Since the Starlit Path was sealed off to her, Elara would resolutely tread the forbidden trail paved with rot and shadow. She would leave Cinder Town, not as an accessory to Kaelan Blackwood, but through her own power—a power derived from the Alien Knowledge the Kingdom deemed blasphemous.
And so, she returned to being the silent phantom outside the Grammar School windows. The early spring wind was sharp and bitingly cold, making the conditions for eavesdropping treacherous, but her hunger for knowledge was no longer mere curiosity; it had transformed into a desperate search for tools of survival. She needed to understand the mechanics of The Iron Anvil Kingdom. Even from the most superficial, officially sanctioned lessons, she could reverse-engineer the logic of the entire system, thereby better concealing herself and preparing for the ultimate escape.
She absorbed every scrap of knowledge Oliver's lessons offered—the Kingdom's history, basic natural philosophy, even the most rudimentary Aetheric Theory—with the avarice of Cinder Town's Steam Core. However, the brief reprieve ended abruptly. In the unpredictable cold snap of early 1283AS, her concentration betrayed her; she failed to detect the rhythmic crunch of a guard's boots on the wet flagstones and was caught.
In the Headmaster's Office, the corpulent Headmaster Mr. Horne surveyed the dirty, trembling red-haired girl with undisguised revulsion. "Scum! Thief! How dare you defile the Altar of Knowledge!" Without further inquiry, the copper-tipped cane in his hand whistled through the air, descending with the force of sanctioned, systemic violence.
The pain was a sharp, humiliating punctuation mark. But what chilled Elara more than the physical agony was Mr. Horne's definitive declaration, spoken with absolute authority: "From this day forth, no one from The Ash House is to approach this school within one hundred paces! I will raise the walls and deploy extra watchmen! You Cinder-Dreg, you will steal nothing that does not belong to you ever again!"
The path to even superficial knowledge was physically, absolutely severed. This raised wall was more effective than any discriminatory law, representing the most direct rejection of the lower-class Anomaly by the Kingdom's Stellar Core system. Elara, bruised and carrying a deeper sense of despair, stumbled back to her cold corner in The Ash House.
Hope seemed extinguished. But as she curled up in the darkness, on the verge of being consumed by pain and impotence, the Rotting Earth Codex pressed against her chest seemed to emit a faint, chill warmth. She was jolted by the memory of the alien fragments that had flooded her mind, which included methods for interpreting the book's twisted symbols.
A single, logical yet insane thought bloomed in her mind. If she couldn't access this world's knowledge, then she would excavate the forbidden knowledge carried within her very bloodline!
Leveraging the raw instinct and formidable mental fortitude gifted by the Alien Witch's Soul, she began attempting to decipher the Rotting Earth Codex. The process was agonizingly slow. The twisted symbols were not a language of correspondence, but closer to a "Direct Mapping of Concept," requiring her to seize their meaning using her Dissonant consciousness, a technique that felt like her mind was being torn apart. After countless failures, she managed to grasp the basics of the opening passages.
The book was less a grimoire and more a heretical apprentice's notebook on the intrinsic nature of 'Life' and 'Matter'. It cataloged peculiar flora, fungi, and minerals, describing their 'Confluence' with a certain 'Primal Power.' One illustration was unmistakably the Shadow Ash Moss that had saved her life that night; the adjacent symbols, Elara faintly understood, combined to mean: "Shadow," "Adherence," "Scent Seclusion," "Lesser Life Pacification"—in short, Concealment.
"Stealth…" Elara's heart hammered. Was this not the very tool she desperately needed for survival?
Hope reignited, but the path was far more perilous. Many materials described in the Codex, even in this blighted, harsh environment of Cinder Town, had low-quality substitutes. She began using every available moment—while moving coal, washing clothes, or disposing of refuse—to secretly gather things normal people considered weeds or poison: the fetid Drowsing Fungus growing by the sewage ditches, the light-absorbing Shadow Lichen found beneath abandoned rail sleepers, and even the oddly greasy Rustscale Powder scraped from rusted iron nails.
The process of compounding was fraught with danger. She had no proper tools, only a stolen, cracked clay pot and a metal strip. Following the Codex's vague instructions, she had to mix the processed materials at specific times (usually the gloomiest midnight), in a precise sequence, and infuse them with a thread of her own Dissonant Will—a strength fundamentally distinct from the Stellar Core Aether.
Her first attempt was on a rainy night. She hid in the deepest part of the defunct boiler house; the drumming rain on the tin roof muffled her activity. When she poured the final ingredient into the pot and focused the cold, alien force within her, the anomaly occurred.
The mixture reacted violently, belching thick, sickly-sweet-smelling purple smoke and hissing dangerously. Before Elara could retreat, the pot exploded! Hot, corrosive liquid splattered onto her hands and face, searing her skin.
She choked back a cry, biting her lip to prevent any sound. The explosion drew a patrol; their lantern beams swept through the ruins. She held her breath, pressed deep into the shadow, her heart nearly tearing itself out of her chest. Luckily, the guards dismissed it as a stray animal, cursed loudly, and moved on.
Once the danger passed, Elara examined her injuries in the faint light filtering through a crack. Her face was only lightly scalded, but a sharp shard of pottery had sliced a deep, bone-visible gash across her left palm. Blood mixed with the black residue and continued to flow, the pain nearly causing her to faint.
Yet, in that moment, she noticed something astonishing: the residual, partially successful concoction spilled on the ground was slowly… "absorbing" the surrounding light? The small corner where she lay felt like the shadow had gained density and substance.
Despite the failure, despite the cost in blood and agony, Elara grinned a silent, strained smile in the dark. The pain was real, the wound was real, but… the success was also real!
For the first time, she had consciously, actively guided the Dissonant force within her, and it had measurably impacted the physical world! Though it was only the roughest, most unstable precursor to Concealment Dust, and it had cost her a scar that would likely remain on her palm forever.
She looked at the ragged skin peeling back from the cut in her palm, blood dripping onto the filthy ground. This scar was not a mark of shame; it was the Blood Mark of her commitment to the Witch's Path, the first weapon she had purchased with pain and courage.
The knowledge in the Rotting Earth Codex was not fantasy. The Witch's Power was not a spectral myth. It acted directly upon the very essence of matter, twisting, converting, and perhaps even creating. This was fundamentally different from the way Mr. Oliver described Aether-Adepts merely 'borrowing' and 'guiding' the stellar energy. The Adepts were the straight-A students of the rules; the Witch… perhaps a Rule-Breaker.
The thought sent a shiver of terror mixed with thrill through her. She carefully collected the remaining, partially effective powder and wrapped it in a rag. The cut on her palm still throbbed, yet she hardly felt it.
The path was revealed, even if narrow, dangerous, and thorny. The first scar was the price paid and the prologue to her power. The shadows of Cinder Town would become her ultimate mentor.