The Second Eye

They prepared the solvent in careful increments. Too little would leave the later pigment intact. Too much could disturb the ancient layer beneath it. Psy tested the mixture against fragments recovered from the edge of the mural, adjusting its mineral balance until the surface response slowed.
She selected the curve she had first noticed.
Under magnification, it did not resemble a fracture. The line widened and narrowed deliberately. On one side, ancient blue pigment formed a shallow arc. On the other, the same pigment curved in the opposite direction.
Symmetry.
Psy placed the solvent against the wall.
The later pigment softened almost reluctantly. She lifted it one translucent layer at a time, transferring each fragment to the preservation field beside her. A thread of blue appeared beneath the black.
Eira leaned closer.
“That is not part of the collar,” she whispered.
Psy continued.
The blue line curved upward, surrounded by a band of faded white and a darker border. It resembled the left edge of the Undivided One’s eye, but that was impossible. The known eye already occupied the center of the face beneath a later layer of soot.
She exposed another fraction.
The shape widened.
Eira’s luminous markings went still.
“Stop,” she said.
Psy froze.
Neither of them spoke. Eira’s hands formed no qualifying geometry. Even the light beneath her skin had become motionless. For a Neyran, the absence of all three layers of expression conveyed more than silence alone.
The restoration instrument continued recording, its quiet pulse marking each passing measure.
“What do you see?” Psy asked.
“I see why someone covered it.”
Psy shifted the light. Her mind resisted the image because every familiar proportion declared it wrong. The curve was too far from the center. No Neyran artist would place an eye there. No Neyran face could possess the balance suggested by the hidden lines.
Unless the face had not been Neyran.
She moved to the opposite side of the central axis and scanned beneath the later pigment. An answering curve appeared there, equidistant from the center.
Two eyes.
Not one eye divided by damage. Not a later symbolic addition. Two complete eyes positioned across the face, each painted with deliberate anatomical detail.
Psy stepped back.
The Undivided One had been given the face of an unknown being.