The tallest tower in the Kingdom of Wiphyrn had no windows, but the hooded figure at its summit did not need them. To that being, solid stone was as transparent as air.
Its fingers, long and thin like branches of glass, traced circles in the dust accumulated over an astral map. The surface glowed with a pale inner light, pulsing to the rhythm of a dying heart.
"I hope the Old Crow has received my letter," the voice whispered. It was not exactly a sound, but an auditory shadow that made the air vibrate with a chill.
The figure turned toward a creature that looked like a stuffed bird perched on a shelf, its eyes gleaming beneath the hood with ancient malice.
"Time is now a thread… and the flame has already begun to burn it."
In Thornhaven, the smell of old paper, ink, and dried herbs filled Aldric's study. It was the scent of accumulated knowledge, heavy and comforting.
The old man ran his fingers along the spines of the books on the shelf, his expression maintaining a veil of forced calm that would not fool a careful observer.
"This one," he said, pulling out a heavy volume bound in scaled lizard leather, "deals with the Elemental Currents. Basic, but essential for understanding where you're stepping."
He placed it atop a small stack on the central table, where the Canons of Arcane Perception already rested, along with a thick treatise on the cognitive flora of Wiphyrn.
His movements were precise, economical, but there was an underlying tension. As if an invisible hourglass were draining behind his eyes. He reached for another tome, the field journal of a traveling Mystic, when his hand froze in midair.
His gaze was drawn, almost against his will, to the top drawer of his desk. The only one that always remained locked.
With a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of decades, Aldric turned the key. The click of the lock sounded loud in the silence of the room.
Inside, resting on a cloth of black velvet, lay a single envelope. The wine-dark wax seal bore a symbol he had not expected to see again, but knew far too well: a tower wrapped in a spiral.
Aldric broke the seal. His eyes scanned the few lines written in an irregular hand.
For a moment, it seemed as though the air had been sucked from the room. Aldric's features, usually an unshakable cliff of patience, shifted. It was not fear. It was the expression of someone who turns a key in a lock and hears the decisive click, knowing that the door about to be opened can never be closed again.
He folded the letter with deliberate movements and slipped it into the inner pocket of his vest, over his heart.
"The basic lessons will have to wait," he murmured to himself, his voice distant. "Time has ceased to be our ally."
He looked out the window, not at the peaceful landscape of Thornhaven, but beyond the visible horizon.
The room fell silent, except for the soft, rhythmic sound of fingers tapping on wood.
Some days had already passed since the lessons began. For Konstant, learning was a purely tactile and auditory experience. Aldric had prepared special wooden boards, with the Excelsis alphabet carved in relief, creating an adapted system so the boy could "read" with the tips of his calloused fingers.
He ran his index finger over the curves and lines, mentally memorizing the shape of each letter by touch and associating its texture with the sound Aldric pronounced. His perception, heightened by the transformation in the cocoon, picked up the microtextures of the wood, the temperature of the room, and even the breathing of the others.
Meanwhile, Keiko, Rady, and, surprisingly, Luna learned in the traditional way, with parchment and ink.
Little Luna had decided that if Konstant was going to learn, she would too. Seeing the fierce determination in the girl's eyes, Aldric simply added another bench to the table, without protest.
He then positioned himself before them, unrolling a worn parchment across the table.
"As it is a language created by the Gods, practically everyone knows Excelsis, regardless of race, well… most of the ones I know," Aldric explained, his voice moving through the room as he observed his students' progress.
The rhythm of the old man's steps, slow and measured, was as distinctive as his voice. By instinct, Konstant stopped his finger over the raised letter for the sound "S" and focused on the vibration coming from the floor.
At that same instant, the scratching of Luna's quill ceased. She had lifted her head.
For a second, she hesitated, biting her lower lip. Then curiosity won.
Luna's question echoed the thought of them all. "Which races, elder?" she pressed, her eyes darting between Aldric and the others, seeking confirmation that she was not the only one confused.
Silence fell over the table. Keiko lowered her parchment. Rady stopped drumming his fingers. Konstant turned his face toward the old man, his sharpened hearing focusing on the subtle change in Aldric's breathing.
In a year living in Thornhaven, they had never seen anything beyond humans. Not a mention, not a strange traveler. The idea of other races felt distant, belonging to fairy tales.
Aldric sighed, the sound of fabric brushing indicating he had sat on the edge of the table.
"It makes sense that you wouldn't know. Wiphyrn is an isolated place, surrounded by difficult geography. That is why we have been safe from the Abyssals for so long… and also the reason for our ignorance."
His voice took on the didactic tone of a teacher, but carried a solemnity that made the air feel heavier.
"The world you are about to enter has many faces. Some familiar, others not." He counted on his fingers, as if listing rare treasures. "Beyond humans, the races I know of are the Colmeiais, the Silvestres, and the Veridianos."
"Colmeiais?" Keiko repeated, doubt evident in her tone.
"Colmeiais," Aldric said, the word leaving his mouth with a dry click, almost mimicking the sound he described. "They are tall, bipedal, with four arms. And the first thing you need to understand about them is that they do not speak."
He paused, letting the idea settle.
"At least, not as we do. Their language is a combination of articulated clicks, pheromones, and bioluminescence. A 'good morning' from a Colmeial might be a blue flash on the left shoulder followed by a double click."
Keiko drew in a sharp breath, imagining it.
"That is why the gods' Common Tongue is a practical miracle for trade," Aldric continued. "A Colmeial can learn to understand our words, but to 'speak' to us, they use a tuning crystal on their chest that translates their signals into sounds we can hear. It may sound somewhat mechanical and emotionless, but you can understand them."
He looked at the three of them.
"Do not underestimate them because of that. They are excellent builders and handle nature like no one else."
He paused, his blue eye fixed on the youths.
"That is why they are dangerous. Their logic is practical, not emotional. If you represent a threat to the hive, they will solve the problem. Without warning. Without discussion."
Konstant could not avoid the image: chitinous exoskeletons striking against one another in a sinister silence, like an army that did not shout, but only clicked and exhaled chemical scents. A shiver ran down his spine.
Aldric seemed to sense the heavy silence that had settled and shifted his tone, softening it into a more fluid rhythm, like someone recounting an old tale.
"As for the Silvestres…" he continued, and Konstant heard the faint knock of the old man's knees brushing together. "From the waist down, goat legs, split hooves. Horns on their heads. Nomadic by nature. They say they find paths where no one else can find a passage." He paused meaningfully. "Their music serves as a guide. If you hear a Silvestre playing a flute in the mist… either you are saved, or you are about to be lost forever."
The last echo of the warning still lingered when Aldric's tone shifted again, dropping to something solemn and more intimate.
"And the Veridianos…" he almost whispered, with a reverence absent from the other descriptions.
"They look like men made of tree bark, moss, and shadow. They are born in places where the land remembers something strong and ancient. They heal sick forests." His voice carried a weight of sorrow.
"They say they bleed sap and, unfortunately, they are sometimes hunted for it. That is why they are the rarest, the least likely to be seen."
He paused, letting the information sink in.
"In Aethérion, you will likely run into them in the corridors. You will eat at the same table, train side by side. You will have to trust them in battle."
He let out a tired breath.
"Or learn to distrust." He shook his head slightly. "Forget your world as a reference. Outside of here, what you do not know can kill you. And well… you do not know much."
The silence that followed was dense. The reality of Aethérion was becoming increasingly tangible and alien to Konstant. He felt the weight of that unknown vastness, a world he would have to navigate without sight.
Aldric stood and walked to the window. Konstant followed the sound of his steps and the change in the air current when he stopped before the opening.
Aldric ran a hand through his beard in a gesture of weariness, then straightened. "There is something else," he said, turning back to them. There was a spark of something rare in his gaze: pure reluctance to deliver bad news. "I cannot teach you the Arcane Arts."
The sentence fell into the room like a brick.
"What do you mean you can't?" Keiko's voice rose an octave, heavy with frustration. "You're the only one in Thornhaven who knows about runes and magic. If not you, who will teach us?"
"What I know is of no use to you," Aldric replied, his calm contrasting with her exasperation. "I am an arcanist. My magic is a bridge I built to access the power of the world. Yours… is a river that already springs from within you. Teaching a fish to build a bridge will only drown it."
He tapped his chest, a dull sound over his heart.
"An arcanist like me opens a path here. A bridge. It is through it that we converse with the world's mana. We ask. We shape. We give form with runes, mathematical calculations, and precise words. It is a constant negotiation with this world."
He paused. Rady felt the old man's gaze fall upon him, or rather, upon the center of his chest.
"But you…" Aldric continued, his voice intense. "You do not have a bridge."
"You have a Source. Something that is already power, burning within you like a furnace. Mana does not answer your call; it obeys. Or reacts violently. I have no idea how that internal furnace of yours works, nor where it begins or ends."
Aldric paused dramatically.
"Trying to force traditional arcane training on that source would be like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it."
Rady swallowed hard, the sound audible in the silence. The metaphor was painfully clear.
"So we can't learn anything?" Keiko asked, her chair scraping against the floor as she shifted restlessly. "We're going to Aethérion without knowing anything?"
"You can learn," Aldric replied firmly. "But not the way a mage learns."
He walked to the side table. Konstant heard the soft metallic sound of a blade being touched.
"There are other paths. Runic Guardians do not cast spells; they channel power through engraved weapons, activating magical circuits with their own vital energy."
He turned to Rady.
"Spirit Monks refine ki, the vital energy of the body itself, hardening the skin until it resists like steel and their fists break stone."
His attention shifted to Konstant.
"Trackers sharpen their senses until they hear the whisper of the world, anticipating movements before they happen, feeling the life around them."
He returned to the center of the room.
"All of them use the same energy of the world. The difference is that they do not try to control it with external formulas. They let it flow through them. To strengthen muscles. To sharpen senses. To deliver a single strike worth a hundred. It is instinctive. It is physical. It is dangerous."
Aldric picked up the leather-bound book from the stack. The sound of it scraping across the wooden table echoed until it stopped in Konstant's hands. The boy touched the cold, scaled cover.
"This book contains the basics of the geography, politics, and races of Wiphyrn," Aldric said. "Read it. No, wait. Konstant can't read it. I will read to Konstant when I can, or you can read to him."
Aldric sighed, and Konstant felt the exhaustion in the old master's breath.
"Train your bodies. Strengthen your minds. Because when we leave here… theory will end very quickly."
Konstant felt the cold, scaled weight of the book in his hands. It was no longer just an object. It was a key. A key to knowing a new world, complex and filled with things that could kill him.
He tightened his fingers slightly around the book. I will have to learn to see in other ways, he thought. The air in the room felt heavier, laden not only with the smell of old paper.