Chương 47: Chapter 46: Just a Slave's Tale

Only after finishing the soup —that thick, hot mixture, rich in fat and oil that filled her stomach and returned warmth to her body— did Selena return to the book. Her fingers caressed the leather spine before opening it to where she had left off. Numan of Zison, the wandering chronicler, had spent pages upon pages gathering short stories.

Selena read about children who got lost in the woods and were devoured by beasts; about the Dentus, powerful creatures that lurked in the rivers with teeth capable of snapping a leg in a single bite; about the terrible Corros of the marshes, whose breath could melt flesh and leave only bare, bleached bones. They were tales to frighten little ones, survival lessons disguised as warnings. But one of them was different.

Numan introduced it with the same solemnity he used on every page:"Collected from the fringes of the Great Duchy of Verrion, transmitted only by slaves. Here I present a story I have decided to title 'The Girl Who Spoke to the Void'." The note gave the tale a different weight, a sense of truth arising from the lowest and most forgotten strata of society. It was the voice of the voiceless, the whisper of those who lived on the edges, in the margins, in the gaps where the light did not reach.

Selena immersed herself in the reading:"Once upon a time, in the most miserable slums of a lost village near the dangerous rivers, there lived a girl named Eldra whose only friend was an old, half-blind anurhy. One day, the anurhy fell gravely ill. Disconsolate, Eldra ran beyond the safe limits, where adults forbade her to go. In a forgotten grotto among copper-scaled ferns, she found a man in a gray robe, a sage of the Path of the Inner Voice, meditating in silence. He did not speak to her of gods or prayers.

Instead, he told her: 'Fear screams, but truth whispers. If you want to save your friend, listen to the silence of his being, not your own noise.' Confused, Eldra returned home and sat beside her dying anurhy. Instead of crying, she closed her eyes and listened. She did not listen with her ears, but with her heart. And in the deep silence of her love, she felt the weak, faltering flow of life in her friend, a rhythm as subtle as that of a moth in the night.

Without thinking, without words, she placed her hands upon the amphibian, and a gentle heart, like dawn upon the bark of a glass tree, flowed from her into him. It was not a loud miracle, but a simple and profound flow that restored balance, like sap returning to a tree in spring. The anurhy opened his large eyes, healed, and let out a croak of joy.

And Eldra knew, without anyone telling her, that true magic lay not in pleading with the gods, but in listening to the whisper of life itself, the same that guides the chelokran by thermal patterns and the bee toward the flower and having the courage to respond." This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Her heart skipped a beat.

Selena left the book open on the desk, her trembling hands pulling away from the pages as if the paper might burn her. She finally knew. This was what she was looking for, the closest she had come to understanding everything. But her mind was a mess of a thousand questions, a whirlwind of ideas spinning out of control, crashing into each other like frightened birds in a cage. Gradually, her breathing slowed. She inhaled deeply, held the air for a moment, and then let it escape slowly, very slowly.

The exercise calmed her, stilled the internal storm until she could think clearly. It's magic, she thought, and a smile touched her lips, almost as if she could taste a profound, long-awaited answer. For the first time, I've found it. Not in a spellbook, not in an occult treatise, but in a slave story, in a tale about a girl and her anurhy. She returned to the thought, letting ideas flow as naturally as the water of a stream: Maybe that's how this body was healed when I arrived here.

With the same energy that flowed from Eldra toward that anurhy. The blood that disappeared, the wound that closed... maybe it wasn't a dream. Maybe it was this. But her pragmatic mind, that heritage of a man of the earth that still inhabited some corner of her being, forced her to consider other possibilities. I must be pragmatic. Perhaps it's just a slave's tale. Another story to endure the hardness of life, to believe there is something beyond suffering. But it's the best I have had so far.

It's more than I've ever had. Then something else struck her chest, an uncomfortable thought she couldn't ignore. Corren. The master had hinted that she should look into legends, that she would find answers there about the origin of her words, about that ancient knowledge that sprouted from her without her knowing why. But he had also said, quite clearly, that magic did not exist. That was only in storybooks and ancient folklore.

Selena shook her head repeatedly, over and over, as if the movement could help her process the contradiction. Until another thought reached her head, calmer, more logical: He's hiding something. But it's not that he doesn't want to tell me; it's that he can't tell me. There is something about this that he cannot reveal. Maybe because he doesn't fully trust me. Maybe because saying it openly would endanger everyone. Maybe because... With no goddess acting in this world. No deities answering prayers.

But perhaps with magic. A different kind of magic, not of spells and wands, but of flows and balances, of listening to the whisper of life and responding with the heart. Nothing fit in her head. The pieces of the puzzle refused to come together. Why would they prohibit it? she wondered and then tried to give herself an answer. That's why they burn the heretics. Because they have the freedom to know the truth of the world.

Because they know the gods do not listen, that prayers are empty, that the only thing that really matters is the flow of life and the ability of conscious beings to connect with it. The church doesn't persecute heretics for thinking differently. It persecutes them because they are right. The thought left her breathless. If it were true —if magic existed in this world under another form, under another name— then everything she thought she knew about Erabergh wavered.

The structures of power, the church, the nobility, everything was built upon a lie. And the heretics, those outcasts who meditated in caves and preached critical thinking, were the only ones telling the truth.