Chương 169: Chapter 30: A Stain in the Weave

Thus, the weeks began to pass, dizzying in their monotony and restoring rhythm. The elections were held; Maya went to vote, returning exhausted from the civic hustle and bustle. When Selena's arm was finally back to one hundred percent, certified by Anselmo with a grunt of approval and a warning never to be so reckless again, the young resonant resumed her lessons with Remo.

The routine solidified like forming crystal: mornings dedicated to the study of medicine alongside Hassan and Ralish in the library, immersing themselves in notes on anatomy, pharmacopoeia, and clinical cases; afternoons of Spartan training with Remo, where meditation under interference and unyielding combat molded her body as well as her concentration; nights in her room where, accompanied by Fjora and Samira, she devoted herself to the rigorous study of Norrun, immersing herself in the language until she dreamed of its guttural declensions.

Each day spent with both women brought them closer. With her growing understanding of Norrun, Fjora slowly opened up with anecdotes from her childhood. —In my land, we say Thrumir bless you. He is the chief god of the pantheon, the deity of storms —when the Khelganor warrior spoke, her eyes shone with a different light— As we grow up, there is a saying repeated in every village: "Give the girl a dagger and a doll; let her know her duty lies with both."

The weekends brought a different kind of respite: outings with Maya and Ren to taverns, strolls through Kaelburg, or simply sitting by the river talking about nothing and everything. There were festive days, such as the Festival of the Golden Flow, where the Church of the Eternal Sap celebrated the sun's zenith and the vital force of plant life. It was a sacred yet joyous holiday where people splashed one another with water that was scented and tinted gold, symbolizing the eternal flow of life.

Selena, Maya, and Ren joined the crowd, ending up soaked and laughing, the golden water staining their clothes, skin, and hair with an ephemeral, celebratory shimmer. When Pyr, the final month of summer, arrived, the university began to regain its vital pulse. Pyr was the month of preparation, when noble students prepared to return after all, they constituted the majority.

Meanwhile, the few free citizens, children of magnates, ambitious burghers, foreign students, and scholars on exceptional talent grants began to repopulate the halls and classrooms once more, filling the holiday silence with the anticipatory murmur of the new cycle, albeit with a clear difference in their arrival times. A Thyll fell, and with it came the first day of Mycath, the first month of autumn.

Although the leaves still retained their green, they were beginning to show the first timid flashes of yellow and red at their edges, as if the trees knew change was inevitable but had decided to take it slowly. The air, previously heavy and hot, acquired a slight crispness in the mornings a whisper of what was to come. Selena headed to the Atrium of Wisdom beneath that nascent autumn sky. Her destination was the massive central hourglass, its metallic grains continuing to flow with eternal patience.

And there, as agreed, stood Isolde. The master of the written touch seemed carved from perennial gravity itself. Her black robe, with its characteristic violet trim, was immaculate without a single wrinkle, without a speck of dust. Her face, with its sharp features and eyes like tempered steel, showed no emotion upon seeing Selena. Only a faint, almost imperceptible nod. Without a word, Isolde activated the secret mechanism at the base of the hourglass.

With the familiar grinding of stone against stone, a section of the floor slid away, revealing the staircase that descended into the hidden passages. Selena followed her, her footsteps echoing down the spiral of gray stone. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. They walked in silence through the labyrinth of tunnels until reaching one of the many teaching rooms Selena now recognized.

It was austere and circular, with smooth stone walls and a simple table of dark wood. Isolde motioned for her to sit. Selena obeyed, placing her hands on the table and feeling the chill of the polished wood. Isolde stood before a small slate blackboard, though she took no chalk. Instead, she turned to Selena, her voice clear, cold, and projected like a scalpel, filling the room.

—Isabella of Solendra —she began, pronouncing her name with the precision of a verdict— The only noble resonant in five thousand years, ever since Eliud Volgthar founded Erabergh and established that the echo would be a state secret, not a toy for the aristocracy. She paused; her gray eyes locked onto Selena's. —His Majesty spoke directly with me to grant that you be taught the written touch... properly. With all the consequences.

—She sighed, a short, dry sound— I suppose Valerian, as usual behind his mask of a theatrical fool, did not explain it to you with the necessary starkness, but I will. As clear as the day I gave you your first lesson on the echo, almost exactly a year ago. Isolde sat down then, crossing one leg over the other in a fluid motion. Her posture commanded absolute authority, yet it also carried an ancient fatigue, that of someone who has delivered warnings many times, knowing they often fall on deaf ears.

—From the written touch and the spoken echo —she continued, her tone strict and pedagogical— there arises, in theory, an imagined resonant. It sounds poetic, doesn't it? Imagined. As if it were the pinnacle of art, pure creation. However, it is dangerous. So dangerous that it was what consumed Eliud before his time and you should know this by now, after what you witnessed. Another pause, allowing the name of the first king and the shadow of the dungeon to resonate in the cold air.

—In the millennia that this kingdom has been teaching resonants, recruiting them, finding them... the conscious crossing of these paths has not occurred, not because it wasn't tried. It was tried, not once, nor a few times. Many. Isolde placed her hands on the table and began moving her fingers one by one, as if counting a litany of failures. —The echo, Elizabeth, always comes to life.

It does not matter which path you use: the spoken path, with its words that burn the soul; the written path, with its strokes that steal time; even the imagined path, in its purest and most theoretical form, does not escape this. But perception... perception is the fundamental problem. She leaned forward slightly, her gaze intensifying. —You see what you shouldn't. The reality of the Void, and how it infiltrates our own. Where pain is not merely a sensation, but a shape you can see twisting in the air.

Where smell has texture, and you can touch it. Where sounds have color, and colors have taste. Your senses, trained for a coherent world, will not know how to handle that... superposition. They will grow confused, they will rebel, and sometimes, they will break. She stopped moving her fingers, her hand resting motionless, a pale claw against the dark wood. —But the main problem, the most insidious one, is that the Echo or the Void, whichever you prefer to call it, does not remain solely within your perception.

It infiltrates reality. It leaves it... cursed. You know this very well. I know from the reports what happened in the dungeon. Those horrors were not mere illusions; they were alternate realities, distortions that had solidified over millennia, fed by an imagined resonant who mastered power until the end of his life and that is why they endure. The air in the room seemed to solidify with every syllable, yet the master lowered her voice, making it even more ominous.

—If a novice resonant, an apprentice who barely understands the fundamentals, mixes the paths and their perception shifts... even if they never manage to touch the imagined echo, they will leave a stain. A stain in the weave of reality. Their corrupted essence will cause nearby animals to mutate, and drive people mad with shared nightmares. And in the best cases, the least catastrophic, it will simply cause the place where they died, or where they lost control, to become haunting.

A place where the air feels colder, where shadows move on their own, where animal instinct screams at you to flee. Forever. Now everything clicked in Selena's mind. She realized that the echo was what had birthed most of the myths and legends she had heard. Yet this explained even further the ominous nature of ghost stories in the world, the shadows that stalked people, and places with perpetually altered climates, it was the legacy of the cursed who had been reckless.