Chương 196: Chapter 55: A Non-Negotiable Deal

With a smooth motion, she opened the book. Eliud's handwriting on the first few pages was neat and precise, the calligraphy of a man who still believed he could tame knowledge through order. Yet as Selena progressed, following the account of how his power grew and intertwined with his life, the script began to alter. It became more hurried; the strokes broadened in some paragraphs and narrowed in others, as if the hand guiding them responded directly to the quickening pulse of a heart burdened by growing grief.

There were erasures, words underlined with fury, and margins crowded with annotations branching outward like roots of anxiety. This is, Selena thought with a shudder of recognition, what a translation could never capture. The expurgated version she had read was a dried corpse; this was the living body, still warm, its veins pulsing and muscles strained by the effort of containing a soul on the verge of fracturing. She went straight to the passage detailing the creation of his first Resonant object.

Eliud, like her, had employed an impregnation method, yet with one fundamental difference: he had not forged the piece himself. His wife, a talented artisan, had crafted a fine silver bracelet adorned with patterns reflecting love. He, in an intimate ritual charged with emotional significance, had poured his willpower and blood into it, weaving with the written touch upon the metal not to master an element, but to safeguard an affection. It was, in essence, another form of creation.

Not as technically complex as the method Selena had learned from Sulfic's volume, yet infinitely richer in warmth and human worth a quiet reminder that before he became the first king and the founding Resonant, Eliud had been a man who loved. Then she arrived at the account that, when read long ago in the version granted by the King, had made her tremble with horror: the night Eliud, laying siege to the bandits' hideout, had melted the attackers' armor with a spell of concentrated heat.

The description was graphic, brutal. Yet here, in the original manuscript, the coldness of historical fact was shattered by its author's trace. Right after the phrase "it had to be done," the ink was smeared and stained, as though a tear or the tremor of a hand had fallen upon the parchment at the moment of writing. A reminder etched in ink and salt: even the strongest man, the one carrying the destiny of a kingdom, weeps in private for the lives he takes, even if taken in the name of a greater good.

Barbarity, even when justified, leaves its scar upon the soul long before it leaves its mark on history. A few minutes later, her eyes found the chapter she had been seeking almost unconsciously: Eliud's investigation into how to summon a creature of the Void. The description was meticulous, alarmingly detailed. The circle of blood was no mere symbol; it was a conceptual gateway, and drawing it demanded a mental state almost contradictory for a Resonant.

It had to be created with the intention of drawing the echo without harnessing it, treading the very razor's edge where arcane energy is simultaneously activated and contained. The circle itself could be inscribed in any language though Eliud named Volg-Thûr and Veritasilba, the Resonant clarified that language was irrelevant; what truly mattered was the central element: the imposition of pure thought upon the blood as it flowed.

Then, the practitioner had to stand at the center and employ the spoken echo, yet not in the usual manner. It was not a spell of command or transformation, but of calling. Of need. Of supplication. An invitation issued from conscious vulnerability, not from strength. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The marginal notes surrounding the diagram of the circle were packed with warnings written in an increasingly tense hand:"The primary complication regarding creatures of the Void is that they invariably answer the call of a Resonant who possesses the means to summon them to strike a covenant. Yet their presence implies no obligation. It does not bind them to listen to you, nor to aid you, nor even to respect your life or that of any human in their vicinity.

As I have previously stated, they are ineffable, essentially imperceptible. They possess no scent, no discernible texture, nor do they make sounds audible to others. Only the practitioner who summons them is capable of perceiving them of 'hearing' their presence. They may not even materialize before you, choosing instead to follow you throughout your entire life without intervening, merely observing, measuring this new reality into which they have been drawn." To a certain extent, Selena already knew this.

Cassian, the King's advisor, held a contract with one such entity, and their relation resembled a watchful coexistence far more than an alliance. Yet Eliud's next annotation clarified the possible terms of such pacts:"They may demand things. The most common price is ever the weight of blood, whether one's own or another's, yet conditioned upon a specific emotion arising from slaughter or sacrifice.

I have known of others that desire only memories from the invoker, tearing away precious moments and leaving voids in their mind. Others demand parts of the physical body of the one who summons them: an eye, a finger, a piece of skin. Some carry away emotions forever, leaving you incapable of feeling genuine joy or sorrow. And there are those, the most insidious, that require you to consciously stain your soul by committing an act of such moral depravity that they may savor the maelstrom of your guilt and anguish."

"In exchange," the script continued, now smaller, as if Eliud hesitated to reveal it,"I have managed to determine only three categories of benefits they may bestow upon you. The first is the most common: protection. They will guard you as their 'contractor,' yet it is a capricious protection subject to their own inscrutable judgment. And should they perish in this realm, if you summon them anew, they will demand the price once more.

The second benefit is arcane knowledge: they grant you, without requiring your understanding, temporary or permanent mastery over a branch of Void magic, a power foreign to the comprehension demanded by the echo. And the third..." Here, the ink appeared to have dried more heavily.

"Those that demand parts of the body often offer this: in exchange for a fragment of yourself, they grant you a fragment of them of their impossible body. Warning: the entities seeking this long to infiltrate our reality through the creation of an artificial vessel, an avatar. They are constructing something here, using pieces of Resonants."

The final line was underlined twice, with a stroke so firm it nearly breached the parchment:"In short, every entity of the Void will offer you but a single deal, non-negotiable. It will never reveal what it will grant you in return until after the payment has been delivered. Remember this above all else: refusing to fulfill your part once requested... will result in your murder. Not out of malice, but through the cold logic of a debt owed." Selena closed the book gently, yet she did not push it away.

Her palms remained rested upon the cover, feeling the echo of those words of that final warning resounding in the quiet chamber like the chime of a bronze bell at the bottom of a deep well. The knowledge now rested there, within her hands and within her mind, no longer filtered by transcriptions or censors. It was raw, dangerous, and profoundly human.

Much like the first king, Selena felt the dual weight of that truth: the shelter of understanding, and the dread of knowing precisely how far the abyss could reach should she choose to peer into it.