Chương 82: Chapter 15: The Book Hunt

The group dissolved with the speed of mercury. Fern and Corin departed almost at a run, driven by a palpable anxiety. Ren headed with a martial stride toward the Sky Cloister. But Selena did not head toward the residences. Her gaze was fixed on Maya's back, who was walking away with a determined step toward the heart of the campus. She caught up to her with a few long strides. —Do you want to go with me on the book hunt? —Selena asked, her voice a bit strained by the effort and a sudden bout of shyness.

Maya turned, and her hazel eyes, which before reflected heaviness, now shone with a spark of curiosity and something that looked like complicity. —Of course, Lady Duchess —she responded, and a mischievous smile played on her lips. Selena opened her mouth to protest, to insist that here they were equals, that the title was a slab she wanted to leave behind. —Here we are… —she began to say. But Maya interrupted her gently. —All the same, I know.

I'm just pulling your leg —the healer finished with a light giggle that completely disarmed Selena's tension. Smiling, both set out toward the library, their figures forming an improbable alliance under the twilight light. The imposing structure of carved stone loomed before them, a beacon of knowledge and now, of survival. Inside, the same tired-faced librarian guided them with a mechanical gesture toward the stairs that descended into the depths.

They went down to the fourth floor, a space already quieter and more austere than the upper ones, where the air smelled of ancient dust and venerable paper. Upon reaching the door that marked access to the fifth level, they stopped. The librarian, consulting a thick leather-bound volume, asked for their names. —Maya, of the Whispering Forest —said the healer. —Isabella Elizabeth Selena of Solendra —she added, feeling the uncomfortable weight of the surname.

The man slid a finger down the list, his eyes lingering on each name. He nodded to himself. —Maya. He read in a low voice. —You have permission only up to the sixth floor. Then, his gaze fell on Selena, and an eyebrow arched slightly. —Isabella… freedom of action. Maya turned her head toward her companion, her eyes widening with incredulity.

"Freedom of action" was not a permission; it was an almost mythical privilege, a key to all secrets. Selena felt a wave of discomfort. She did not want this to be another barrier, another reminder of her difference. —It was a gift from the King She confessed in a sigh, lowering her voice. —But let it be a secret between us. Then, in a gesture born from the deepest part of her new and fragile friendship, she winked at her. Maya's expression was a mute poem of disbelief and sudden reevaluation.

It was not envy that crossed her face, but an instantaneous and somewhat bitter understanding of the different currencies traded in this world. The silence between them, as they descended the spiral staircase that wound into the library's entrails, was as dense as that which reigned in the forbidden corridors. The librarian, having fulfilled his duty, vanished into the shadows of the fourth floor, leaving them alone before the oppressive majesty of the fifth level.

The solid wooden door closed behind them with a click that resonated like a sigh from the stone itself. The air was different here, colder, laden with a scent of millenary dust, aged leather, it was the aroma of knowledge guarded with suspicion. Infinite shelves, higher than those on the upper floors and carved on one side with the name of the subject, were lost in the gloom of the vaulted ceiling.

The light came from sealed glass lamps containing a glowing orange gas, illuminating titles engraved in letters of various colors that promised truths and horrors in equal measure. It was in this sanctuary of silence and secrets where Selena, feeling the weight of Maya's gaze, broke the ice. Her voice was a whisper that barely disturbed the sacred stillness of the place. —Do you remember the things they promised you to come to the university?

—she asked, her expression a visible conflict of discomfort and the desire to be understood. Maya, who was running her fingers over the spines of the books with instinctive reverence, turned toward her. Her eyes, practical and serene, clouded for an instant with the memory of the transaction. —That's right —she said, and a light sigh escaped her, laden with the resignation of one who has been bought with gold coins. Selena swallowed hard, searching for words.

The clumsiness of her explanation contrasted with the mortuary elegance surrounding them. —Well, to me... they only gave me one request to His Majesty. Strictly, they gave three to House Solendra, but my uncle the Grand Duke... took two. He left me one, and I... I asked for unlimited access to the library. The words floated in the air between the shelves, confessing a raw truth. Maya observed her, and on her face, there was no reproach, but a sympathetic pity, a fraternity forged in the same forge of utility.

—So, they sold you too —Maya murmured, her voice a soft echo in the vastness— but they sold you for favors. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. It was a conclusion so simple and so devastating that Selena could only nod, accepting the weight of the label. —You could say that, yes —she acknowledged, and in that admission, there was a strange liberation.

She was not the Crimson Duchess, the capricious noble; she was another piece on the board, exchanged for a privilege of knowledge. With the air cleared, they had dived into the hunt. Selena, with determination and curiosity that was hers in essence, lost herself among the aisles. Her fingers ran over the spines, first finding the sober and practical manual of the royal council, whose pages promised instructions to contain the explosions of one's own soul.

Then, the Chronicles of the Echo, a heavy and ominous volume that smelled of faded ink and buried truths. Finally, the Stabilization Protocols, a compendium that hoped to be the antidote against self-destruction. Maya, for her part, emerged from another section with three volumes under her arm, but coincided in the same absence: the elusive Resonant Physiology by Mistress Galena was not on the fifth floor. A tacit agreement led them to descend even further to the sixth level.

The atmosphere here was even denser, more ancient. The air smelled of roots, parchment, and the stillness of centuries. It was in a secluded corner, on a shelf under a particularly dim gas lamp, where they found the volume. They took it with almost ritual care. —We can swap them —Selena suggested, holding the Royal Council manual— That way we read them all without duplicating efforts. Maya nodded, a smile of complicity budding on her lips.

It was a practical alliance; a bridge of parchment and ink stretched over the abyss of their different origins. By the time they left the library, the world had blackened. The night was a velvet vault studded with cold stars. The sandwich stall, an island of yellowish light in the deserted plaza, was still open. Selena, moved by an impulse of camaraderie that was new and precious to her, treated Maya.

They ate in silence, watching how the insects in the public lamps, glass jars with an open base, filled with luminous creatures that fed on a sweet and intoxicating nectar, painted the way back with their dancing glimmers. It was an alien and melancholy beauty, a counterpoint to the heaviness of the books they carried. They only parted upon reaching the threshold of their respective rooms, with a tacit promise to meet the next day for the exchange. Selena entered her room, but sleep did not calm her.

The adrenaline of knowledge stolen from the shadows, the intensity of the day, and the birth of a true alliance kept her mind boiling. She dropped into the light wood chair by the window, arranging the precious volumes on the desk. The whisper of the Forest Cloister was a distant lullaby. Just as she was opening the Chronicles of the Echo, feeling the rough texture of the ancient paper under her fingertips, the door opened softly. It was her slaves.

Their silhouettes were outlined in the doorframe before they entered with their usual stealth. Fjora, with her glacial gaze that swept the room in an instant, evaluating. Samira, with her honey-colored eyes that rested on the books on the table with barely veiled curiosity. Selena, this time, hardly paid them any attention.

She continued with her book and noticed it was one of those rare volumes that dispensed with any introduction, as if the author considered time dedicated to preambles a luxury no resonant could afford. From the first page, the faded ink stated with chilling rawness that the echo had remained hidden for centuries behind seemingly normal stories, myths of heroes and divine pacts.

The society of Erabergh, so naturist and spiritual on its surface, had been embellishing and distorting those tales, covering with poetry what was originally pure and naked power. Legends considered sacred pacts with Aelthra, the great deity of the flow, were nothing more than powerful and meticulously prepared resonants who made use of their gift at critical moments in history.

And although the author listed colossal feats, the founding of cities, the containment of plagues, the defeat of ancient beasts, none, he insisted with somber obstinacy, was morally marvelous. Each one was stained by a terrible cost, a heartbreaking decision, or a sacrifice that the official chronicles had seen fit to erase. The echo or magic, the passage Selena managed to read with heavy eyelids concluded, was not an instrument of grace, but a tool for survival and, often, of pragmatic and brutal efficacy.

Selena could not continue. The weight of the revelations, joined with the accumulated exhaustion of entire days of tension and accelerated learning, defeated her iron determination. Her head slumped forward until it rested on her crossed arm on the table, and a deep and immediate sleep caught her. Hours later, she woke with a spasm, her neck aching and a string of dried drool staining the corner of a page of the venerable Chronicles of the Echo.

The moisture had soaked the paper, slightly blurring the ink of a paragraph that spoke of the first recorded mages, as if the book itself wept for the truths it contained. With a grunt of frustration and shame, she closed it carefully. She stood up, leaving the volumes stacked on the desk as mute witnesses to her momentary failure, and staggered to the bed, where sleep, this time more benevolent, reclaimed her completely.

When the day rose in an intense and clear yellow that seeped through the window, painting the room's floor with golden stripes, Selena opened her eyes feeling the weariness still rooted in her bones, but with a clearer mind. She got up, washed her face with cold water that woke her up completely, and without allowing herself to waver, dressed in a deep jet-black dress. Her reflection in the mirror was that of an elegant and severe shadow, a figure that seemed extracted from an ancient engraving.

She put on practical low-heeled shoes and left the room with a determined step. Her destination was the Atrium of Knowledge, but a glance at the immense central Hourglass confirmed that there was still quite a while before the start of the Path of Medicine. Her stomach, empty and protesting, reminded her of her negligence. She headed to the same usual stall, where the vendor, with a face as tired as if he hadn't slept, handed her a simple snack and a steaming tea.

She paid again a bronze crown and two hard pennies, feeling once more the pang of guilt as she calculated how much that coin represented in the streets of Terracanto. Then, she headed directly to classroom B-8 in the Orb Tower, determined to make the most of the time. She sat in a corner and began to eat breakfast alone, nibbling on the bun while her gaze scanned the empty room that gradually filled up. The medicine class that day, however, was indeed interesting.

A much older teacher, with white hair as snow and a carefully trimmed beard that gave him an air of an ancestral sage, took the lectern. His voice, laden with years but surprisingly clear and kind, filled the room with an authoritative calm. —The bones come first —he announced. It was as if he were revealing a fundamental truth of the universe. —They are the frame, the scaffolding that sustains life. To know them is to know the foundations of the house before decorating its rooms.

Selena, finally spellbound by the tangibility of the knowledge, opened a new notebook. The elderly teacher, whose name she learned was Anselmo, began a methodical and fascinating journey through the human skeleton. The spoke of the femur, the longest and strongest bone, capable of supporting the weight of an entire body; of the skull, the bone box that kept the mystery of consciousness; of the vertebrae, that flexible column that was at once support and channel.

His teaching was not a mere enumeration; he wove in anecdotes of his youth as a field surgeon, explained how the shape of a bone betrayed its function, and how a poorly healed fracture could mark a life forever. Selena's pen flew over the parchment, eagerly and precisely. She filled page after page with diagrams and names, with connections and observations. By the time the class came to an end, she had seven full pages, a treasure of solid and useful knowledge.

Master Anselmo's last word on the ankle joint was still echoing in the academic air of the Orb Tower when Selena, moved by a spring of urgency, gathered her notes and rushed out. The morning sun, now high in the sky, crashed against the black of her dress while her footsteps drummed on the courtyard stone, a race against the hourglass and against the destiny that awaited her in depth.