The frustration became a physical knot between my shoulder blades. For days, I moved through the motions—training, eating, observing—but my mind was a trapped bird beating against the bars of my ignorance. The next few days I thought and thought about where the library must be.
My nocturnal cartography was complete. Every corridor, every empty salon, every locked door was etched in perfect, useless detail. The House Theodore, in its soaring, opulent splendor, was a temple without scriptures. It made no sense. A ruling house without an archive was a warrior without a brain—a brute instrument. But the Theodores were not brutes. They were precise, calculating. Their cruelty, I sensed, would be elegant.
I reviewed my mental map. There was one unchecked box, a location so insignificant I'd dismissed it. One place I haven't checked was the shed. The small, wooden structure in the garden. It was an afterthought, a blemish on the perfection of the estate.
But why would a shed have books in it? It was illogical. Books demanded climate control, security, reverence. A damp, humble shed was the antithesis of that.
Nevertheless, I decided to check it. Desperation overrode pride. I could not afford assumptions.
The following night, I retraced the long journey down, my small body navigating the vast staircases with weary familiarity. The garden was still, the glowing flora lending an eerie, silent carnival atmosphere. The shed sat in its patch of shadow, looking even smaller and more forlorn.
I pushed the door open. The interior was a single room, lit by the dual moons through a dusty window. It was exactly as it had seemed. It was filled with scrapped weapons. Not the clean, oiled arms from the upstairs armory, but the casualties of battle or neglect: a sword with a notch bitten deep into its blade, a dagger hilt with the tang broken off, a crossbow with a cracked stock. They were piled carelessly in a corner, a skeletal heap of forgotten violence. The air smelled of rust, old wood, and damp earth.
Of course. A wave of bitter disappointment washed over me. I'd been chasing a specter, my need had conjured conspiracy where there was only clutter. I decided to go back.
But as I turned to leave, my eyes, trained by a lifetime of debugging code and deconstructing narratives, caught an anomaly. The pile of scrap metal was large, but it seemed… seated on the floor. Not resting on the packed-earth floor, but somehow apart from it. There was a uniformity to the dust around its edges, a perfect line the debris didn't cross. It was a set piece.
Back in my crib, the anomaly festered. The next day, I was preparing a mental map of the place. I isolated the shed. I replayed the image: the weapons, the dust line, the sheer pointlessness of storing irreparable junk in a separate building when space wasn't an issue. It was a prop. A stage dressing.
Where, Where, where? There must be a library… no, a secret library. The thought ignited. Since this place has no books, it must be in a secret place. The Theodores wouldn't be without knowledge; they would hide it. Hoard it. Bury it.
My mind, stocked with tropes from a thousand stories, offered templates. The only secret places I remember were basements, tunnels, and hidden paintings. I'd seen no tunnels. The paintings were vast, monumental, fixed to load-bearing walls—not shifting panels. So that leaves the basements, huh…
Yeah… I haven't checked the underground. The entire estate was built on a foundation. There had to be cellars, vaults, dungeons. But where was the entrance? Not in the grand halls. Not in the inhabited wings. It would be somewhere unobserved, unremarked.
Where could it be?? I overlaid my map with this new logic. The kitchens had pantries, but those were active. The servant areas were busy. The garden shed was isolated, visited rarely, if ever. It was the perfect blind spot. A place for broken things, beneath notice.
It looks like someone or something wants to hide the library desperately… The thought was chilling. This wasn't just an architectural quirk. It was intentional obfuscation. But why? Is this some kind of test? Was I, the eighth child, expected to find it? Was my worth tied to uncovering the family's hidden heart?
Or not?... The more likely answer was darker. Knowledge was dangerous. The contents of that library were not for general consumption. Not for maids, not for younger children. Perhaps not even for all the golden-haired siblings. It was contraband.
The only thing left was the Shed. My focus laser-beamed on the shed. The most likely answer is the SHED. The logic was reverse-engineered and beautiful. A human who has checked the shed before will not go there again since they saw the scrapped weapons in there. It was a one-time visual deterrent. A solved puzzle. And who even expects an underground in a shed… It was a double bluff, hiding the profound in the profane.
But the final, lingering question was the most terrifying. Who is doing this? My father? The cold, assessing Head who seemed to own the very silence? Was this his design? Why did it do it? To separate the curious from the obedient? To weed out the unworthy? Or to create a secret haven for a select few? Numerous questions filled my mind, a swirling storm with the shed at its calm, deceptive eye.
The following night I prepared. This was no longer reconnaissance; it was a heist. I moved with a new purpose, the aching descent a necessary price. The garden was my accomplice, its eerie luminescence providing just enough light to see by without needing a torch I didn't have.
I stood before the shed door. My heart was a steady, hard drum, not from fear of capture, but from the fear of being right. Of what I might find. A small, anxious breath. I pushed the door open and slipped inside, then gently closed the door.
The scrap pile sat in the corner, a silent sentinel. I approached it, the dust muffling my steps. I didn't hesitate. If I was wrong, I'd merely have moved some junk. If I was right…
I grabbed the notched sword first. It was heavier than it looked. I dragged it aside, the screech of metal on dirt loud in the confined space. I moved the broken dagger hilt, the cracked crossbow, piece by piece. The work was physical, grounding. Underneath was not packed earth, but a large, flat square of worn, dark wood, flush with the ground. It had an iron ring set into it.
My breath caught. I was right.
I pulled the ring. The wood panel lifted smoothly, silently, on well-oiled hinges, revealing a square of utter blackness and a smell that wafted up—dry paper, old leather, the cool, mineral scent of deep earth, and something else… a faint, ozone-like tang.
The elegance of the trap was admirable. I had almost been that human who never checked it again.
I peered into the darkness. Rough-hewn stone steps descended. I moved inside. Slowly, slowly I tumbled inside, feeling for each step with my foot, my hands gripping the cool stone walls. The descent was short. After a dozen steps, the space opened up.
It was not a large room, but it was dense. The walls were lined with shelves carved from the living rock. And on every shelf, crammed into every space, were books. Not the pristine, gilded volumes I might have expected, but books of all sorts—thick, leather-bound codices, slim sheaves of parchment tied with cord, scroll cases of tarnished metal, even tablets of slate etched with fine script. This was not a curated collection. This was an archive. A hoard.
Moonlight from the shed door above provided a faint shaft of illumination, enough for my eyes, now keen in the low light, to see. There were a lot of books. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. My pulse quickened, not with anxiety, but with a fierce, hungry joy. This was it. The Rosetta Stone to my nightmare.
I had no time to marvel. Every second in this forbidden place increased the risk of discovery exponentially. I quickly moved here and there to find a perfect one about this planet and its history. I scanned spines, using the moonlight shaft like a reading lamp. The scripts varied. Many were in the common tongue of Aethelgard, but others were in older, more angular scripts, or symbols that hurt my eyes to look at for too long.
I needed a foundation. A primer for the world itself. I rejected dense philosophical treatises and books of complex sigils. Then I saw it, on a lower shelf: a thick, unadorned volume with a title stamped in simple gold leaf on dark leather: " History of Continent of Aetheria " It was exactly what I needed.
I pulled it from the shelf, the weight of it substantial in my small arms. I carried it into the shaft of moonlight, sat on the cold stone floor, and opened it.
With my photographic memory, I quickly looked. My eyes raced over the pages, not reading for comprehension yet, but for ingestion. I was a scanner, saving every page, every map, every chart of lineage to the flawless drive of my mind. The feel of the parchment, the layout of the text, the shape of the illustrations—all of it burned itself into my permanent memory with a single, focused glance per page. I turned them with careful, quiet speed.
After a few minutes, it was done. I could "read" it at my leisure, in the safety of my crib.
I closed the book, reverently returned it to its exact place, ensuring no trace of my visit remained. I took one last, sweeping look at the treasure trove around me. This was a resource I would return to, but carefully, sparingly. For now, the foundation was enough.
I climbed the stairs, pushed myself up into the shed, and carefully replaced the scrap weapons over the hidden door, arranging them as close to their original haphazard pile as I could remember. I left the place quickly and returned home.
The ascent back to my tower was a grueling marathon, but my spirit was light. The heavy, enervating fog of ignorance was lifting. I had stolen fire from the gods.
Back in my crib, as the false dawn painted the sky, I closed my eyes. In the darkness behind my lids, I opened the book.
Knowledge Acquired.