I stepped into the void.
The spiral staircase was cut from the living rock of the island's foundation, slick with centuries of condensation. There were no lights here. No floating mana orbs, no torches. The darkness was absolute, a physical weight that pressed against my eyes.
I did not light a flame. Fire is an element of passion, of warmth. It would break the Key.
I descended in the dark, counting my steps. One. Two. Three. My mind remained a cold, flat lake. I was not afraid of the dark because a machine does not fear the dark. A machine simply navigates it.
I counted three hundred and twelve steps before my foot touched a flat stone floor.
I stopped. I was at the bottom.
I reached out with my hand, and a faint, pale blue light flared into existence. It wasn't a spell I cast; it was the room reacting to my presence. The air itself seemed to ignite with a low-level bioluminescence, revealing the Verboten Archive.
It was not a library. Roric Alastair had been right. It was a prison.
The room was a vast, circular cavern, the ceiling lost in shadows high above. The walls were lined not with shelves, but with iron cages. Inside the cages were books.
Some of the books were chained down, vibrating violently against their restraints. Others leaked a thick, black smoke that pooled on the floor. One book, bound in what looked like shimmering scales, was shrieking—a high, thin sound like a dying bird—over and over again.
The air was thick with a psychic pressure that made my skin crawl. It wasn't just magic; it was intent. The chaotic, fragmented thoughts of the mad geniuses who wrote these tomes were leaking out, filling the room with a cacophony of invisible whispers.
Hate... burn... power... see me... take me...
The voices clawed at the edges of my mind. They sought a crack in my armor. They wanted to find a fear, a desire, a spark of ambition they could latch onto. If I felt fear now, if I felt greed, the wards would sense it. The Scribe's Path would recognize an intruder, and the "mad gods" would be let loose on my mind.
I stood perfectly still. I reinforced the wall of my logic. These are not voices, I told myself coldly. They are residual mana echoes. They are data. Irrelevant.
I began to walk.
I moved through the aisles of cages, my footsteps silent. I was looking for something specific. I scanned the spines of the imprisoned books.
The Ritual of the Bleeding Sun.Taxonomy of the Void-Dwellers.The Heartstone Protocols.
I stopped. There it was.
In a cage of red iron, bound in crimson leather that seemed to pulse like a slow, wet heart, was the book Damien sought. The Heartstone Protocols. It was right there. I could reach through the bars, pick the lock with a pulse of mana, and take it. I could give it to Damien and secure my position forever.
I looked at it. The book seemed to whisper to me. Power... endless power... no more pain... no more fear...
My hand didn't twitch. My pulse didn't quicken. I felt nothing. To take it would be ambition. To destroy it would be righteousness. Both were emotions.
I walked past it.
I was not here for Damien. I was here for me.
I moved deeper, to the very center of the room. Here, the cages were smaller, the bindings more intricate. This was the section Alastair had marked as "Personal Theory."
I found a small, unadorned cage containing a single, thin book bound in pale, gray slate. It didn't vibrate. It didn't smoke. It didn't shriek. It sat in the center of its cell, radiating a profound, utter silence. It sucked the noise out of the air around it.
The title on the spine was etched in simple silver: The Hollow Sovereign: A Guide to the Severed Soul.
This was it. This wasn't a book about fireball spells or demon summoning. This was the manual for the very state of mind I was struggling to maintain. It was Alastair's masterwork on mental conditioning, on how to separate the will from the emotions permanently.
I placed my hand on the lock of the cage. It was complex, but mechanical. I used the same precise, needle-point pulse of mana I had used on the gate. Click.
The door swung open.
I reached in and took the gray book. It was terrifyingly cold to the touch, like holding a block of ice. As soon as my skin made contact, the whispers in the room vanished. The screaming book fell silent. The black smoke receded.
The book demanded silence, and the room obeyed.
I slipped the book inside my tunic, pressing it against my ribs. The cold seeped through my clothes, chilling my heart.
I had what I came for.
I turned and walked back to the stairs. I did not run. Running implies fear. I walked with the same measured, robotic pace. I ascended the three hundred and twelve steps. I stepped back into the janitor's closet.
I turned and placed my hand on the wall of solid darkness. I pushed.
Click.
The wall solidified. The stone returned. The damp, moldy smell of the closet replaced the ozone scent of the Archive.
I was back.
I stood in the dark closet for a long moment. The heist was done. Now came the hardest part.
I had to become human again.
I closed my eyes and let the logic fade. I let the barrier drop.
The emotions hit me like a physical blow. The fear I had suppressed, the adrenaline, the sheer, overwhelming terror of where I had just been—it all rushed back in a single, nauseating wave. My knees buckled, and I slumped against the mop bucket, gasping for air, my hands shaking so hard I could barely clasp them together.
I dry-heaved, my stomach knotting. The transition was brutal. It felt like waking up from being frozen alive.
I checked my pocket watch. I had been gone twenty minutes.
I forced myself to stand. I smoothed my uniform. I checked the mirror in the corner of the closet—a cracked, dirty shard of glass. My face was pale, my eyes wide and haunted. I pinched my cheeks to bring back some color. I took deep breaths until the shaking subsided to a manageable tremor.
I slipped out of the closet, locked the grate behind me with a simple mending-charm on the broken pin, and melted back into the shadows of the service corridors.
Ten minutes later, I walked back into the Grand Hall.
The music was still playing. The nobles were still dancing. The air was warm and smelled of roast pheasant and perfume. It was a stark, jarring contrast to the silent tomb I had just left.
I found Damien. He was exactly where I had left him, holding court with a group of senior professors.
"Ah, Lucian," he said, glancing at me. "Feeling better?"
I touched my stomach lightly. "Much better, thank you. The fresh air helped."
"Good," he said, turning back to the Headmaster. "As I was saying, Headmaster, the academy's curriculum could benefit from a more... aggressive approach to practical application."
I stood by his side, the perfect, loyal shadow. I nodded at the right times. I smiled the thin, polite smile.
But against my ribs, beneath the silk of my uniform, the gray book sat like a block of ice, a heavy, secret weight.
I had stolen from the mad gods. I had walked into the abyss and come back. And Damien, the genius, the mastermind, the villain... he had absolutely no idea.
I took a sip of wine. It tasted like nothing. The cold from the book was spreading, numbing my chest.
I was the Guest of Honor. I was the Architect. And now, I was the Thief.
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[ Author's Note- Please read the Author's Note that I wrote. It's in the 'Volume 0: Auxiliary Volume' section, along with the prologue. Please read it and share your thoughts — it's important. Thank you. ]