Chương 93: Chapter 26: It Had to Be Done

Selena hurried toward her first task, so she barely crossed the threshold of the library. The air changed, becoming cold and still, heavy with the dust of centuries and the weight of unnameable secrets. Her footsteps echoed on the endless spiral of stone stairs, descending deeper and deeper, as if she were stepping into the very bowels of history. Each step distanced her from Ren's mundane problems and Maya's rhetoric practice, plunging her into the subterranean current of her own dangerous legacy.

Finally, she reached the eighteenth floor, the crypt of ebony and silence. There, in its hiding place among the chronicles of forgotten tribes, lay the book. She took it in her hands, feeling the rough texture of the ancient hide, as if the author's anguish were still imbued in the pages. A deep sigh, which was more an act of reflex than of relief, escaped her lips. Then, she opened it.

The narrative of Eliud Volgthar continued, carrying her past the terrified man who had saved his wife, toward the leader forging a kingdom out of chaos.

"Once the book was in my hands and the treaty sealed," she read,"other tribes approached us and we united. But those that had been warlike since time immemorial only became more resistant to our advances." Unification had not been peaceful. The shadow of war, of blood spilled in the name of a future peace, loomed over every line.

"However, by following the Balyr tribe, who controlled ancient knowledge, I was able to access stone tablets written in Veritasilba, rules of the echo and what they already called the touch itself." Selena caught her breath. The language of roots and symbols that Samira had mentioned to her. Eliud had not only discovered the power; he had sought its rules, its grammar, in the most arcane knowledge.

"The first pronouncement stated with a beautiful poem:" The following words were written in a slightly different, more ornate calligraphy, as if the writer had wished to honor the original form:"In the Echo, whispers remain, weaving shadows none shall attain. Yet to speak is to seek command, words imposing, shaping the land. To write is to reshape and rend, strokes that make the whole world bend. To think is to transfigure all, a mind that breaks the trivial's wall, and forges light where sameness seemed to fall."

Selena read the poem once, twice. It was a gem of clarity amidst Eliud's confessional prose. It outlined the three facets of power with poetic precision. The whispers of the Echo, unattainable in their essence. The speech, the magic that dominated, imposing will upon reality. The writing, which transformed, altering the very essence of things. And the thought, the deepest level, which transfigured, breaking the molds of the mundane. It was the complete worldview of the imagined echo, encapsulated in a few lines.

The explanation by Eliud that followed was that of a scholar applying theory to his brutal experience.

"What we deciphered over the months along with the tribe was that the power of magic or the void, as I was growing accustomed to naming it, was that the echo was alien to this world. The whispers were its way of connecting with the resonant. No one truly reaches it; it seeps into us, stealing our life little by little as payment for breaking the laws of this reality." The description was chillingly similar to the warnings of Isolde and Valerian.

It was not a pact; it was cosmic parasitism, a forced transaction with an intrusive dimension.

"Speaking as magic comes from the dominance of the concept of replicating; it is what I understood best by making use of it myself." Selena nodded to herself. Her first spell, the water arising from nothing, had been an act of pure will, of imposing an idea upon the void. Dominating instinctively, replicating something she felt deep within, even more than she was aware of.

"But ' To write is to reshape and rend, strokes that make the whole world bend.' opened my eyes to a new philosophy." The poet and the warrior in Eliud clashed here. Writing was not just imposing; it was altering, rewriting reality as if it were a parchment. It was a subtler power, deeper, and perhaps more dangerous.

Then came the line that marked a point of no return in history, not just for Eliud, but for his entire kingdom:"From that day on, and without knowing what it would lead to, I began to attempt using written magic with the catalyst of my blood." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Selena closed the book gently, her fingertips throbbing against the cover.

This was not just a man's chronicle; it was the record of the first time anyone had attempted to systematize the forbidden, to channel power through a tangible medium. Eliud, the healer turned warrior, turned king, had now become the first arcanist. Every resonant who came after, including herself, would bear the weight of that primordial choice. He had not only opened the door; he had begun to map out the deadly labyrinth that lay on the other side.

She opened the book with a mixture of eagerness and apprehension, and the pages seemed to surge forth with force, the words engraving themselves not just in her eyes, but into the very fabric of her understanding. Eliud's voice, increasingly confident and yet laden with monumental weight, resonated in her mind:"Once I began to understand the written touch, the first thing I created was a magical object that would allow me to heal myself." Selena felt her heart leap. A magical object?

Her gaze descended instinctively toward the stone and thread bracelet she always wore on her wrist. Corren's bracelet. Could it be something similar?

"A bracelet," Eliud continued, as if responding to her thought,"that by moving my fingers in a certain way over it, would imbue its echo so that I might heal." The description was vaguely familiar, but Selena's did not require specific movements; it was a constant comfort, an anchor. Eliud's was a tool, an object of deliberate power.

"Upon creating it, I knew how many times it would last: only ten times, with a maximum duration of one year." The precision of the cost was chilling. It was not a vague power; it had quantifiable limits, a grim contract whose clauses were known beforehand.

"It is regrettable, because in that single act I spent three years of my life." Three years. An eternity, exchanged for ten moments of grace. Selena tried to imagine the sensation, the instantaneous void of three years of futures, of dawns and sighs, torn out by the roots in a single act of creation.

"But the value of healing a serious wound at any moment was worth it above all else." The pragmatic and brutal equation of power. Life as currency, and survival as the only valuable merchandise. Then, the chronicle became tinged with legend.

"It is for that reason that the first warlike tribe conquered, which were the Rhunjal, called me 'The Immortal' after piercing me with their spears three times." Selena could see it: Eliud, impaled, bleeding, and then, with a furtive movement of his fingers over the bracelet, the flesh closing, strength returning, standing erect once more among enemy banners like a vengeful specter. It was not a title earned through exploit, but through terror.

The surrender of the Rhunjal was not due to defeat, but due to the collapse of their understanding of reality.

"My faithful friend Khelan, a believer in Aelthra, constantly attributed my echo to divine power. I did not hold it against him." The irony was so dense it could almost be tasted. The man who knew his power was a transgression against natural laws, being revered as a prophet of the very flow of life.

"He felt that the echo, though cursed, was indeed a blessing from Aelthra to end the pain of war and famines in the world. The power of the flow regaining its natural state." It was the justification of every tyrant, of everyone who wields absolute power: the end, a world without pain, justified the monstrous means. Eliud convinced himself that his curse was, in reality, a divine mission. But reality always claims its price.

"In a northern battle against Nordic bandits, I suffered a terrible rebound from the spoken echo that tore away three of my fingers in the fight." The image was so vivid and sudden that Selena almost felt the phantom pain in her own hand. Magic did not forgive. To fail, or perhaps to overextend, carried immediate and brutal consequences.

"But the bracelet returned them to me instantly." The circle closed. The very magic that mutilated, healed. The same life spent in creating the object was used to repair the damage the power caused. It was a cycle of self-cannibalism, of feeding the monster with pieces of oneself. Then came the final justification, the one that turned the blood in Selena's veins to ice:"And with my spoken echo, I heated the iron of their armor to a red glow.

The horrible smell of their bodies was the last thing we sensed before wiping out the bandit settlement." It was not a battle; it was a slaughter. A mass execution with a power that turned men into human torches inside their own carapaces. The horror was so palpable that the parchment seemed to emanate a stench of scorched flesh and red-hot metal.

"It had to be done… it had to be done." The final words, repeated like a desperate mantra, resonated in the silence of the library. They were not a declaration of triumph, but the lament of a man trying to convince himself that the horror he had perpetrated was necessary. That the smell of burning flesh was the price of order, of peace. Selena slammed the book shut, as if its covers could contain the wave of nausea and horror engulfing her.

Hours had passed without her realizing it, submerged in the whirlwind of the first king's consciousness. She could read no more. Her mind, her soul, needed a respite from such darkness. —I must go back —she said to herself, and her voice sounded strange in the sepulchral stillness. Once in her room, she threw herself onto the bed, lacking even the strength to undress. The image of the soldiers cooking alive inside their armor danced behind her closed eyelids.

Almost entirely against her will, physically and mentally exhausted, her eyes fell into the deep, treacherous darkness of sleep.