She'd only asked a simple question—something like, "If the temple taxes the bakery's flour shipments, does that count as a civic tithe or a private levy?"—and suddenly the entire kitchen turned into a council chamber.
Mrs. Cresswell dropped her ladle with a clatter. The assistant baker, a lanky teen with flour up his nose, started mumbling about grain prices being fixed by temple edicts. Even Brother Aldous, who had wandered in hoping for a snack, was soon elbow-deep in parchment from the archives, trying to trace precedents from the last Flour Tax Reformation thirty years ago.
All because Elena had stayed up late reading the temple's trade regulations. Again.
"I only wanted to understand where the bread really comes from," she muttered to herself, hiding in the back room to finish kneading a batch of dough.
But that one question had snowballed into more: What's the temple's role in local trade? Who sets the prices for essentials like flour, meat, or oil? Who benefits from the tax on donated food, and how was that gold used?
For most people in the temple, answers like "The High Priests decide" or "It's tradition" were good enough.
For Elena Virelle—book hoarder, note scribbler, and unintentional academic—it wasn't.
---
That afternoon, Liora found her in the temple's modest study hall, sitting cross-legged with three scrolls open at once and ink smudged across her nose.
"You look like you're plotting to overthrow a kingdom," Liora said dryly, leaning on the doorframe.
"I might be," Elena replied with a grimace. "A very small kingdom made of yeast and bureaucracy."
"Ah," Liora smirked, stepping in and perching on the edge of the desk. "So you've met the flour tax."
"It's absurd!" Elena threw up her hands. "The temple donates bread to the poor, but the flour's taxed when it comes in, then again when it's redistributed to the city kitchens. That's two silver crowns per ten-stone sack! And the bakers get paid barely five copper crowns a day!"
Liora's eyebrow arched. "You actually read the treasury ledger?"
"Yes! Sort of. Brother Aldous let me look at one from five years ago, and even then, the grain margin was... strange. There's something about the way they process imports through the Dock Registry that makes me think it's been rerouted—or worse, resold."
There was a moment of silence. Then Liora leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, "You know, Elena... most novices cope with bread duty by learning how to nap with their eyes open. You chose to audit the temple's tax policy."
Elena laughed despite herself. "I can't help it. The more I learn, the more questions I have."
"You're becoming a real scholar." Liora's eyes softened. "Just... be careful. The temple's books are tightly controlled for a reason."
"I know," Elena murmured, tapping her fingers against the page. "But I need to understand it. All of it. How the temple functions. Where the money goes. Why certain orders—like the alchemists—get six times the stipend that the healing wards do."
---
Later that week, Elena met with Brother Rallo, the elderly archivist who oversaw the temple's civic records. She offered to help him clean and rebind some crumbling ledgers. In exchange, he allowed her to read a few carefully selected volumes from the temple's political history.
One particularly worn scroll, titled On the Duties of Faith and Coin, outlined how temples in the North operated as de facto municipalities, especially in rural provinces where city lords were absent or weak. The temples taxed, governed, and administered trade, often wielding more power than local aristocrats.
But it was the footnotes that caught Elena's eye.
A scribbled comment in faded ink read: 'Reassessment of crown value during the Silver Famine—see Archive R6: Year 1172.'
She dug up Archive R6 two days later. It confirmed something astonishing: During the famine, the High Priests had secretly hoarded silver to artificially inflate the crown's worth, forcing trade guilds to accept temple scrip instead of real coin.
"I knew it," Elena whispered.
Not because she was trying to find scandal—but because it proved how deeply the temple's politics shaped even the price of bread.
---
Meanwhile, the temple staff began to notice something odd about Elena.
The quiet novice girl—who used to trip over her robes and blush at every compliment—now asked alarmingly precise questions about funding structures. She requested access to council minutes. She annotated donation ledgers with side notes and polite challenges in the margins.
"She's a menace," one assistant murmured, half-admiring, half-terrified.
"She asked me if the oil lamps in the east corridor were subsidized by the guild or privately acquired," groaned a scribe. "Who even thinks like that?"
And yet, no one stopped her. Not because they approved—but because, technically, she hadn't broken any rules. In fact, she was still fulfilling her novice duties better than most: bread duty, library duty, scribing, even temple cleaning when needed.
It was just that in between scrubbing floors, she was questioning the foundation of their economy.
---
Liora brought it up during one of their late evening walks.
"You've changed," she said, her voice almost wistful.
Elena glanced sideways. "Is that good or bad?"
"Good," Liora replied, after a pause. "I think... you're starting to find your voice."
Elena didn't answer right away. They passed through a row of flowering hedges, the scent of evening roses hanging in the air. Crickets sang softly beyond the temple's stone wall.
"I think I'm finally starting to understand this world," Elena said. "Not just survive it."
"You're not just surviving," Liora said. "You're questioning it, improving it."
Elena looked down at her ink-stained fingers. "It's not enough to bake the bread. I want to know who pays for the flour. Why some get more than others. Who decides. Who benefits. And what happens when no one asks those questions."
"You're going to be a problem for them," Liora said with a soft grin.
"Maybe," Elena said. "But a useful one."
---
By the end of the month, Elena had drafted a quiet report and handed it to Brother Aldous. It wasn't accusatory—just... meticulous. Observations on inefficiencies, questionable reallocations, inconsistencies in donation distribution. She didn't even sign her name.
She didn't need to.
A week later, three temple kitchens received additional flour shipments. Bread distribution increased by 15%. The bake staff was given a small stipend increase—from 5 to 6 copper crowns per day.
And Elena?
She returned to her chores, kept her head down, and began studying the council's edicts on city infrastructure. Because if you followed the bread far enough, eventually, it led to roads, wells, and water rights.
And Elena Virelle had only just begun.
---
[Economic Notes from This Chapter]
Daily wage of a temple baker: 5 → 6 copper crowns/day after redistribution
Flour tax: 2 silver crowns per 10-stone sack
Average stipend difference: Healing wards (≈30 copper/month) vs. Alchemist order (≈180 copper/month)
Temple trade influence: operates as municipal power in rural provinces, taxing and redistributing food/coin
Example inflation manipulation: Silver Famine hoarding led to artificial rise in crown value and forced temple scrip usage
---
Library, Lies, and Loafers
By the time the sun dipped beneath the silver-trimmed rooftops of Aerilyn, Elena had dust on her cloak, ink smudges on her fingers, and two dozen questions burning in her mind. She wasn't sure if the ache in her feet came from walking the uneven cobblestones or from standing too long in front of dusty library shelves.
She had spent the entire day at the central archive, following up on the history of the Starfallen and the strange phrase from the cryptic note she received back in Chapter 10: "Look not to the stars for answers, but to the dust beneath them." No one else knew about the note—not even Liora. Elena didn't want to bring it up until she had a clearer idea of what it meant.
Unfortunately, all she'd gotten were sore muscles and conflicting theories.
"Are you still trying to unravel the message?" Liora's voice came from beside her, soft and amused.
Elena turned. "Yes. I thought if I searched enough, something would connect."
"And did it?"
Elena sighed and dropped her bag on the grass beside the communal courtyard fountain. "Only if you count one book that claimed 'dust' symbolized forgotten knowledge, and another that swore it referred to corpse powder."
Liora winced. "Cheerful."
"It gets better," Elena added dryly. "Apparently, there was a rebellion two hundred years ago called the Dustborne Rebellion. They were magic users who believed knowledge had been suppressed by the aristocracy."
"That… actually sounds important."
"It would be," Elena said, "except it was wiped from the official records after only a few years. I only found traces of it in a banned book tucked behind a crate of geography scrolls."
Liora stared. "You're starting to sound like a proper scholar."
"I don't know if that's good or bad," Elena muttered.
They sat quietly for a while, letting the fountain's gentle splashing fill the silence. Liora had brought leftover honey bread from the kitchen, and they tore pieces off together like kids hiding snacks from teachers.
"Do you ever think," Elena said, voice low, "that we're only seeing the surface of everything here?"
Liora tilted her head. "We are."
"No, I mean… Aerilyn. The Academy. The magic system. There's something missing. It feels like I'm learning the pieces, but none of them fit the way they should. Like someone's rewritten the rules and forgotten to tell the rest of us."
Instead of brushing it off, Liora grew thoughtful. "You're not wrong. Even among mages, there are gaps in our history. Whole chapters gone. Records burned or 'lost.' And nobody talks about it."
Elena blinked. "So it's not just me?"
"Not just you." Liora leaned closer. "Some of us think it's deliberate."
Elena's stomach knotted. "Deliberate?"
"To keep power in the hands of the few."
A wind stirred the trees. In that moment, the courtyard felt vast and small all at once.
---
Later that night, Elena returned to her shared quarters. She opened her small coin pouch and counted what remained after paying for ink, paper, and a new pair of cheap walking boots.
Balance:
4 copper crowns
2 tin shillings
0 silver
She sighed. Most apprentices made around 10–12 copper crowns a week, assuming they worked kitchen shifts or couriered scrolls. She earned 5 for helping translate ancient Aldran texts. It was underpaid work, but nobody else could read it, and the scribe was old-fashioned.
She'd considered taking up another part-time job—maybe potion sorting—but Liora had warned her that some of those tasks were under the Guild's jurisdiction, and working without permission could lead to a fine.
Elena still couldn't quite understand why simply moving bottles required official sanction.
---
The next morning, Elena made her way to a side building on campus rarely visited by regular students: the Economancy Records Hall.
Unlike the public archives, this one was silent and cold. Inside, glowing ink runes hovered above thick books arranged by year and ministry. She stepped past the copper-plated threshold and let the scent of dust and something acrid—like old leather and magic ink—fill her lungs.
The records librarian, a wiry older man with horn-rimmed spectacles, looked up from his post.
"You lost?" he asked, not unkindly.
"No," Elena said. "Looking for financial records from the reign of Archduke Marlen III. Around the time of the Dustborne Rebellion."
The man arched a brow. "You're either a student of obscure politics or you're poking at things best left buried."
"I'm just curious."
"Hah." He waved her in.
Elena spent two hours combing through tax ledgers and land holdings—until she spotted something odd. The funding to the Mage Registry had tripled in 1471, just a year before the rebellion started. Simultaneously, the budget for public literacy programs had been slashed to nearly nothing.
"Why would they cut books and raise war funds?" Elena whispered to herself.
Unless they were preparing for something. Or hiding something.
As she jotted it down in her notes, she realized something chilling: the Dustborne weren't just rebels.
They may have been silenced scholars.
---
That night, Elena returned to her room to find a second note beneath her pillow.
It was written in the same scrawled hand.
"You are not the first to look beneath the dust.
You may be the last to survive it."
---
[End of Chapter 23]