Elena Virelle clutched the books against her chest like they were scandalous contraband—which, by the wide-eyed look of the librarian chasing her down the hallway, they might very well have been.
"Miss Virelle! That aisle is restricted!" the elderly librarian barked, her robes flapping like a storm-battered sail. "You need written clearance!"
"I didn't take anything! I just… looked!" Elena called over her shoulder, breathless but grinning as she rounded the corner and nearly collided with a stack of magical herb catalogs.
Liora, waiting at the reading hall's entrance with a lukewarm tea, raised a single eyebrow as Elena barreled toward her, face flushed.
"You've been gone forty minutes," she said, deadpan. "Either you found a time-loop manual or you got yourself in trouble again."
Elena slid to a halt beside her, eyes sparkling. "Okay, maybe I peeked into the High Arcanum stacks. But only because I was looking for something about the Starless Era. One of the old maps had a symbol I think I saw before."
"You mean the one in the back of that coded note?"
"Exactly! It showed up on the margin of a pre-Calamity tome. And listen—there was a theory in the footnotes. Something about ancient starmetal veins buried beneath old cities." Elena's voice dropped to a whisper. "Veins that are starting to react."
Liora's teasing expression faded into something more focused.
"You think this is connected to your strange note?"
"I know it is." Elena's fingers brushed over her sleeve, where the crumpled paper had been tucked away in a hidden pocket since she first found it in the baker's shop. "And if it's right, then the Calamity didn't erase everything. Someone—or something—left pieces behind."
Liora took a slow sip of tea, thoughtful. "Then I suppose we better start learning how to read them."
---
Later that afternoon, Elena returned to her part-time duties with Mara, the apothecary. Today's lesson involved weighing powdered shells of cloud beetles, which apparently retained a trace of storm magic if ground properly. The going rate? Two silver crowns for a dram of beetle dust—but only if it crackled when exposed to iron.
"If you mess up the grinding," Mara warned, handing Elena the mortar, "they'll just become very expensive compost."
Elena took a careful breath. "How much did you say this was worth again?"
"Three days of your wage, girl. Don't sneeze."
Elena managed not to inhale the dust—barely—and continued working. The air inside the shop smelled like vinegar and herbs, mixed with a faint tang of rain. Liora had wandered in to drop off a package, and now sat quietly on a stool, her dark eyes scanning the labels.
"Is it true you've been reading about the Empire's collapse?" Mara asked, breaking the silence as she mixed a green syrup in the background.
Elena nodded. "I found a section in the central library—at least the parts I was allowed in—that said the Calamity began with a series of magical ruptures. But the official history glosses over it."
"That's because no one wants to admit how badly the mages failed," Mara said bluntly. "Cities swallowed whole. Skies darkened. Entire spell networks collapsed. And the nobles just… vanished."
Elena blinked. "You mean the nobility?"
"No. I mean the Noble Houses. Those who bound their bloodlines with magic. Most of them burned out. Others went mad. The ones who survived scattered or sealed themselves away."
Liora looked up. "Didn't some retreat into the southern isles?"
"Aye," Mara nodded. "But they took their knowledge with them. Cowards, all of them."
Elena returned to her grinding, mind spinning. The pieces were stacking together, puzzle-like. Between the coded note, the starmetal veins, and these whispers of vanished mages, something about this city felt like it was waking up.
Or worse—remembering.
---
Later that week, Elena received her first payment from both the apothecary and the library scribe post. It wasn't much—six silver crowns for her part-time week with Mara, and two crowns from organizing scrolls—but it was enough.
She kept a careful ledger of expenses now, another thing Liora had taught her. Paper cost 3 copper sheets per page, ink 7 copper per small bottle, and a bowl of stew at the dormitory tavern was 1 silver if you added bread and tea.
"If you want to save up for a wand," Liora said one evening, pointing at the numbers, "you need at least fifteen gold crowns. More if you want one that doesn't crack in the rain."
"I might need to sell a kidney," Elena joked.
"You're not allowed. I like your kidneys."
Elena grinned at her over the ledger. "Thanks, I grew them myself."
---
But beneath the daily routine, the coded note stayed at the back of Elena's mind. She'd redrawn the symbol—an angular star with a broken circle—and compared it to what she saw in the forbidden archives. The match was near perfect.
One night, she sat up late, candle burning low, and gently pressed her hand against the folded paper.
There were no enchantments she could detect—at least not with her rudimentary knowledge—but it still felt wrong. Like it wasn't just ink on parchment, but a sliver of something watching her.
Something waiting.
She would find out what. She had to.
But first… she needed more beetle shells.
---
A Brochure, A Book, and a Bored Bureaucrat
Elena Virelle had never expected her morning to start with a glossy brochure.
"Welcome to the Tower District!" the cheerful receptionist at the guild had chirped, pressing it into her hands with the kind of forced smile that came from spending too long behind a desk. "New residents are highly encouraged to attend at least one orientation session. Tuesdays and Fridays. Third floor, Room 5B. Free tea."
"Thank you…?" Elena had replied, bewildered. She hadn't exactly moved in—more like stumbled into an unofficial apprenticeship. But it seemed the city had decided she now belonged.
And with that, Elena had found herself squished between a disgruntled baker's apprentice and an overenthusiastic goat mage (yes, he specialized in magical goats), in a room filled with creaky chairs and a magically flickering chalkboard that refused to stay still.
"Welcome to your first civic integration session!" a voice announced brightly.
Elena blinked. The speaker was a middle-aged man in a gray robe, with half-moon spectacles and the kind of posture that screamed 'career bureaucrat'. His name tag read: Bartholomew Pin, Assistant Archivist to the Assistant Registrar of Minor Affairs.
Elena was already exhausted.
---
Bartholomew Pin began his speech with all the excitement of a drying spellbook.
"Tax structure in lower-central Starspire follows a standard ladder system," he droned. "Commoners in the labor class tier are subject to a 6% monthly tax on declared income exceeding 40 silver crowns. This increases to 8% beyond 70 silver, and…"
Elena's eyes glazed over.
She wasn't sure what part of her life had led to this—possibly agreeing to help reorganize guild shelves for five coppers an hour—but somehow, she now needed to know about tax brackets.
And surprisingly, it was useful. Especially when the goat mage leaned over and whispered, "The loophole's in livestock declaration. Don't register more than six goats. Trust me."
The assistant archivist continued. "Bartering transactions valued above 5 silver crowns are subject to a formal writ of exchange, and failure to record such dealings may result in penalties of up to 3 gold crowns or community service."
Elena took notes. She wasn't planning on bartering anytime soon, but given her luck, she'd probably be forced to trade a haunted teacup for emergency lodging next week.
---
After the session, she wandered down to the market for her usual errands.
Bread cost 6 coppers a loaf today—one copper more than last week. The baker, a burly man with flour permanently embedded in his beard, muttered about grain caravans being delayed by wyvern sightings.
"Only rumors," he said, tossing a slightly burnt loaf into her hands. "But rumors raise prices faster than facts."
Elena frowned as she counted her remaining coins. A pouch that once jingled was now politely quiet. She'd earned 1 silver and 8 copper this week from guild assistance and two scroll transcription tasks. After bread, cheese, and a new bottle of ink, she'd have barely 9 copper left.
She passed a small stall where a red-haired woman was selling salvaged books—old, battered volumes that looked like they had been saved from a flood and then politely stomped on.
One caught her eye: "The Beginner's Guide to Pre-Collapse Enchantments (Volume I)."
The vendor raised a brow. "Three silver."
"I only have eight copper," Elena admitted, fingers tightening on the strap of her satchel.
The vendor sighed. "If you copy me three pages of clean script from that book on transmutation glyphs, I'll give it to you for one silver and a smile."
"I can smile," Elena said immediately. "Very convincingly."
---
That evening, Elena sat on the second floor of the Starspire Guildhall, by the window that leaked cold air no matter how many draft wards they cast. The enchantment book sat in her lap, and a blank notebook in front of her. She copied by candlelight, careful and deliberate.
The spells were outdated and strange, filled with odd redundancies modern mages avoided, but it clicked with something in her brain. Like a whisper of memory not hers.
"To anchor a temporal ward, ensure the sigil root is grounded in a neutral ley alignment…"
She paused, eyes scanning the margin where someone—perhaps the original owner—had scribbled:
"If you try this without stabilizing the flow, say goodbye to your eyebrows."
She smirked.
---
When she returned to the little attic room she shared with a cranky apprentice named Mila, she found a folded note on her bed.
It was the same paper stock as the one she had found tucked in the history tome weeks ago. Same neat, slanted handwriting.
"Follow the quiet places. One of the voices speaks truth."
There was no signature.
Elena sat down heavily on her straw mattress. The note from before had warned her of a lie in the guild's past. Now this one whispered of voices.
Was someone watching her?
Or… guiding her?
She looked again. The fold of the paper had an ink smudge at the edge. Familiar.
From the same ink bottle she had used earlier.
Elena froze.
No one else had touched her desk. That meant—
The note hadn't been delivered from outside.
It had been placed there by someone insidethe guild.
Her fingers trembled, and not from the cold.
---
[End of Chapter 24]