If you've spent any time with The Voynich Key, you've met the Keeper. Ancient, patient, sitting in his underground chamber beneath Prague like a man who has simply decided that time is someone else's problem. He shows up, he drops a few world-altering revelations, and then the story moves on without ever asking the obvious question: how on earth did he end up down there?
The Keeper's Oath answers that question.
It's a prequel novella set in 1586 Prague — Rudolf II's court, John Dee chasing forbidden knowledge, and a young translator named Tomáš Věrný who really should have kept his head down and his nose in other people's manuscripts. Instead, he finds himself caught between a brilliant but dangerously ambitious count, an Englishman who knows more than he's telling, and a crack in the fabric of reality that has been quietly making things worse for a century.
It's the origin story of a man who chose to disappear so that everyone else could keep going — and it costs him rather more than he expected.
The novella is free for subscribers, and it slots neatly before the events of The Voynich Key if you want to read the series in order, or stands perfectly well on its own if you just want a standalone story about Prague, impossible choices, and the particular loneliness of being the only person in the room who understands what's at stake.
Fair warning: you may find yourself feeling unexpectedly sorry for someone who has had four hundred years to get used to his situation.