The next few days passed in a blur of orientation lectures and preliminary assessments, all of which I navigated with a carefully cultivated air of unremarkable competence. I attended classes on political history, my mind a strange fusion of Damon's rote-learned knowledge and Azrael's behind-the-scenes understanding of how it all *really* went down. I sat through lectures on affinity theory, my new, synthesized consciousness grasping concepts of Death and Chaos that would have made Azrael's head spin, while simultaneously cross-referencing them with the power-scaling system from the web novel. I was a ghost in the machine, a perfect student who never raised his hand, never asked a question, and never scored higher or lower than the exact middle of the class.
But my real work began at night. My brief foray into the forgotten archives had been fruitful, but it was only a starting point. I needed more. I needed to understand the full scope of the Vex'Arak conspiracy, to map its timeline, to predict its culmination with a precision the novel's narrative had never provided. The book gave me the 'what'; I needed to uncover the 'how' and the 'when'. For that, I needed access to the Academy's main library.
The Grand Library of Lumina Academy was a testament to the power of knowledge and the arrogance of its keepers. It was a vast, cathedral-like structure, its vaulted ceilings so high they were lost in shadow. But its true size was hidden. The shelves, I knew, extended into folded space, another masterpiece of Vex'Arak construction. It was a library that was, quite literally, bigger on the inside, containing millions of volumes from across the ten thousand years of the Solarius Dynasty's reign.
Getting in was easy. It was open to all students. The challenge was accessing the restricted sections and, more importantly, doing so without being noticed. The library was warded by House Glaciem librarians and protected by silent, floating sentinels that monitored for unauthorized access and the use of forbidden magic. It was a fortress of information.
I entered during the busy evening study period, just another student looking to do some pre-examination reading. I found a carrel in a moderately populated section, sat down with a generic text on elemental theory, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. For an hour, I simply sat, turning a page every few minutes, projecting an aura of focused study. In reality, I was extending my senses, my enhanced Mournblade awareness feeling out the rhythms of the library. I mapped the patrol routes of the sentinels, the placement of the scrying wards, and the attention patterns of the librarians. It was a slow, patient process of becoming part of the environment.
When I had a complete mental map of the library's security, I began my true search. I didn't need to browse the open stacks. Azrael's memory of the novel was my card catalog. The author, in a few throwaway lines of exposition, had mentioned specific texts that contained clues to the Vex'Arak's long history of "accidents."
*";…a historical text, 'The Age of Sundering: A Retrospective,' which noted the Vex'Arak's first forays into spatial manipulation during the war…"*
*"…the infamous 'Treatise on Unstable Geometries,' a banned book that theorized on the weaponization of reality tears, rumored to be authored by a Vex'Arak apostate…"*
These books wouldn't be in the open stacks. They would be in the restricted archives, the sections dealing with forbidden history and dangerous magic. Access required special permission from a senior instructor or the Headmaster himself. I had neither.
But I had something better: a deep, intuitive understanding of Death affinity.
I left my carrel and walked towards the back of the library, to the ornate silver gate that sealed off the restricted section. A Glaciem librarian, a woman with hair the color of frost and eyes like chips of ice, sat at a desk nearby, her gaze sharp and alert. The gate itself hummed with powerful wards, designed to detect life force, magical signatures, and unauthorized intent.
I found a secluded alcove between two towering shelves, out of the librarian's direct line of sight. I closed my eyes. I reached inward, to the core of stillness that was the heart of my Mournblade power. I began to suppress my life force.
It was the technique I had used to move unseen through the Academy at night, but I pushed it further. I didn't just dim my presence; I began to extinguish it. My breathing slowed until it was almost non-existent. My heartbeat, that slow, heavy drum, became a faint, distant echo. The natural warmth of my body cooled, matching the ambient temperature of the library. To any magical sense, I was ceasing to be alive. I was becoming a void, a patch of nothingness. It was a dangerous state; stay in it too long, and the process might become irreversible. Damon had practiced it for years, but had never been able to hold it for more than a minute. The new me, with Azrael's robust soul anchoring the consciousness, found I could sustain it longer.
When I was little more than a walking corpse, a hole in the fabric of life, I opened my eyes and moved. I stepped out of the alcove and walked directly towards the silver gate.
The librarian's head turned slightly as I passed, her senses picking up a faint chill in the air, but her eyes slid right past me. There was nothing to see. The wards on the gate flickered as I approached, their magical light wavering as they encountered something they couldn't classify. I was not alive, so the life-force detectors ignored me. I was not using magic, so the signature alarms remained silent. I had no hostile intent—my mind was a perfect, cold calm—so the intent-wards had nothing to lock onto.
I placed my cold hand on the gate. It was not locked physically. Its only defense was the wards. I pushed, and it swung open with a faint, protesting chime that the librarian dismissed as a draft. I slipped inside and pulled the gate shut behind me. I was in.
The air in the restricted section was different. It was heavy, charged with the contained power of the dangerous knowledge that surrounded me. I allowed my life force to return to its normal, suppressed level, the warmth flooding back into my limbs with a painful, tingling rush.
Now, the real work began. I moved through the labyrinthine aisles, my eyes scanning the ancient spines, Azrael's memory guiding me. I found it within minutes: *'The Age of Sundering: A Retrospective.'* It was a massive, multi-volume work. I didn't need to read it all. I knew the relevant section. Volume III, Chapter 12: "The Desperate Gambit: House Vex'Arak and the Birth of the Screaming Wastes."
I found the *'Treatise on Unstable Geometries'* in a locked case. The lock was complex, a puzzle of shifting magical sigils. Azrael would have been stumped. Damon, however, had spent his youth studying necromantic locks and soul-traps. His fingers moved with an innate understanding, tracing the patterns, feeling the flow of energy, and finding the single, critical flaw in the design. The lock clicked open.
For the next hour, I devoured the information. I didn't read; I absorbed. I cross-referenced the historical accounts of Vex'Arak's "desperate" wartime experiments with the theoretical applications in the banned treatise. A clear, terrifying picture emerged. The "accidents" I had found in the construction archives were not just random acts of sabotage. They were precise applications of the theories in this book. They were creating a resonance cascade, tuning the entire Academy to a specific, non-Euclidean frequency—the frequency of the Outer God Xylos.
The work was always excellent. The prices were always reasonable. The reality-tearing incidents were always "accidents." It was a conspiracy of perfect, plausible deniability, conducted over centuries. And it was nearly complete.
As I was carefully placing the treatise back in its case, I felt it again. The same cold, analytical gaze I had felt in the archives.
*She's here.*
My watcher. The Noctis girl. Elsa. She had followed me. Or she had been here already, conducting her own investigation. It didn't matter. She was here, and she was watching me handle a banned book in a restricted area I had no right to be in.
I did not react. I did not turn. I finished locking the case, my movements economical and precise. I turned from the shelf and began walking towards the exit, my posture calm, my expression neutral. I had the information I needed. Now, I had a new problem. A witness.
As I left the library, melting back into the evening crowd, I did not look for her. I knew she was there, a shadow clinging to other shadows. I didn't need to see her. I knew she was watching.
This changed things. Elsa Noctis was no longer just a name on a character sheet. She was a direct complication. Or… a potential asset. She was intelligent, skilled, and clearly investigating the same conspiracy I was. She would be useful, or dangerous, or both.
I walked back to Blackwood Hall under the light of the three moons, the cold night air doing nothing to cool the frantic calculations running through my mind. The board was getting more crowded, the pieces more complex. And I had a feeling my quiet, solitary game was about to become a duo.