this cyclopean presence were nothing more than an insignificant geographical accident.

But this apparent apathy did not apply to all the inhabitants of the canvas. We soon learned that some of them lived under the threat of what they called ‘gommage’ – an obscure process involving the gradual disappearance of part of the population. From their home town, they regularly organised expeditions to march north and challenge the fate they attributed to the black structure.

However, these rumours of determined walkers soon ceased to be mere travel tales. At a bend in the winding path, as we made our way towards the monolith, we discovered a camp, cleverly positioned set back from the path to provide shelter from the elements. Its location was marked by a black flag bearing a golden 33. Around us, the traces seemed to indicate that it had been abandoned recently, in a hurry. An abandoned water bottle lay near the extinguished hearth, for example. We methodically inspected the site, searching through the cold ashes and observing the arrangement of the stones that had served as seats, but it was only when we probed the rock face that we made our discovery. In a deep crevice, sheltered from water infiltration, we found what its occupants had taken care to protect before fleeing northwards. It was a notebook with a worn binding, carefully wrapped in an armband in the same colours as the flag. A brief note accompanied it: ‘For those who come after!’.

I carefully unfolded the armband before immersing myself in reading what turned out to be a rigorous observation report, intended for the apprentices of the person who must have kept it. Every change in terrain and every variation in climate was recorded with surgical precision. Added to these observations were accounts of the adventures experienced by the members of the expedition. Along the way, the original handwriting had been replaced by another, fine and nervous script. Just as I was about to put it back where I had found it – after all, it was not addressed to me – a final note caught my attention. Scribbled hastily on the very last page, it implored that a hand unrelated to the canvas take possession of the journal so that the memory of the explorers would live on beyond the painting. So I took it with me and slipped it into my luggage.

This extra weight in my bag sealed the end of our journey. The exploration could not go on indefinitely. The world of the canvas, as vast and fascinating as it was, was not ours. We had travelled far and wide across its shifting lands and observed its inhabitants; it was time to turn back. This decision imposed itself, even if leaving this place was like closing a book that we knew we would never be able to read again in quite the same way. Lyraën, silent, engraved every nuance, every vibration of colour in her mind one last time, preserving a living echo of this world long after our return.

The passage out of the canvas had been almost imperceptible. In an instant, we found ourselves back in the hall of the manor house, facing the silent work of art. Nothing had changed, and yet we were no longer quite the same. The Expedition 33 notebook, now in my possession, carried a new weight: that of the voices it preserved and the stories rescued from oblivion. We left the place knowing that this world would continue to exist beyond our gaze, indifferent to our departure.

 Today, the fragments brought back from the world of the canvas lie in my studio, mixed with the powders and essences that I usually collect. Plants with unstable properties, mineral residues and those few unnameable fragments gradually blended into my compositions, infusing my preparations with a subtle energy. The stories in the journal, meanwhile, fed my mind with new ideas, and I like to think that, in the dragon eggs that followed, a fragment of the expedition's adventurers survives, carrying the memory of this world of pigments.