Chương 79: Chapter 12: The Jester’s Welcome

The Atrium of Knowledge was almost empty at that hour. The midday light filtered through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the dust dancing in the air. There, at the base of the immense central Hourglass, where mineral dust with metallic glints fell with hypnotic slowness, a group waited. A man in his forties, of medium height and athletic build, leaned against the stone pedestal of the clock. He wore a black robe with complex red trim, but his bearing denoted an authority that went beyond the fabric.

His beard, trimmed with the precision of a goldsmith, framed a firm mouth. His brown hair, with a few distinguished gray hairs silvering his temples, was styled with practical order. But what most caught Selena's attention were his eyes: steel gray, piercing and calculating, as if they could see beyond each person's facade. Beside him, four students —two boys and two girls— remained in silence, observing Selena with a mixture of curiosity and caution.

When Selena reached his side, the man with gray eyes straightened up. A slight, almost eccentric smile played on his lips. —Selena, right? Or was it Isabella? —he asked with a deep and melodious baritone voice, laden with absolute confidence. His gesture of surprise was so deliberately exaggerated that it was almost a subtle mockery of protocol. Suppressing a sigh, she nodded with a slight inclination of her head. There was no room for doubt in that gesture. —Selena, I prefer it.

—We are still waiting for another —he announced and waved a hand with a flowery and theatrical gesture, as if he were on a stage and not on the edge of the best-kept secret in the kingdom. Silence reclaimed the group, a tense and expectant mantle, while the light from the Hourglass continued its slow and ceremonious descent, marking the beat of their wait. The last to arrive was a blond boy, barely a teenager, his face flushed from haste and a mop of golden hair disordered by the wind.

There was no time for greetings, nor for explanations. The man in the black and red robe, as if an invisible spring had triggered his will, moved toward the base of the Hourglass with haunting fluidity. His fingers, long and dexterous, pressed an almost imperceptible sequence on the carved stone, revealing a lock, where he inserted a key and turned it, and with a whisper of ancient mechanisms, a section of the pedestal slid to one side, revealing a dark and narrow opening.

—Go ahead —he said, in a voice that admitted no delay. One by one, the six young people crossed the threshold. Selena was the penultimate, feeling the temperature drop immediately, as if they had pierced the skin of the world and entered its stone veins. The master closed the door behind him, and the click of the mechanism as it locked back into place sounded like the slamming of a coffin.

The darkness was absolute for an instant, until a row of tallow lamps, hung at regular intervals on the wall, lit up one after another with a yellowish and smoky flicker. The corridor was narrow, made of solid and unadorned stone, with stale air that smelled of damp earth, of dust, of the tallow from the lamps, the smell of confinement. The master guided them without hesitation, his robe billowing in the gloom, his steps firm and steady in a labyrinth that seemed to have no end.

Shadows danced on the walls, stretching and contracting with the flickering of the flames, and the only sound was that of their own breathing and the crunching of their soles on the polished stone. After what seemed like an eternity of turns and gentle descents, the corridor opened into a circular room, wide and austere. The ceiling, vaulted and low, was carved in a language that Selena did not understand, but which she felt as subtle pressure on the edges of her consciousness.

In the center, a black stone table, smooth and cold, was surrounded by seven dark wood chairs, simple but solid. —Take a seat —the master ordered with a broad gesture that encompassed the room. Selena chose a chair in the first row, facing the table. Her heart beat at a rapid pace, but her face remained serene, a mirror of forced calm. The others distributed themselves around her, some with curious looks, others with evident discomfort.

It was then that the master stood before them, and with an exaggerated flourish of his hand and a bow that bordered on the buffoonish, he introduced himself: —I am Master Valerian —he declared, and his voice, a deep and melodious baritone, contrasted with his theatrical gesture. —Graduated with honors as an arcane resonant master of the spoken echo and current part-time royal advisor. He made a dramatic pause, letting the titles resonate in the stony silence.

—Welcome, unwary youngsters, to the torment of the curse bequeathed by your unpleasant luck. The Whispering Void smiles upon you today with a gesture of contained madness, as it does to every resonant who has the misfortune of being one. He cleared his throat, and his expression became slightly more grave, though not entirely serious. —My introduction is made. It is your turn. One by one, they spoke. Each name, each trade, was a stone in the building of identities they raised in the midst of uncertainty.

—Fern, hunter —said a boy with dark brown hair and green eyes, with a rustic frankness in his voice. —Yarra, woodcutter —followed a young woman of about eighteen, whose muscular body and calloused hands betrayed years of brutal work. —Corin, poet —murmured the blond who had arrived late, with a softer voice, almost evasive. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

—Maya, healer —added a girl with reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes, whose tone was calm, but with a spark of sadness. —Ren, guard apprentice —said the last boy, tall and of medium build, with a rigid posture that betrayed his training. All eyes turned toward Selena. She took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the gazes, the echo of the whispers she had heard before. But she was not going to give them the pleasure of hiding. —Selena, philologist —she declared, with a clear and serene voice, without hesitation.

The words came out before she thought about them, as if they had always wanted to escape, to name herself as such. In the distance, a dry and contained laugh escaped from Master Valerian, as if he had caught the unintended irony in her response. Then, like a disturbed hum of wasps, whispers began among the other five. They were not clear, but some words floated in the heavy air:"Hereditary Duchess," said a voice. Another, lower, more laden with meaning:"Crimson." Selena did not flinch.

She kept her gaze fixed on Valerian, but inside her, the name —that title stained with blood— resonated like a dull blow. She was not just an intruder in someone else's body. But Valerian, with a sharp gesture of his hand, cut the whispering as if tearing a veil of murmurs. —A spoken resonant only speaks, when necessary, little ignoramuses of reality —he said, and his voice, before melodious, now had the edge of a sharpened blade.

He dropped into his chair, which creaked under his weight, and began to rock back and forth with a hypnotic and disturbing rhythm. The front legs struck the stone floor with a monotonous click-clack that marked the beat of his words. —I hope your lectures this morning was boring enough —he continued. And a crooked smile played on his lips. —Because I will not present the course to you. I will present the worst involuntary curse you must face, with or without a decision.

He rocked further back, until the chair seemed about to give way, and then, with feline agility, he sprang up. The recovered balance was as abrupt as it was theatrical. —The Touch, as we resonants call it, or magic, as it is known by those who do not know what they are facing… —His gaze, suddenly sharp as a diamond, fixed directly on Selena's stone and thread bracelet. Every hair on her body stood on end. A cold current, like the touch of an invisible breath, ran down her spine.

It was as if those steel eyes not only saw the bracelet, but through it, to the faint heat it emanated and which until now had been her only comfort. She felt the vulnerability of one who discovers that their most intimate secret is not so secret. —… comes from a dimension higher than ours —Valerian continued, without looking away from Selena, as if he were speaking only to her. —But make no mistake: it is not born from any deity.

Those who preceded us in this unfortunate involuntary quest named that dimension as 'the Whispering Void' or 'the Underlying Current'. Finally, he released Selena from his scrutiny and swept his gaze across the rest of the group, capturing each one in his web of words. —Fate played with us as if in gambling —he said, and his tone became harsh, laden with an ancestral bitterness. —One in every ten thousand births is a resonant. But between eighty-five percent and ninety-five percent die before the age of five.

He paused, letting the coldness of the statistics settle in the room, letting each number fall like a slab on the shoulders of the young people, letting the image of children dying before learning to speak be etched in their retinas with the clarity of a nightmare. —And those who manage to pass the filter… are only a few, those who show the potential for their magic to be, shall we say, useful. The kingdom calls them resonants. To me, personally… —his voice dropped gradually.

Until it became a whisper laden with contempt and a strange complicity, as if sharing a secret, he had sworn to keep but could no longer contain. —I like to call us the cursed. He stopped speaking. The silence that followed was thick and ominous. For the first time, the mask of theatricality and eccentricity vanished completely from his face.

His expression became serious, grave, and in his eyes a deep shadow appeared, the look of a man who had seen something —a story, a truth, a horror— that no one else should know, and which, nevertheless, he was condemned to transmit to this new generation of the damned. When he resumed his voice, it was no longer that of an eccentric jester, but that of a herald of dark realities. —I will give you no illusions —he declared. Each word fell like a pebble in the stony silence. —The echo can kill you and it will.

Each use will cost you years of your own life. But if you fail… He made a deliberate pause, letting the terror incubate in their gazes. —It will not only cost your life. It will cost you your body. Immediately. A broken bone, a few fingers less… in the best of cases, just a cold that leaves you in bed for a week. At that point in his speech, most could not even move from their chairs. Fern, the hunter, had white knuckles gripping the edge of his seat.

Maya, the healer, paled, as if the illnesses he mentioned were already beginning to crawl up her skin. Selena felt an icy cold in her stomach, a visceral understanding that the power she craved was intertwined with her own mortality. —But even with everything —Valerian continued. Then, recovering the hypnotic rocking of his chair. —The echo is powerful. My master, when I studied, termed it as a replicant of reality. And it is, in essence. The creaking of wood against stone marked the rhythm of his revelation.

—You must understand to replicate, and you must feel to master. He leaned forward, and his gaze, laden with a sudden intensity, swept the circle of young and terrified faces. —Magic has two paths —he announced. Then, in a fleeting and calculated gesture, he winked exclusively at Selena, a flash of clandestine complicity that he hoped would go unnoticed by the others. —The first is the spoken echo, where the spell is born from a word. Although it is an… inexact definition.

While the spell is created with the voice, there is no sound in it. It is the will made silent verb, a mold that is imposed upon the whispering void. The second is the written touch, where the spell is born from writing with the resonant's blood upon an object. But, again, it is inexact. While writing comes into play and a catalyst is used, the ink… the ink vanishes completely when written. As if reality claimed the price in advance.

He leaned back again, and a deep sigh, laden with the weight of centuries of bitter knowledge, escaped his lips. —Children, the void is deep and dangerous. Therefore, starting tomorrow and for the entire semester, we will teach you how to avoid dying in your first use. He stood up abruptly, the chair screeching in protest. —Today we will not continue with the class. You have time to meditate on your harsh reality… or to vomit, if more than one needs to.

With a final flourish of his robe and a smile of pure and macabre amusement drawn on his face, Valerian turned his back on them and left the room, leaving the six young people plunged into a silence laden with terror, incredulity, and the overwhelming certainty that their lives, as they knew them, had come to an abrupt and terrifying end. The echo of his steps was lost in the passage, and for a long minute, no one moved.

The weight of the master's words —years of life snatched away by each spell, the threat of deformation, death as an inseparable shadow of power— had settled in the room like a thick and icy fog. Fern, the hunter, had his gaze fixed on his own hands, as if he could already see them falling apart. Yarra, the woodcutter, breathed with difficulty, and Corin, the poet, seemed about to faint, his face pale as the parchment on which he used to scribble his verses.