Date: December 5, 540, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
A cold, bone-piercing rain drummed on the roof of the Institute of the Carved Scroll dormitory, as if trying to hammer into the ground not only the water, but the very dreary December darkness that had enveloped the city of Nest. In the tiny room, lit only by a single tallow candle, chaos reigned, visible only to its occupant. To an outsider's eye, it was simply a modest, poor student's cell. For Gil Varei, it was a map of her own despair, laid out on the table, on the bed, on the floor.
The table was piled with scrolls and codices. Some were tattered, with marginal notes in her neat but exhausted handwriting. Others, new, lay untouched, their perfect bindings seeming like silent reproaches. "Fundamentals of Church Rhetoric," "Genealogy of the Ruling Houses of the Rakash Dynasty," "Elementary Astronomy"... The titles merged into one continuous, meaningless blur before her tired, inflamed eyes. She sat hunched over a huge folio, "Syntax of the Ancient Language of the Imperial Era," and the letters, like frozen spiders, stubbornly refused to form words, let alone meaning.
She hadn't slept for the second... or was it the third day? Time had lost its linearity, turning into a viscous, sticky substance where the only milestones were another cup of bitter herbal brew for alertness and another failed attempt to memorize an archaic declension.
Inside, everything was empty and cold, as if she herself had been filled with this night rain. Physical fatigue was a familiar backdrop, one she had almost grown used to. But now something else had washed over her. A dull, nauseating feeling of her own inadequacy. It had crept up quietly while she was busy with translations, and now it gripped her throat with an icy hand.
"I won't make it."
The thought sounded in her head with such clarity and such ruthless simplicity that Gil actually flinched. She leaned back in her chair, covering her face with her palms. The bones of her fingers pressed painfully into her eyelids, forcing sparks from beneath them. Everything she had achieved—escape from the orphanage, successful entry into the Institute, Rod's respect—suddenly dimmed, seemed like an insignificant accident that was about to be exposed.
She thought of Kaedan. Where was he now? In the North, as they had agreed? He was probably already fighting monsters, building fortresses, his spirit of armor honed in real battles. And she? She sat within four walls and couldn't conquer a pile of old papers. The thought that she would let him down, let them all down, was sharper than any physical pain.
She needed to talk. To scream. To pour out this lump of powerlessness stuck in her chest. But Lia was already asleep behind her curtain, snoring carelessly, and Sigrid was probably meditating or solving some dizzying equations in her head that Gil couldn't even understand. Disturb them with her weaknesses? No. It was impossible.
Then her gaze fell on a small sheet of cheap parchment lying in the corner of the table. A letter. She hadn't planned to write it. It was irrational, a waste of time and resources. The chances of it reaching anywhere were negligible. But now rationality receded before an acute, childish need for connection with the world that remained outside the Institute's walls. With the world where she was understood without words.
With a hand trembling from fatigue, she dipped her pen into the nearly dried ink.
"Kaedan,
If this letter somehow miraculously finds you, don't think something has happened to me. I am fine. Outwardly.
I'm writing to you because tonight I thought I had forgotten the sound of your voice. And that frightened me more than any exam.
I sit in my cage. It's bigger than the orphanage, it smells of old books and dust, not cabbage soup, but it's still the same cage. Sometimes I feel like I've deceived myself, deciding that my weapon is knowledge. It's too heavy. It doesn't lie in the hand like your bracers. It fills you from within, like water, and is about to burst you.
I am learning a language no one has spoken for three hundred years. I memorize the names of kings whose bones have long since crumbled. And meanwhile, somewhere out there, beyond the walls, the real world lives, breathes, changes. And I let it pass through me like a sieve, leaving only dry, useless facts.
Today, for the first time in a long while, I remembered our oath. The one by the Old Pine. And I felt ashamed. Because I'm not building a better world. I'm just learning to read the instructions for its assembly, and I can't even figure out the first few points.
Tomorrow is the exam. I'm scared. Not of failing it. But that, by passing it, I will take another step closer to forever remaining in this tower of scrolls, becoming one of them—dry, smart, and utterly useless for the real cause.
Forgive this mess. Forgive the weakness. Don't tell the others.
Just... write back something. Anything. A story. About the Northern Lights. About the shape of snowflakes. Anything. So that I remember that out there, there is someone real.
Yours,
Gil"
She didn't reread it. She folded the sheet, sealed it with a drop of wax without imprinting it, and stuffed it into her desk drawer. She knew she wouldn't send it. There was no address. No way. But the very act of writing became the valve that released some of the steam. The sharp pain in her chest dulled, replaced by the usual, dull fatigue.
She blew out the candle and lay down in bed, listening to the rain. Sleep wouldn't come. Thoughts darted like trapped flies between the declensions of an ancient verb and the image of Kaedan. Was her sacrifice—this renunciation of sleep, food, simple human joys—justified? Or had she, the smartest of them, made the biggest mistake, voluntarily imprisoning herself?
Towards morning, when the rain finally ceased and the window lightened, her last thought before short, anxious sleep finally overcame her was a simple, clear decision. She could not allow herself to break. Not out of pride. But because if she broke here, in this room, over a book, it would mean their oath, their dream of a Better World, had been worthless from the very beginning. And she refused to believe that.