Life, for the first time since I had fallen into this world, settled into a routine. It was not a routine of panicked survival, but of cold, grim purpose.
On the outside, I was the very model of a reformed, elite student. I was quiet, diligent, and draped in the unassailable authority of Damien's favor. My presence in the advanced-magic lectures was no longer a joke; it was a given. Nobles who had once sneered at me now sought my opinion on Runic Theory, an opinion I gave in clipped, cold, and efficient sentences. I was, in their eyes, a prodigy of a different, colder sort—a strategist, a mind.
But this new life, this "golden cage," was merely a facade for my two, true occupations.
My nights were my own. They belonged to the slow, patient, and agonizingly difficult work of Mana Breathing. Locked in my room, I would sit for eight hours, not sleeping, just breathing in time with the world's pulse. I was a miser, hoarding tiny, priceless drops of pure, refined mana, adding them one by one to my Core. My Core, once a sluggish, murky pool, was slowly becoming a clear, deep, and pressurized well. The self-loathing and the cold rage I felt for Damien, for myself, for the world—I channeled it all into this single, burning focus. It was the furnace that kept me going.
My days belonged to Damien. They belonged to the hunt.
Armed with the Level Four Academic Access Pass, I became a fixture in the Grand Library. But not the warm, sunlit atrium I had once known. I now walked past the common stacks, past the chattering students, to a towering, rune-etched iron door in the library's deepest recess. A golem, its crystal eyes burning with a cold, blue light, stood guard.
The first time I approached, it had raised a hand. "Access restricted."
I presented the silver medallion. The golem's eye glowed as it scanned the intricate runes. "Access Level Four. Verified. Welcome, Scholar Greyfall."
The iron door slid open with a heavy, grinding thud, revealing a world I had never known existed.
This was the Verdant Archive, the faculty-level stacks. The air was cold, still, and heavy with the scent of ancient, powerful preservation magic. There were no soaring, open spaces. It was a labyrinth of dark, metallic shelves, lit by silent, floating orbs of cold, green-white light. The books here were not mere books. Many were bound in strange hides, others were etched on crystal tablets, and some were chained to the shelves themselves, their covers pulsing with a faint, contained aura.
This was where the real knowledge was kept.
My mission was clear: find the Verboten Archive. I was not a brawler looking to smash a wall; I was an architect looking for a blueprint. I bypassed the alluring, dangerous-looking tomes of advanced magic and went straight to the section marked "Academy Foundations & Cartography."
For days, I was a ghost in this silent, cold labyrinth. The public histories were propaganda. But here, with my Level Four access, I could read the real ledgers. The private correspondence of the academy's founders. The early, failed blueprints. The construction logs.
It was on the third day, buried in a dusty, half-burnt compendium of architectural notes, that I found my first thread. The public-facing histories all credited the academy's design to a council of wizards. But this ledger, in a single, cryptic footnote, mentioned another name: Roric Alastair.
A reclusive, almost mythical mage-architect who, the notes claimed, was the "true designer of the library's containment wards." The entry described him as a man obsessed with "self-contained, magically-warded sub-levels" and "architecture that could think." The entry was crossed out, as if by a later, censoring hand.
Roric Alastair. This was my key. I was no longer searching for a place; I was hunting a ghost.
I was hunched over the fragile, ancient parchment, my mind completely absorbed, tracing the lines of a faint, preliminary blueprint, when a soft, light footstep echoed in the silence.
I didn't even have time to school my features before I looked up.
She was standing at the end of the narrow, metallic aisle, a heavy, leather-bound book on advanced Runic Gestures clutched in her hands. Seraphina Vael.
Of course. This place, this sanctuary of true, high-level knowledge—this was her world. This was her home. And I had just invaded it.
Our eyes met. The distance between us was thirty feet, but it felt like a gaping, unbridgeable chasm. Her expression was a complex, terrible thing. There was no surprise. There was no anger. It was a cold, deep, and profound weariness. She saw me. She saw the Level Four book in my hands. She saw the silver medallion chained to my belt.
She saw my "reward."
She understood, in that instant, that my new place at Damien's side was not just social. He was using my mind, the very "brilliant mind" she had once been curious about, for his own dark purposes.
I was a poison, and I had just been deliberately introduced to her sanctuary.
I did not speak. My mask of the cold, detached scholar snapped into place. I let my gaze linger on her for a single, hard second before deliberately, dismissively, looking back down at my book.
The silence in the aisle was a heavy, suffocating thing. I could feel her gaze on me, the weight of her judgment. After a long, agonizing moment, I heard the sound of her turning. A soft rustle of her dress, a light, retreating footstep.
She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. The message was clear. She had not forgotten. She had not forgiven. She was the one, true witness to my crimes, and I would find no peace, not even here, in the deepest, most forgotten corner of the world.
She was gone.
I was left alone in the cold, green-white light, with the name of a dead architect and the heavy, chilling weight of my new mission. I turned the page, and the sound of the ancient parchment was the only sound in the world.
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[ Author's Note- The next chapter will be released in 30–40 minutes. Stay tuned!And guys, if you're enjoying the novel, please support it with your power stones — it really means a lot. Thank you ]