Chapter Two
The Library of Breath
Ayame's Childhood Memory
***
The scent of dried herbs and aged parchment clung to the library like a second skin. Tiny motes of golden light drifted above the long stone tables, each Breath-lantern pulsing with contained healing magic. Glass vials clicked softly on the high shelves when the building breathed, some filled with pastel liquids, others housing crystal-threaded roots that shimmered when the lanternlight caught them.
Ayame sat cross-legged on a low velvet stool, scribbling uneven glyphs onto parchment. Her brow furrowed; her tongue peeked out at the corner of her mouth as she tried to keep the line from wobbling. Beside her, a healing wand rested in its cradle, humming faintly. It was still too advanced for her to use, but close enough to feel like a promise.
Master Solís moved with precise grace between the rows, checking artifact cases and making notes with a quill that never ran dry.
When he spoke, he did so without looking up, as if the words were part of the inventory.
"There's a girl arriving at Bastion today. From the northern marshes."
Ayame looked up sharply, eager. "A new student?"
He turned then, silver-rimmed spectacles catching the lantern glow. "Not yet. She's… complicated."
He lifted a vial and watched its Breath threads twist lazily against the glass. "Her name is Liren. Orphaned. Pariah in her village. She sees the dead."
A quiet chill slipped under the library's warmth. Ayame tilted her head. "Like spirits?"
"More than that. She can sense the final threads of Breath before they vanish. Communicate with what remains."
"Is that dangerous?" Ayame asked, and heard her own voice drop, as if the shelves were listening.
Her father's smile was brief and unreadable. "It depends on who's asking. Most will fear her."
He set the vial down with care. "Your mother thinks we should take her in. Says the girl has no one. And perhaps she's right." His fingers rested on the glass a beat too long. "But I see a use for her. Soon."
Ayame sat straighter. "Do you want me to meet her?"
"I want you to be her friend," he said, finally meeting her eyes. "She'll have no one. And you've always been… persuasive when you wish to be."
Pride rose in Ayame's chest, small and bright.
"If I help her," Ayame asked, "will you teach me how to use the Breath blades?"
He chuckled softly. "Perhaps."
That was all she needed. She nodded quickly, already imagining the two of them exploring the university corridors, and her father watching her as someone more than a child.
"Then I'll make sure she never feels alone," Ayame said brightly.
Master Solís turned back to his notes; his face went blank again, as if it had never moved.
"That," he murmured, "would be ideal."
***
The Unseen Lessons
A month after Liren's arrival
Master Solís's private library, late afternoon
***
The private library was quieter than usual. The Breath-lanterns were dimmed; the only light came from a soul-root flame suspended in a glass orb above Master Solís's desk. The flame popped now and then, releasing a curl of violet spark that died before it touched the floor. Lavender ink and polished oak sat heavy in the air, the way secrets did.
Ayame sat in a carved reading chair with her arms crossed, heel thumping the footrest in a steady, irritated rhythm. She didn't look up when her father entered.
"She's fine," Ayame muttered. "But she's boring."
Master Solís paused beside the cabinet of oath-scrolls. A crystal quill-holder on the desk tapped softly, tap-tap-tap, like a patient metronome. "Liren frightens you?" he asked, almost amused.
Ayame scowled. "No. She's just… weird. She barely talks. She stares off like she's listening to ghosts. And Vessa says she gives people the shivers."
Solís uncorked a vial of spiced ink; the stopper clicked like a lock tumbling shut. He let the silence stretch until Ayame's heel slowed.
"Your mother asked me to help her," he said at last. "Said the girl had no one left. That she deserved kindness."
Ayame's shoulders softened, but only a little.
"Kindness alone doesn't change the world," Solís continued. "Utility does."
He turned. In the soul-root glow, his eyes looked like cut glass. "Most people are tools."
Ayame blinked, the word landing heavier than she expected.
"They conform because it's easier," Solís said, voice calm, almost instructional. "A farmer tends soil because he must. He spends his life mastering his craft. There's no time left to question who owns the fields."
He stepped closer. The quill-holder stopped tapping.
"They obey, not because they are lesser, but because we have spent generations grinding out disobedience. One whisper at a time. One law at a time. Until they no longer trust their own judgment."
Ayame traced a faint glyph into the dust on the desk, smaller now. "That's… sad."
"It is," Solís said. "And it is true."
Ayame glanced up. "And Liren?"
"Liren is not like them," Solís said. "She's untethered from the script."
He paced once, slow, as if arranging his thoughts into a blade. "I was strange once. An orphaned apprentice from the outer lands, half-forgotten by the world. But I saw clearly and refused to blink."
The soul-root flame flared, and something hungry flashed through his expression before it smoothed away again.
"Now I am head of the most respected house in Bastion," he said, "husband to a woman whose blood traces to royalty, keeper of the Vaults, because I dared to look where others looked away."
Ayame listened, awe braided with unease.
"Weird people are dangerous," Solís said softly. "They see the cracks beneath the surface. Those who don't fit are the ones who reshape the world."
He set a gentle hand on her shoulder. The quill-holder resumed its tap-tap rhythm, like a clock reminding them whose time they kept.
Ayame's voice went small and child-serious. "So being weird isn't bad, if you're smart about it?"
"Precisely."
Ayame swallowed. "If I help her find her use… she'll be safer, right?"
Solís's smile returned, thin and approving. "Very clever."
Her frustration melted into determined eagerness. "I'll try harder."
"Good."
He turned back to his ink and spoke as if to the flame, not to her. "Because one day soon, she won't just matter. She'll be the hinge a big door turns on."
The soul-root flame flickered; for a heartbeat the library felt like it inhaled, and held.
***
History of Religion Lecture
Professor Harlen, first year
***
The lecture hall ceiling was a dome of crystalglass etched with constellations, each star pulsing faintly with Breath-light. Students lounged on stepped cushions instead of chairs; scrolls and slatepads floated beside them like loyal birds.
Archivist Harlen stood barefoot on the low dais, robes half-unbuttoned, hair wild as if he'd run through a storm and decided it suited him.
He clapped once, loud enough to startle a few slatepads into wobbling.
"All right, my shining mistakes. Welcome to Core Histories and Theories of Breath II."
A few groaned; others laughed. Harlen grinned at both.
"I see you survived your first year. Congratulations. That means one of two things. Either you're ready to be told the truth, or I'm running out of colleagues who'll stop me."
He picked up a curved fragment of stone scored with melted glyphs and held it aloft.
"This is part of the Royal Road. Built by the Mad King in his attempt to bind the world under a single banner. Not within the Core, around it. Carved through forest, ashland, and salt sea alike."
"He finished maybe sixty percent before he was slain by his nephew, Onekya Solís. May her name outshine him forever."
A hush fell. Even second-years treated that name like a ward.
Harlen let the quiet sit, then asked, "Why does the Core still protect us? Why haven't the storms or the Breathlings consumed what's left of the world?"
No one answered. Breath-lights hummed; somewhere a student's stomach growled and then stopped, as if it had remembered where it was.
"No one knows," Harlen said, almost cheerfully. "The winds scream above. The monsters crawl below. Yet this sliver of land survives. Some say it's mercy. Others say it's a prison."
A stone relief behind him showed three figures carved at the lip of a dark spiral. Harlen tapped it with the Royal Road fragment.
"Six hundred years ago, a woman named Reva descended into the Core and returned. She founded the Expedition Guild to understand what others feared to name."
"Some believe we've extracted all that's useful."
"But others," he added with a wink, "believe we've only scratched the surface."
The floating chalk beside him drew a nine-point spiral in the air, precise as a sigil.
Right then, the side door creaked open.
Khalen Rasheen slipped in, rain-damp and clearly late, satchel half-buttoned. A few drops spotted the stone in his wake.
Harlen didn't look up. "Ah. Our final flame has arrived."
Soft laughter rippled across the cushions. Khalen paused in the doorway, expression unreadable.
Harlen gestured without turning. "Seat beside Mr. Elyas. Yes, that Elyas. And no, you two can't duel in here, unless it's with wit or historical footnotes."
Curiosity sharpened. Eyes tracked Khalen as he descended and took the open seat beside Elyas without a word.
Elyas looked up, amusement flickering at the corners of his mouth. His posture was easy and practiced, already familiar to the room, but not arrogant. Just accustomed.
From a few rows up, Liren nudged Ayame behind her scroll. "Finally."
Ayame smiled faintly but kept her eyes on the dais.
Harlen let the attention settle, then leaned forward as if telling a secret. "Now, as I was saying. You've learned the rules of Breath. Passed your binding and conduit trials. But this class? This is where it gets messy."
"We'll cover the Mad King's rise, the invention and misuse of Breath-infused technologies, and the so-called Ordinary Human who gave us gifts that outlived their warnings."
"Spoiler alert: half of it's myth. The other half just hasn't killed us yet."
He tossed the Royal Road fragment into the air; it hovered and rotated, then flared into illusion. Fire licked the base of a throne.
Soldiers knelt to a ghost. A stone gate opened onto an abyss.
Harlen's voice softened, and the room followed. "History is memory distorted by power. Let's see how deep the truth goes."
***
Interlude
The Seed That Would Not Bloom
***
Before the tunnel had a name, a crystal began to form.
It was not a jewel so much as an open mouth: a lattice of hungry facets drinking the heat that rose from the deep. Clear became milky; milky turned prismatic. The stone learned to thirst.
Something drifted into that unfinished mouth.
Not thought, not yet a body. A larval thing the size of a cupped hand, soft and blind, all hunger and reach. It moved toward the warm place because living things do. The lattice tightened because growing things do.
The seed should have bloomed. Crystals near the Core ripen, flare, open like flowers that rewrite stone. This one did not. When the earth tore, bedrock folded wrong and an old ward cinched tight around the faultline. The seed's season never changed. Breath kept pouring in. The mouth never closed.
The creature learned the rhythm by dying.
Draw. Burn. Mend. Each surge cooked it to stillness; each lull let it knit. Skin glassed into translucent plates; soft joints hardened, cracked, and hardened again. Tiny limbs budded, failed, returned. It learned to hold still because movement meant shatter. It learned to wait because waiting was the only weapon that did not break.
Others like it hatched in darkness and ended against warded lines, or starved where the Breath-winds fell thin. This one had the curse and mercy of a never-bloom: a constant umbilicus of power, a cage that fed what it trapped.
Centuries passed the way Breath passes, always there until it isn't.
Above, people hammered new halls into the stone and called the place Caer' Syllen.
Festivals tolled; chains were made and broken; oaths shouted and swallowed by rock.
Once, soldiers cornered refugees in a lower nave. The killing was quick and close. Blood worked into the seams and down into the fault. Pain fell like rain.
The seed drank that, too.
In a lull that felt like night, a tremor opened a hairline crack. Air threaded in: dust, fungus, iron. A student cut a palm on a loose nail, and a single drop found the seam. Salt and fear hit the creature's tongue. It jerked, plates chiming against the facet walls, and the lattice flashed once, twice, then dimmed.
Sometimes the seed sang.
When the winds were right, the crystal made a low tone. The small thing pressed its body to the music and answered with a weaker note. Resonance crawled up the stone. In a lecture above, students would later swear they felt a bell in the floor, and laugh at themselves for it.
Once, only once, the Bound Mother stirred. Not to save, but to notice. The small insistence of a life rehearsing survival brushed the edge of her long sleep. For the span of a single heartbeat, she cupped the fault like a palm beneath a child's skull and eased the pressure by the width of a sigh. The lattice did not know. The creature did not know. Only she did. Pleased by its stubbornness, she settled back into ache with a little more patience.
Time slowed into becoming. A ridge sprouted glassy eyes; most dimmed, two did not. They learned pressure-lines in the crystal like hairline rivers. A thorned tongue tasted through the crack and learned rust, Breath, and the brief sweetness of spilled oath-wine.
Hunger rounded into shape; rage thinned into heat that did not need a mouth.
The creature kept doing the only thing it knew: not dying.
On a day people with calendars would mark for other reasons, the Breath-winds changed pitch. Far away, a house became a kiln, and a young man's scream turned air into glass. The surge that reached the old tunnel was not the usual tide. It was a wave that had learned grief.
The prism drank.
Every facet lit violet at once, color running like water toward the Core. The not-quite-wings spread against the walls and held. The two eyes that mattered dilated.
Above, the sealed door grew warm to the touch.
The thing inside did not speak; it had never learned to. But it listened with its whole made body: corridors, footsteps, a careful tread that sounded like its own Breath.
Someone was coming.
The seed brightened once, like a heartbeat, and went still.
It had learned to wait.
Now it would learn to be seen.