Chương 78: Chapter 11: Intellectual Curiosity

She thought of everything, and the possibilities unfolded before her like a fan of paths branching out in the forest of her mind. Theology to unravel the mysteries of the church that dominated the kingdom, to comprehend the gears of that monster of faith and power that had lit pyres and molded consciences for millennia.

Moreover, she could study philosophy standing out among all, immersing herself in the currents of thought that had shaped the ideas of Corren and the heretics of the cave, finding in their words the echo of the great thinkers of another life. After all, her heart always pulled strongly toward the academic, and there was nothing more academic than the art of thinking with depth, that exercise of dissecting reality with the scalpel of reason.

Although alchemy caught her heart's attention with the strength of a rising tide. Alchemy and science, the study of the transformations of matter, the art of combining, separating, and transmuting. She could help the world in ways no one had ever imagined, her heart galloped with the possibility not only of helping but of learning again, of becoming once more that student who devoured books with the greed of one discovering a new universe.

The formulas, the experiments, the possibility that the knowledge could be translated into remedies, into relief, into life... it was an intellectual seduction that made her fingers vibrate with the need to write, to note, to comprehend. But the end, like an immovable point, loomed over her.

A destiny that was not that of the philologist nor that of the academic, but that of the intruder who had seen the cough of blood paint the lips of a boy in a shack of branches, who had felt in her own hands the blood of a woman decapitated for a title that was not hers. Medicine and healing. Being able to heal children like Lykos, to return to them the breath that poverty and indifference stole from them drop by drop.

With that thought, a memory emerged, clear as a mirror of still water, so vivid that for an instant the aroma of books and wax vanished to give way to another time, another place. A man of dark complexion laughing, with that laugh that was simultaneously frustration and affection, talking about polymerase as if it were an indecipherable hieroglyph, of cranial nerves that had to be memorized with the precision of a surgeon, of the Krebs cycle that repeated in his nightmares like a biological mantra.

Román, the friend she had left behind in another existence, in another world, in another skin. The one who complained that the human body was an enigma too complex to be reduced to enzymatic reactions. Then she smiled with greed, she had it. It was not only compassion that called her toward medicine. It was also that invisible thread that united her to what she had been, to the memory of the man who once listened to a friend despair at the complexity of life.

It was a way of honoring that blurred past, of stretching a bridge between two existences that should not have met. —Advanced Medicine and Healing —she said at last. Her voice, though firm, carried the tremor of a newly coined certainty, the echo of a decision that transcended mere academic choice. The words fell into the silence of the room like a seed in fertile soil.

The rector nodded slowly, and in his navy-blue eyes shone a glint of approval, with his experience of decades observing students cross his threshold. —So be it —he murmured. He noted something on a parchment with one of his quills, tracing the characters with confident calligraphy that seemed to seal her destiny in indelible ink, each letter a link in the chain of her new existence. He looked up again, and those navy-blue eyes, deep as the ocean at sunset, locked into hers with renewed seriousness.

Selena had the feeling that the man could see beyond her words, beyond her title. —You must go tomorrow to the Orb Tower —he instructed. His index finger, knobby and pale, pointed vaguely in the direction of the enigmatic tower, the one she had seen from the carriage with her name engraved in golden letters. —In it, the chair of Medicine is taught, and although you do not need to study it in depth or pass it, it is necessary that you attend at least some classes each week. To maintain appearances.

He paused, letting the weight of the farce settle. Then, he continued, detailing the schedule that would mold her new reality, it was the architecture of an itinerary of her double life. —The classes of the resonants are taught from midday, that would be thirteen hundred hours of the day, look at the sand of the clock if you need to, on the days of Khelan, Voln, Rhal, Thyll, Mycad. And on the weekends, that is, the days of Ferul, Anor and Mendr, the complementary courses are taught.

You must enroll in those schedules starting today, but with the official you already saw at the entrance. In his tone there was no place for a reply, it was the voice of one who has dictated the same instructions to generations of students and knows they admit no exception. —From tomorrow, instruction begins. They bid each other a warm farewell, showing the proper respect.

The rector stood up, and his bow was a masterpiece of subtlety: deep enough to honor her lineage, measured enough not to lower his own authority. As she left, she caught a glimpse of the rector from the corner of her eye. The man lowered his head toward his documents, submerging himself once again in the sea of his responsibilities with the same ease as a diver drops into known waters.

The quills resumed their dance over the parchment, the files recovered their millimetric order, and Selena knew that, for him, she was already just one more procedure in the long list of nobles who had crossed his door. A few minutes later, after a brief and efficient procedure with the same official at the entrance, she was presented with a new choice: the complementary courses.

The system was intriguing; each of the seven primary paths offered a series of elective subjects that allowed students to specialize or expand their knowledge in an almost modular fashion, like the university degrees she remembered from another world, but organized with the millennial logic of an institution that had had centuries to perfect its gears. Her mind did not take long to decide. The options unfolded before her like tools in a workshop, each with its utility, each with its promise.

Her choices were a reflection of her deepest needs and her latent skills. From the area of Linguistics, she selected"Languages and Dialects of the Area". A fundamental tool for understanding the world, a key that would open the doors to knowledge beyond the books she had not been able to read from Corren's shelves to those texts in unknown tongues that had looked at her from the heights of the shelves with the patience of well-kept secrets.

She remembered the black obsidian volume and the ivory white one, their glyphic characters like twisted roots and river pebbles, waiting to be deciphered. From Military Strategy and Logistics, she chose"Weapon Practice and Handling". Not out of warlike ambition, not because the sword called to her with the same seduction as knowledge, but out of a visceral need for defense, for feeling less vulnerable in an environment where threat was a constant shadow.

She needed to know she could protect herself, that she could protect others, even if it were with the trembling hands of one who has never wielded more than a knife to clean fish. And, from Linguistics again, she chose"Paleography and Deciphering of Ancient Texts". If there were magic, secrets, and hidden truths, they would undoubtedly reside in forgotten texts, in symbols that time had erased, in words that had been deliberately buried under layers of orthodoxy and oblivion. She would be the one to unravel them.

It was the promise of the philologist, the vocation of the man who once wanted to travel to St. Petersburg to read the Russian linguists in their original tongue, now adapted to a world. Upon finishing that crucial procedure, which laid the foundations of her double academic life, she reunited with Fjora and Samira, who were waiting for her like two living statues at the threshold of the administrative building.

Their figures were outlined against the midday light, and Selena noticed how the gazes of the passing students drifted toward them with a mixture of fascination and apprehension. The northern warrior and the southern scholar were a pair as unusual as they were threatening. They headed to the great dining hall. The hall was a vast expanse of long tables made of light, polished wood, illuminated by tall windows of transparent glass that let in the light of the mountains and by forged iron lamps awaiting the night.

The air vibrated with the murmur of hundreds of conversations —a constant buzz of words intersecting like the threads of a tapestry— and the aroma of a dozen different dishes: spices that tickled her nose, roasted meats giving off their fatty perfume, freshly baked breads whose crusts crunched when broken. The variety was overwhelming, a feast that spoke of the opulence and resources of the institution, a contrast so brutal to the porridge of the shelter.

Overwhelmed by a sudden and bittersweet fit of nostalgia, a hot knot that squeezed her throat with the strength of an invisible fist, Selena searched the menu for something that reminded her of her time with Kaela. Her eyes scanned the options written on a black stone blackboard with white chalk and settled on the tannery soup. The name was the same, but the dish served to her when she found a spot at one of the side tables, away from the central bustle, was a revelation.

Where the soup she shared with Kaela had been a sober mixture with scarce and hard chunks, a savory broth for that region, this one was thick, hearty, loaded with generous pieces of tender meat that melted on the tongue, fresh vegetables that still held the flavor of the earth, and melted cheese that provided a creaminess enveloping every bite. It was the same recipe, elevated from mere survival to deliberate abundance.

Each spoonful was a mirror of what had been, a luxury version of a memory she kept like a talisman. As she sat down, she noticed the looks. Some nobles, recognizable by the fineness of their clothes made of shimmering silks, silver brooches capturing the light, high collars marking their rank like crests, and the arrogance in their bearing, their heads slightly raised, their gaze roaming the room like one evaluating a herd, observed her with a mixture of curiosity and caution.

Whispers she could barely distinguish, fragments of conversations cut short when she passed nearby, names floating in the air like wasps:"Solendra", "the Duchess", "Crimson". No one approached. No one tried to strike up a conversation. Around her, a bubble of isolation had formed an invisible circle that the other students respected with the same naturalness as they would step back from a well.

It was the specter of the original Selena, the Crimson Duchess, looming over her like a barrier more impenetrable than any wall. Her reputation, carved in acts of cruelty and severity, preceded the consciousness that now inhabited that body, creating an isolation that, for now, was both a shield and a profound solitude. She ate in silence, feeling the weight of the gazes, some curious, others hostile, most simply cautious, and the complex flavor of the soup, which mixed on her palate with an aftertaste of irony.

The same recipe that had sustained her in her darkest days in Terracanto, now became a reminder of all she had lost and the distance that separated her from who she had been. Meanwhile, her two slaves remained standing at a respectful distance, their silhouettes acting as two sentinels, watching not only their mistress but everyone who might approach with an intensity that deterred any attempt at approximation.

With nothing else to do that afternoon, and with a visceral need to trace a mental map of her new stage, Selena dedicated herself to wandering the vast domains of the university. Fjora and Samira followed her like two shadows that did not need light to exist, their steps barely a whisper over the gravel of the paths. She discovered that the library, an imposing building of carved stone that rose with the gravity of a temple, extended primarily underground.

Its windows were high and narrow, like the slits of a fortress, and its main door, of solid oak with iron fittings, opened with a creak that echoed in silence.

A young librarian with an affable face but a stern gaze, with dark skin, explained to her in a low, measured voice that the first floor was open to the public, a wide room with reading tables and shelves reaching the ceiling, but the second to the fourth were reserved for students, and the lower floors, those that sank into the earth like the roots of an inverted tree,"forbidden to everyone who was not an academic, an official, or possessing express permission from the King."

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. The final words resonated in her like an echo of the royal request, like a bell toll multiplying in the corridors of her consciousness. Her unlimited access was an exceptional and dangerous privilege, a double-edged sword that marked her as much as it protected her.

The forbidden floors called to her from the depths with the same magnet as Corren's texts in the cave, promising secrets that had survived centuries of oblivion and censorship. Beyond, in the open areas where the mountain wind slipped between buildings and the sun drew changing patterns upon the stone, she found the chambers dedicated to the training of body and spirit. The fencing hall resonated with the metallic clash of foils and short swords, a constant tinkling that was like the music of a battle contained.

Through its open doors, she saw students moving in the rehearsed choreography of combat, their bodies turning and thrusting with the precision of armed dancers. In the riding ring, students rode titanopods, the six-legged creatures with segmented shells that advanced with majestic heaviness, their legs striking the earth with a rhythm reminiscent of war drums. Finally, they gained a name from a sign leading to their stables.

The gardens were a universe in themselves, a controlled explosion of alien flora where some sectors, marked with signs reading"Caution: do not enter without an instructor", became living labyrinths of gigantic leaves swaying with a hypnotic slowness, pulsating stalks that seemed to throb with a life of their own, and flowers whose colors changed under the light depending on the angle from which they were viewed.

Selena stopped for a moment in front of one of those notices, feeling the temptation to cross the barrier, to delve into the forbidden. But prudence, that lesson learned through blows in Terracanto, kept her on the marked path.

The common baths were numerous, distributed throughout the campus like small islands of order amidst the bustle, but the thermal baths, those pools of steaming water exhaling clouds of vapor heavy with minerals, where the body could sink and forget for a moment the weight of existence, were a single enclosure divided by gender, a luxury that only students with resources could regularly afford.

The craft workshops buzzed with activity, a hum of tools and voices filtering through their ajar doors, where young hands shaped wood with gouges and planes, metal with hammers and anvils, ceramics with wheels spinning like small hurricanes of clay, and fabric with looms weaving patterns of colors.

As a final bastion before returning, when her legs were already beginning to protest at the expanse of the campus and the sun began its descent toward the peaks, her gaze fell upon an observatory that stood solitary in an open field, removed from the other buildings like a hermit in retreat. Its structure, with a dome of iron sheets reflecting the last rays of the afternoon in coppery flashes and a base of gray stone that merged with the earth supporting it, brought a memory to her head with the force of a punch.

It was incredibly similar to those she knew from Earth, to those observatories she had seen in photographs from another life, with their rotating domes and their telescopes pointing at the sky like giants' fingers seeking answers in the stars. The similarity produced a pang of nostalgia as sharp as it was unexpected, a pain that was not physical but lodged in her chest like a shard of glass.

For an instant, she stood staring at the dome, imagining the mechanisms that would be inside, the star maps that would hang from its walls, the astronomers who would record the movements of the stars with the same patience with which she studied books. Exhausted, her legs aching from the vastness of the campus, which seemed to expand with every step she took, Selena finally returned to her room in the Forest Cloister.

Night had fallen completely, weaving its mantle of shadows over the trees and the paths, and the oil lamps flanking the entrance cast trembling circles of yellow light over the gravel. Without the strength even to undress completely, she removed only her boots and vest, letting them fall beside the bed like a shipwrecked soul abandons their clothes on the shore, and dropped onto the mattress.

As soon as her body touched the comforting softness of the ticking, she felt every muscle, every bone, every cell clamor for rest. A monumental tiredness, the accumulation of weeks of travel, of contained emotions, of decisions that would change her life, of revelations she had yet to fully process, overcame her. She fell into an immediate and deep sleep. The dream flowed like a river of shadows and flashes, dragging her in its current without her being able to offer resistance.

In it, her own essence was ethereal, colorless, transparent as mountain spring water, a consciousness without a body drifting through the stream of images unfolding around her with the cruel clarity of the real. Following the course of that dreamlike water, which flowed through channels that were not stone or earth but memory and desire, she arrived at a scene that shriveled her heart with the force of an icy fist. Kaela.

She recognized her instantly, with her slanted eyes full of a grief that seemed to weigh more than her young body, her light brown skin glowing like aged bronze in the gloom of the cave, her hands tracing letters in the dust with the clumsiness of one learning to name the world. She was talking to someone, and Selena knew before seeing his face that it was Elian. The acolyte's voice, normally harmonious and serene, now sounded grave, heavy with a concern he could not hide.

Kaela's voice reached her as if through a veil of water, distorted but unmistakable, a whisper laden with confusion and a pain that had not yet scarred: —I don't know what to think of her yet, Elian. Everything that happened with Nyssa… —her voice broke. Selena saw her fingers clutch the bracelet of threads and stones she wore on her wrist, the one she had given her, squeezing it with the same desperation with which she had clutched hers in their darkest hours. —But she was the only one I had…

The sound cut off abruptly, as if a veil of silence had fallen over the scene, as if the dream itself denied the comfort of hearing the rest of her words. The image of Kaela vanished, consumed by a whirlpool of shadows, and when the dream current deposited her on another shore, Corren appeared. He was alone, in a frame of gloom that seemed deeper than the night, older than the stone of the cave.

The trembling light of a single candle illuminated his gaunt features, accentuating the dark circles that were the map of his sleepless nights. His fingers, long and pale, stroked the necklace he always wore, the dark metal moon Selena had seen the first time she met him, but now his movements had a specific, ritualistic sequence, like one activating a mechanism known by heart. When he finished, an impossible phenomenon occurred before her dreaming eyes.

His skin, from the fingers upward, began to darken with the slowness of a rising tide. The change ascended through his hands, his wrists, his forearms, adopting the color and, apparently, the texture of pure iron, of newly forged steel. For an instant, Corren was not a man, but a statue, a forgotten monument that had decided to come to life. Then he looked up, and his eyes, the only points of light in that face of metal, the only things that retained human warmth, locked directly onto Kaela.

His words, when they broke from his lips, were a hoarse whisper, a warning carved in steel: —Run —his voice was the rubbing of two granite slabs. But also, the echo of an affection that distance had not eroded. —She will come for you; I know it, I have seen it. You will meet again. The vision faded, consumed by a whirlpool of shadows spinning like dry leaves caught in the wind. Selena woke with a start, her heart galloping in her chest, her breath shallow as if she had been holding it underwater.

The hope that they would see each other again intensified in her head with confusion, mixing with the echo of Corren's words, with the image of his skin transforming into metal, with the pain in Kaela's voice. The first songs of the birds announced the dawn, a morning chorus already beginning to embroider the edges of her consciousness with threads of light and sound. But inside her, a strange and heavy feeling refused to leave.

It was another enigmatic and cryptic dream, another piece of a puzzle that did not quite fit. Why had Corren told Kaela to run? What would he protect her from? And what did that transformation mean, that skin turning to iron as if it were living armor? She thought, but there were no answers. The abrupt awakening was gradually calmed by the thrilling of the birds, a song filtering through the glass like a thread of clear water, taking with it the remains of the nocturnal terror.

She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the cold, clean mountain air, feeling the oxygen dissolve the knots of anxiety still tightening her chest. Although Corren's prophecy —"Run. She will come for you, you will meet again"— still resonated like a dull heartbeat in the deepest part of her being, an echo refusing to fade, Selena knew she could not remain paralyzed by the specters of the dream world.

There was not much she could do with them, other than accept their presence as one accepts the weather or the passing of the seasons, and move forward. Uncertainty would not help her with what she had ahead of today. She dressed in the same practical determination as the previous day, but with a sharper awareness of what her attire signified, of the silent declaration she made every time she chose comfort over adornment, functionality over ostentation.

Her outfit, though similar in cut, had varied in tone: a deep green that enveloped her figure from head to toe, the color of the leaves of the enormous Titardes. The thick wool trousers, the simple linen blouse, and the buttoned vest formed an armor of simplicity that, nevertheless, surprisingly enhanced the intense green of her eyes, as if the forest itself had decided to look through them, as if nature reclaimed what belonged to it.

Without breakfast, with the urgency of knowledge pressing in her chest like a fire she could not extinguish, she headed directly to the Orb Tower. The building rose wide and silent, its milky stone glowing under the morning sun with a radiance that slightly dazzled. Inside, polished wooden signs indicated with elegant arrows the rooms where students of the new courses should head, each arrow carved with the precision of a calligrapher, each letter an exercise in functional beauty.

Selena climbed the spiral stairs, her steps echoing on the stone, a sound multiplying and losing itself in the heights like a dialogue with herself. The ascent was an exercise in patience: each step a promise, each landing a new level of knowledge. Until she found the door marked with a plaque reading"B-8". Beside it, a larger sign announced:"Advanced Medicine and Healing — Introduction to the Way".

The room was wide, illuminated by tall windows overlooking the mountains, whose snowy peaks were silhouetted against a sky of a blue so pure it seemed hand painted. About twenty chairs of light wood, each with a small folding desk on the arm, faced a gray stone pulpit where the instructor would stand. Selena chose a seat in the third row, far from the center of attention she did not wish to attract, but with a clear view of the front.

From there, she could observe her companions without them observing her, she could measure the ground before treading upon it. The room was filled slowly. Students entering in groups, some with confidence, others with the shyness of newcomers. Whispers that died down when someone crossed the door, gazes evaluating strangers, the silent choreography of a hierarchy establishing itself without the need for words. Selena did not have to wait long.

Punctual as the beat of a clock, when the last ray of morning sun rested upon the pulpit, a man in his fifties entered the room. He was tall, his back straight as a mast that had weathered all storms, and his gaze, serene and deep, scoured the room with the calm of one who does not need to impose his presence because it is sufficient on its own. He wore an impeccable white robe, so white it seemed to repel even the slightest speck of dust, as if purity were a requirement of his trade as much as knowledge.

His presence emanated an authoritative calm, that of one who has seen death up close and has learned to negotiate with it without losing respect for life. —Welcome to the Way of Medicine —he began. His voice was clear and deliberate, filling the room without effort, each word a brick in the building he began to construct. —Here one does not fight against armies, but against pain, fever, and the shadow of death. Our battlefield is the human body, and our weapon, knowledge.

He paused, and his eyes swept the room, stopping for an instant on each face as if he could read in them the vocation or its absence. Selena felt that gaze rested on her a moment longer than on the others, evaluating, recording, before moving on. —But be careful —he warned, and his voice took on a grave, almost somber tone, like one revealing an uncomfortable truth. —Saving a life carries eternal responsibility. Ethics is not a luxury; it is the scalpel that guides every decision.

An error here is not measured in gold crowns, but in heartbeats that fade out. Selena listened to him with an attention that transcended mere academic curiosity. Each word resonated in her with a deep and painful truth, like the echo of something she already knew but had never managed to articulate. It was a language of active compassion, of struggle against decay and suffering, of resistance against the world's indifference. For an instant, she allowed herself to imagine that she could help people.

That the knowledge she was about to acquire would not just be a weapon to survive, but a tool to heal, to give back to others what had been snatched from her. When the lecture ended and the students began to disperse, their voices resuming the murmur the entrance had interrupted, Selena rose quickly. The lesson had struck deep, opening a window in her chest through which new air filtered, but another appointment, more urgent and secret, awaited her.

The one that would determine not her public life, but her hidden one. The one that would take her beneath the stones of the Atrium of Knowledge, to the domains of the resonants. She descended the tower stairs with steps echoing in the stone silence, and crossed the courtyard with long, decided strides, her green silhouette standing out against the gray stone like a leaf against a trunk. The mountain wind whipped her face, taking with it the last remainder of sleep, preparing her for what was to come.

Her slaves, as always, followed at a distance, their presence a constant and vigilant shadow recording every one of her movements, every detour, every possible threat. Supervised freedom was just that: the illusion of choice under the gaze of two pairs of eyes that were not hers, that would never be hers completely.