The library was a tomb of knowledge, and I was burying myself alive in it.
Dust motes danced in the slants of afternoon light, disturbed for the first time in weeks. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment, dried herbs, and silence—a silence that was suffocating.
Neer, of course, shattered it immediately.
"So, the Acharya's favorite watchdog," he said, leaning idly against a shelf and examining a scroll without unrolling it. "Do you get extra credit for babysitting me, or is this just a punishment for you too?"
I didn't look at him. I picked up a rag and began methodically wiping down a row of heavy, leather-bound treatises on elemental theory. The action was mindless, a welcome distraction from the storm in my head.
"The task is to clean, Neer. Not to talk."
He laughed, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the quiet hall. "Of course. 'The task.' You'd probably clean your own funeral pyre if the Acharya commanded it." He pushed off the shelf and picked up a broom, but made no move to use it. "Tell me something, Agni. Back in class… was my answer truly wrong?"
I paused, my hand stilling on the rough leather. I could feel his gaze on my back, intense and probing.
"The Acharya said it was emotional," I replied, my voice flat.
"I asked what you thought."
I finally turned to face him. He was standing there, the broom held like a staff, his head tilted. The afternoon light caught the blue of his eyes, and for a terrifying second, they glowed with the same unearthly fire from my dream. I blinked, and the illusion was gone.
"The law is clear," I said, forcing the words out. "Justice cannot be swayed by emotion. It must be impartial, like a scales."
"A scales weighs what is placed on it," he countered, his voice dropping its mocking edge. "It doesn't care if the weight is a bag of gold or a beating heart. But a king should. A person should. Shouldn't we?"
His words, so similar to the thoughts that sometimes whispered in the darkest part of my own mind, unnerved me. This was the problem with Neer. He didn't just break rules; he questioned the very foundation they were built on.
"Your method leads to chaos," I stated, turning back to the bookshelf. "Mine leads to order."
"Your order feels a lot like a prison, Agni. Do you ever take that uniform off? Or are you afraid of who you'd be without it?"
The question hit a nerve so raw I almost flinched. Who would I be without my duty, my discipline, the destiny that was a shackle around my future? I would be the man who killed his best friend. Nothing more.
I didn't answer. I just wiped the dust away with more force than necessary.
For a while, the only sound was the soft swipe of my cloth and the occasional scuff of his feet. He was actually working, I realized with a shock. He moved with a quiet efficiency that contradicted his usual chaotic energy, reshelving scrolls that had been left out and sweeping the stone floor.
The tension between us shifted. It was no longer just the usual rivalry, or even the dread of the prophecy. It was a thick, unspoken thing, filled with his unanswered questions and my deadly secrets.
My eyes kept drifting to him. The way his brow furrowed in concentration. The way he bit his lip as he tried to fit a heavy tome back into a high shelf. He was so alive. So real. How could a dream, no matter how vivid, ever outweigh this reality?
He stretched to reach the shelf, his tunic riding up, and I saw it. A thin, white scar just above his hip.
My breath caught.
In my dream, when the blade sank in… that was exactly where it would have landed.
The world tilted. The dusty library swam before my eyes. It wasn't just a dream. It was a premonition. A promise.
"You know," Neer said, his voice startling me. He hadn't turned around. "You don't always have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Sometimes, you can just put it down."
He finally slotted the book into place and turned, dusting his hands. His expression was unreadable. "The library is clean, Warden. Are you going to report my negligence, or can I go?"
I just stared at him, my mind a whirlwind of scar tissue and stormy ruins. I couldn't form a single word.
He took my silence as assent. With a slow nod, he walked towards the large wooden doors. But as he passed me, he stopped. So close I could feel the warmth of his arm.
"You asked me who I'd be without this uniform," I whispered, the words torn from me before I could stop them. I wasn't even sure I'd spoken aloud.
He looked at me, his gaze deep and unsettlingly knowing. "I didn't ask, Agni. But I've always wondered."
He left then, the heavy door thudding shut behind him, leaving me alone in the silent, spotless library.
I stood there for a long time, the ghost of his presence lingering in the dust-free air. My carefully constructed world of rules and order felt like a house of cards, and Neer's simple, profound questions were a gathering wind.
The prophecy wasn't just a future event. It was a poison, seeping into my present, twisting every glance, every word.
I looked down at my hands. They were clean. No blood. No storm.
But as I curled them into fists, I knew, with a certainty that chilled my soul, that one day they would not be.
And the worst part was, a treacherous, guilty part of me was already beginning to mourn the boy I had to kill, not in some distant future, but right now, in the quiet of this library.
The thought was a violation of my every vow. It was chaos.
It was the most human I had felt in years.
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(Word Count: 843)
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Chapyer End: The chapter ends with Agni's shocking realization that he is already beginning to mourn Neer, humanizing him in a way that makes the prophecy even more devastating. The internal conflict is now fully established, making the reader dread the inevitable confrontation.