Chương 110: Chapter 43: The Test of the Eight Objects

The routine slipped away smooth and sweet for a long time, until the repetition took root in everyone's skin. Until that day arrived; a strong wind blew down from the mountain slopes, and the mist rose from the fierce river like every morning, it was right in the middle of winter, when the snow did not fall too heavily, only covering the world with a quiet and cold mantle. In the ochre room, Valerian, leaning against the wall, announced with his most enigmatic smile: —I have hidden eight objects in the university.

They possess essence of the void. Find them, crimson. He gave no further explanations. There were no verbal clues. Only the challenge, thrown like a gauntlet at her feet. Selena, almost without intending to, found the first one that very afternoon. Back in her room, with her mind still echoing with the challenge, she opened almost by chance a drawer of her desk that she hardly ever used. There, upon dusty papers, was a familiar one.

"Some table," it said, in that trembling and mocking handwriting. Beneath it, another: "Leg." And under that last one, resting like a crystal egg, was a feather. It was from no ordinary bird. Its surface reflected the light not with a metallic sheen, but with the colors of the rainbow, a liquid spectrum that was changing and seemed to pulse with a faint and ancient energy. Upon touching it, a subtle tingling, like the echo of a distant whisper, ran through her fingers.

The second one she found days later, after a late outing to eat with Maya. They were returning laughing down a less traveled hallway near the Cloister of the Forest when Selena felt a tug. It was not physical, but a vibration on the edge of her perception, a sustained note at a frequency that only she seemed to hear. Without explanation, she took off running, leaving a surprised Maya behind. She followed the impulse, turning corners, until she stopped in front of a forgotten niche in a stone wall.

There, half-hidden amidst dry moss, was a wooden toy carved in the shape of a beetle. But the wood was not opaque; it possessed a phantasmal transparency, as if it were carved from ancient ice or from the shell of an alien insect. Maya, catching up to her panting, could only ask: —What happened? Why are you running? Selena showed her the beetle, and in her green eyes was reflected the same unanswered question. The third one arose during a particularly grueling training session with Fjora.

Selena lay on the ground for the umpteenth time, the icy air burning her lungs, when she raised her gaze to the grayish sky in a gesture of pure frustration. Upon lowering it, her sight landed, almost by chance, on the bare crown of a coral tree some distance away. There, amidst the twisted branches, something vibrated. It did not move, but it seemed to pulse with a light that was not light, slightly distorting the air around it. Ignoring the pain, she stood up and walked toward it.

She found a simple dagger, with a short blade and a worn leather hilt. Nothing in its appearance betrayed it as resonant. But when Selena extended her hand, she felt a frequency, a familiar echo that vibrated in harmony with something deep within her own soul. It was as if the object recognized her. The fourth was perhaps the strangest. One day, while she was following Valerian through the tunnels toward her class, a hunch assailed her.

Before the master could react or protest, Selena turned around and took off running in the opposite direction. She did not know where she was going; her feet guided her through a labyrinth of passages that she did not even remember seeing before, as if the essence of the void she sought were pulling an invisible thread tied to her will. Finally, she emerged into a small circular chamber illuminated only by the light entering from a high vent. In the center, upon a stone pedestal covered in dust, was a lamp.

It was neither of tallow nor of gas. Its flame, small and steady, burned with a blue-green color, the hue of deep waters or of the sky in a world she had never seen. Upon returning to the point where she had left Valerian, she found him waiting, leaning against the wall. Upon seeing her with the lamp in hand, his smile widened, a gesture of genuine, mocking glee. —You are becoming predictably unpredictable, crimson —he said, and in his eyes, there was a flash of something that could have been pride.

Two days later, the search became more elusive. Walking near one of the watermills that the university utilized beside the river, Selena felt a calling. It was not a clear tug, but a barely perceptible whisper on the edge of her consciousness, like the echo of a forgotten word. She followed it, her sharpened perception scrutinizing the damp, cold air. She reached the mill, the constant sound of the wheel hitting the water filling the space. But there was nothing there.

Only the air felt a bit denser, heavier upon her shoulders, as if an intangible presence had evaporated moments before her arrival. A sharp, stinging frustration took hold of her. She left there empty-handed and with the sensation of having been on the verge of brushing against something that was slipping away from her. The next clue she felt in the place where she felt most comfortable: the library.

While she was descending toward the eighteenth floor for another immersion into the secrets of Eliud, a different vibration, deeper and more ancient, drew her attention from below. She did not stop at the eighteenth. She kept going down, passing the twentieth, where the air smelled of centuries of cold stone and isolated parchment. The sensation guided her down to the twenty-seventh floor, a level so deep that the silence was absolute, a physical weight upon the eardrums.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. There, amidst shelves of black ebony that did not seem to reflect a single glint of light, she began to run her fingers one by one along the spines. She did not know what she was looking for, she only trusted the tingling that grew in her fingertips. Until she found it. A simple book, bound in worn brown leather, with no visible title.

Upon touching it, a faint warmth, like the last breath of a body when it is very cold, ran through her fingers. She opened it. It was written in Volg-Thûr, a dead language used for ancient laws and for the most sacred, secret texts. Selena, after a long time, was already capable of reading it, although certain words cost her effort. Her philologist's mind immersed itself in the reading, deciphering the symbols with a mixture of fascination and growing unease.

It was a secret treatise, a hidden chronicle of a concealed branch of the church called "the Rotten Sap." According to its pages, this faction was not dedicated to venerating the flow of life, nor to pursuing or extirpating. Its purpose, kept in silence for millennia, was different: to track, identify, and find those touched by the power of the Void: the resonants. A brotherhood of locators within the cult itself, whose ultimate motives the text only hinted at with a veil of ominous mystery.

A chill ran down her spine, the memories of what she had read so long ago in the library of Corren came back to her. Upon turning to the next page, her finger brushed the parchment bookmark that someone had left there. It was a simple piece, with no markings. Out of curiosity, she tried to bend it a little. It did not yield. She applied more force. Nothing. The thin piece of parchment was more rigid than tempered steel. She took it between her thumb and index finger.

It weighed disproportionately, as if that small rectangle contained the weight of a small stone, perhaps a full kilogram in the palm of her hand. It was no ordinary bookmark. It was the fifth object. That same day, with the adrenaline of discovery still rushing through her veins, she headed to the Cloister of the Sky, Ren's residence. It was an open place, a sort of artificial meadow on a high terrace, with the clear sky like a perfect canvas, inviting the contemplation of the stars as night fell.

She found Ren practicing fencing movements with a wooden sword against a post. —Ren —Selena called out, approaching— Fight with me. I only lose to Fjora, that frustrates me. Ren laughed, a sincere sound that echoed in the quiet air. —Are you sure? I don't want the hereditary duchess to end up with more bruises than her guardian already gives her. A smile on just one side of her face was born on Selena, surely a small sigh escaped her.

—Very sure —she replied, already shedding her blanket and adopting a basic stance with her empty hands, ready for the hand-to-hand combat they sometimes practiced. Ren accepted, putting away his practice sword. Before they began, Selena felt another of those slight tugs, this time coming from behind the block of rooms. Without giving explanations, she walked a few paces away, crouched down beside a large, flat stone that seemed part of the landscape, and with an effort, lifted it a little.

Beneath it, glowing faintly against the dark earth, was a thread. Not of silk or linen, but of a material that seemed made of solidified light, of a pale and steady gold. Upon taking it, the thread was soft yet unbreakable. And upon staring at it for a few seconds, a slight dizziness, a sensation of sweet vertigo, invaded her, as if the thread were connected to an abyss of possibilities. The sixth object. Then, they fought. Eight times.

It was a close, sweaty combat, full of blocked blows, applied locks, and takedowns. In the end, the score was five victories for Ren, three for Selena. In the last fight, after a well-placed movement from Ren sent her to the ground of the meadow, he extended his hand to help her up. —Incredibly skilled for a novice —he said, with genuine respect in his voice. Selena, panting but satisfied, protested as she stood up: —I've been practicing for months!

—She opened her hands, showing the hard, yellowish calluses that now adorned her palms, maps of her determination. They parted with a complicit smile. Returning to her cloister, Selena decided to detour to the open-air thermal baths used by some students, fed by a current diverted from the river. While she bathed under a hot and revitalizing stream, she felt another vibration. This time, it came from near the baths, in the direction of the river itself, beneath the fast and frothy current.

When she finished bathing and dressed, she finally tried to reach it from the shore, stretching out her arm, but the current was too strong, the location too precise in the center. Without thinking twice, she tied one of the safety ropes that hung from a post around her waist and, with determination, plunged into the freezing, rushing water. The current buffeted her, but she fought against it, submerging herself briefly.

She extended her hand toward where she felt the calling, her fingers searching among the stones of the bed. And there, her hand closed around something smooth and cold. Upon rising to the surface, shivering but triumphant, she opened her fist. It was a stone. But no ordinary stone. It was of obsidian, of an absolute and deep black. Furthermore, it weighed nothing. Nothing at all. Holding it was like holding a bubble of solid darkness. The seventh object.

That night, after another hot bath to drive away the cold from the river, she fell into a deep and restorative sleep. Upon waking, with the first light of dawn filtering through her window, she looked directly at the calendar; it was the day to present the objects. But she only had seven. The memory of the mill, of the evasive whisper and the heavy air, haunted her. She could not show up with an incomplete task. So, after dressing in a warm dress of fine, lined fur, she ran back to the mill.

This time, she did not rely only on her perception. She took a small, empty glass vial she had with her, and in the very place where the air had felt dense, she opened the stopper and, with a deliberate movement as if catching an invisible butterfly, caught air inside the flask. She closed it quickly. Inside, nothing seemed to change, but Selena felt that she had captured something: the residual essence, the ghostly trace of the object that had been there.

Her eighth object was, in reality, the tangible absence, the shadow of what had escaped her. Later, after a medicine class with Anselmo where the old master showed them, with chilling examples, how mixing two seemingly beneficial resins could create a slow poison that, over the years, ate away at bones with insidious fungal diseases, Selena headed to her meeting with Valerian. She had achieved it.

She now held the eight objects, and her chest swelled with the accomplishment, her walk unusually confident, brushing nobles aside in her path like a knife cuts through silk. She did not think of them, nor of the feigned curtsies or the whispers that choked upon crossing her. Her mind was elsewhere, there, on the hourglass, waiting to satiate that unwholesome curiosity that had been corroding her since the jester's first enigmatic word.

She was just one step away from knowing why Valerian had handed her that riddle.