The first hour of reading was promising.
The second hour was irritating.
By the third hour, I was becoming vividly offended.
I sat at a narrow reading desk near the archive shelf with a growing bookstack of open books that surrounded me, each one offering some variation of the same useless information:
One affinity by nature.
Two affinities by rare inheritance.
Three affinities are an unverified myth.
Anything beyond that? Omitted, dismissed, or wrapped up in a language so vague it might as well have been a confession of nescience.
I flipped a page with more force than needed.
"Secondary expression in limited and unstable conditions," I read aloud. "Exceptional cases may indicate bloodline interference, Aether core contamination, or fractured awakening pathways."
I looked up at the ceiling, in annoyance, and pinched the bridge of my nose.
"This book is terrible."
The Codex flickered.
[ASSESSMENT: ACCURATE]
"Thank you, Codex."
This time I reached for a different book, older and more self-important, that claimed that "the human core is not designed for multiplicity beyond ordained structure," the sort of sentence people wrote when they wanted uncertainty to sound meaningful.
I shut the book.
"This one is somehow even worse."
[ASSESSMENT: ALSO ACCURATE]
Another text spent thirty pages arguing that dual affinities were not truly dual, merely "adjacent manifestations of a single superior expression."
That one earned a quieter reaction.
"I mean, yeah, I guess, but it's just a lazy explanation."
[CONFIRMATION: EVIDENCE INSUFFICIENT]
I leaned back in the chair and pressed two fingers to my brow.
A montage was probably the wrong word for what followed, because nothing about it felt cinematic.
It felt like work.
Reading book after book.
Comparing book after book.
Discarding book after book.
An old war chronicle describing a "siege caster" who used both Ignis and Terra, except every known witness had contradicted the last.
A noble gene tree tracing the House's lineage over seven generations, implying overlap rates of affinity without ever providing useful numbers.
A philosophical piece of literature claiming all affinities were merely "masks" worn by a unified Source, beautifully written, but utterly useless.
And through all of it, the Codex quietly judged with me.
[DATA QUALITY: LOW]
[CASE STUDY: MYTHOLOGISED]
[AUTHORIAL BIAS DETECTED]
[CONCLUSION: NON-ACTIONABLE]
At one point, I set a book down so hard the desk clicked.
"None of these texts is good enough."
[CONFIRMATION: CURRENT SOURCES DO NOT RESOLVE QUERY]
"They're not even trying to solve it."
[CONFIRMATION: ACCURATE]
"How has no one thought to solve the mystery of using all affinities??"
By the time I looked up, the library had changed.
Not in design,
But in light.
The gold-white afternoon glow had dimmed to a cooler silver night. Lamps were floating lower now. The few remaining students were packing up their things or leaving in hushed pairs, and somewhere far off, a bell chimed the evening hour.
I blinked and checked the nearest clock crystal mounted on the wall.
"Wow, it's late," I proclaimed
Much later than I thought.
I sat back slowly and looked around at the scattered books.
'There was nothing definitive.'
'Nothing useful.'
'And definitely nothing the Codex respected.'
Which meant one of two things.
Either the answer didn't exist in the public archives…
Or it existed somewhere that the public didn't have access to.
My eyes drifted toward the far side of the archive wing, where the shelves changed again.
The architecture there was different. Less welcoming. More deliberate. Black-lacquered wood. Warded crystal grilles. A narrow iron gate set into an archway inscribed with small, tightly ordered runes.
'Restricted.'
Not dramatically.
Not with menacing skulls or ominous chains.
Just enough to say: "This part of knowledge is not available to you."
Naturally, that made it more interesting.
I stood slowly, gathering none of the books. I knew I'd put them back later... or tomorrow.
I looked around for Arielle, but there was no sign of her.
There was no movement in the nearby aisles either. The central desk at the front was shadowy, with only one lamp left glowing.
The library had thinned to that particular late-night state where every sound seemed larger than it normally would.
'Perfect.'
I walked toward the restricted section.
The iron gate wasn't locked in any physical sense. It didn't need to be. The runes embedded in the frame would do the real work. There was an access check, most likely keyed to status, faculty permission, or bloodline identification.
I crouched slightly to inspect the lower frame.
The runes were compact, layered, and more sophisticated than the lecture design. They weren't designed to repel force.
They were designed to decide.
I reached out without touching, studying the pattern.
The Codex flickered.
[GATE TYPE: AUTHORISATION FILTER]
[ENTRY WITHOUT CLEARANCE: NOT ADVISED]
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
[CLARIFICATION: USER USUALLY PROCEEDS ANYWAY]
"Haha, what else did you expect?"
I was still tracing the structure with my eyes when a voice appeared directly behind me.
"Whatcha doin'?"
I jolted so hard that I nearly hit the gate with my forehead.
My hand snapped halfway up on instinct, preventing impact.
Elya Veyrannis stood there.
Quiet as if she'd condensed out of the shadows themselves, her hands were folded behind her back, her head tipped slightly to one side. Her pale pink hair caught the low library light and held it like frost. Her expression was open, almost curious, but there was something watchful under it that made me instantly aware of how close she was.
I exhaled sharply.
"That was unnecessary," I said begrudgingly
Elya blinked with a sarcastic expression. "What are you talking about?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
"Hm? Do I?" she said.
I straightened slowly.
"What are you doing here?"
She looked around the restricted archway as if the answer were obvious.
"Visiting the library?"
"Yeah, I can see that. I'm asking why you're here, in front of me?"
Elya's mouth twitched.
"I won't tell anyone," she said.
I frowned slightly. "About what?"
"This." She gestured vaguely to me, the gate, the obvious intention. "Whatever this is."
My eyes narrowed.
"... Why not?"
She shrugged, delicate and unreadable.
"Because you look like the type of person who only does stupid things for important reasons."
"That... isn't reassuring."
"It wasn't supposed to be."
There was a pause.
The library around us seemed to lean in.
Elya looked at me for a moment longer than politeness required.
Then she said, softly:
"There's something different about you."
My spine went cold.
Not outwardly.
Inside.
A precise, internal stillness.
The Codex flickered instantly.
[ALERT]
I kept my face neutral.
"Different how?"
Elya frowned in concentration, as if the answer was close enough to feel and still refusing to take shape.
"I don't know," she admitted. "That's the frustrating part."
She stepped in a little closer, not threateningly, but just enough to make the space between us feel intentional.
"You existence doesn't feel wrong," she said. "Not exactly, but they feel… displaced. Combined with the fact that you're a commoner who is openly speaking to me, an heir of one of the Ten Great Houses."
The words hit harder than they should have.
My pulse sharpened.
I looked at her carefully.
"What do you mean by displaced?"
Elya nodded slightly. "Like your shape fits, but not perfectly. Like…" She exhaled softly. "Like I'm looking at someone through a memory of someone else."
The Codex flashed harder this time.
[NO EXTERNAL ENTITY SHOULD POSSESS KNOWLEDGE OF THE CODEX]
I kept my posture still.
Internally, though—
'What?'
'How does she know then?'
The Codex answered immediately.
[LIKELY: MISATTRIBUTION]
[SUBJECT VEYRANNIS: CANNOT IDENTIFY THE CODEX]
[PROBABLE TARGET OF PERCEPTION: USER SOUL SIGNATURE]
'Soul signature? Wait, you're telling me she can read my soul??'
The Codex responded as if that were an entirely normal point to introduce without context.
[HOUSE VEYRANNIS SPECIALISES IN MEMORY, ECHO, AND SOUL-IMPRINT PERCEPTION]
[SUBJECT ELYA VEYRANNIS LIKELY DETECTS DISCREPANCY BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL IMPRINT]
I stared at the empty air for half a second too long.
Elya noticed.
"You shouldn't do that," she said quietly.
"Do what?"
"Have your mind drift away while I'm still in the room."
"You're imagining things."
"So is your existence."
I looked back at her.
She wasn't smiling now.
It wasn't suspicious or accusatory.
It was honest.
Which was somehow worse.
I folded my arms slightly to keep my hands occupied.
"So, let me get this straight. You're saying I feel different."
"Yes."
"But you don't know why."
"No."
"And you're telling me this because…"
Elya tilted her head again.
"Because if I were you," she said, "I would want to know that someone noticed."
"Noticed what?"
"Your anomalous existence."
That was not an answer I expected.
And I didn't have an immediate response to it.
The library stayed quiet around us.
Distant shelves. Cold lamps. bookstacks humming in the gate frame between us and whatever the forbidden section held.
Finally, I asked the only useful question I had left.
"Are you going to keep trying to figure it out? My existence."
Elya considered that.
Then smiled faintly.
"Yes."
Honest. Again.
'Great. Of course, an heir of the Ten Great Houses is going to keep their eye on me PERSONALLY. What else could go wrong.'
I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding.
"That's inconvenient."
She seemed delighted by that.
"I know."
"Maybe you would reconsider—"
"No."
Then, just as suddenly as the tension had sharpened, she blinked as if remembering something ordinary.
"Oh," she said. "Before I forget."
She reached behind her back and produced a book.
I had absolutely no idea where she'd been hiding it.
The cover was dark blue, almost black, bound in leather so old the edges looked silvered. No title on the front. No visible Academy stamp. Just a faint embossed symbol at the centre, something like a closed eye wrapped in thread.
Elya held it out toward me.
"I think this book will be of help to you."
I hesitated.
Then, I took it.
The moment my fingers touched the cover, the leather went cold.
Not physically.
But as if traces of Aether that radiated from the book had finally found the missing target it had been looking for.
The symbol at the centre brightened.
Aether rippled through the binding with sudden force.
I looked up sharply.
Elya was already stepping back, disappearing into the shadows.
"Hey! What is this—"
The book opened by itself.
Pages snapped outward in a blur of blanched light and glyphs.
And then the world dropped out from under me.
No falling.
No impact.
Nothing.
Just a violent, impossible transformation... that left me no longer in the library.
I was being pulled to somewhere else.
Into something else.
Perhaps.
Into a memory.