Chapter 6

I didn't sleep.

Not because of fear, though that should've been reason enough. The shadows that danced across my chamber walls whispered of assassins and poisoned chalices, of political machinations that could snuff out my life like a candle flame. But it wasn't the specter of death that kept my eyes wide and staring at the ornate ceiling above.

It was the gnawing thought that wouldn't leave, a relentless hunger that clawed at the edges of my consciousness like a starving beast.

If they were already trying to kill me now, I wasn't going to last another week in this world unless I started pulling answers from somewhere other than my instincts. The gut feelings and half-formed theories that had carried me this far were crumbling beneath the weight of reality. I needed knowledge. Real knowledge. The kind that could turn the tide of whatever game I'd been thrust into.

And there was only one place left to look.

The morning light filtered through the tall windows of the palace, casting long golden fingers across the marble floors as I made my way through corridors that had become both prison and sanctuary. Each step echoed with the weight of decisions that could reshape kingdoms or end in my swift demise.

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"You're sure about this?" Liora asked, leading me down a narrow, spiraling stairwell beneath the palace. Her voice carried a tremor I'd never heard before, a crack in the composed facade she wore like armor.

The stone steps beneath our feet were worn smooth by centuries of passage, each one leading us deeper into the bowels of the great structure. Torches flickered in iron sconces, their flames casting dancing shadows that seemed to writhe and twist with a life of their own.

"No," I said, my honesty cutting through the tension like a blade through silk.

She didn't laugh. She rarely did when it came to him. Her jaw tightened, and I caught the way her fingers traced the hilt of her concealed dagger, a nervous habit she'd developed in the days since the barrier incident.

"I'm only warning you once," she muttered, her voice barely above a whisper. "The Archivist isn't like the others. He doesn't care about politics. Or manners. Or anything except the glyphs."

The words hung between us like a challenge, heavy with implications I was only beginning to understand.

"Sounds like a breath of fresh air," I replied, though my voice carried more bravado than I felt.
She gave me a look that could have frozen fire itself. "You'll regret saying that."

The stairwell seemed to descend forever, spiraling deeper into the earth with each step. The air grew cooler, carrying with it the scent of old parchment and something metallic that made my teeth ache. When we finally reached the bottom, we stood before a sight that made my breath catch in my throat.

The stairwell ended at a rusted iron door, scarred with hundreds of tiny glyphs that pulsed faintly in the dim torchlight. Each symbol seemed to writhe and shift when I wasn't looking directly at it, as if the very metal was alive with arcane energy. The door itself was a masterwork of defensive enchantment, layers upon layers of protective wards that would have taken decades to perfect.

Liora didn't knock. She pressed her hand to the latch and muttered something under her breath, words in a language that predated the kingdom itself. The glyphs flared briefly, their light washing over her face and revealing the strain in her features.

The door unlocked with a click like snapping bones, the sound echoing through the corridor with an finality that made my skin crawl.

Inside, the Archive wasn't what I expected.

No gleaming halls lined with precious tomes. No marble shelves stretching toward vaulted ceilings. No grand testament to the accumulation of knowledge that I'd imagined would greet us.

Just dust, stone, and shelves stacked with scrolls and metal plates, arranged in chaotic clusters that looked like they might collapse if you so much as breathed too hard. The air was thick with the weight of ages, each breath carrying the taste of forgotten secrets and abandoned dreams. Cobwebs draped from the ceiling like gossamer curtains, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear the steady drip of water against stone.

And in the middle of it all, hunched over a slab of etched iron like a gargoyle guarding ancient secrets, was the man himself.

The Royal Archivist.

He didn't look up from his work, didn't acknowledge our presence in any way. His quill moved across the metal surface with mechanical precision, each stroke deliberate and exact. The scratch of metal against metal filled the silence, a rhythm that seemed to match the beating of my own heart.

Liora cleared her throat, the sound unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet.

"Master Varis. I've brought the Sage of Systems."

His quill paused mid-scratch, but only for a heartbeat. The silence stretched between us like a taut bowstring, pregnant with possibility and danger.

Then he spoke, his voice dry and hoarse, like wind scraping across sun-baked stone.

"Sage of Systems," he repeated, tasting the words like they were something foul that had been left too long in the sun. "You've already broken more rules in one week than most men do in their lives. And now you want my time."

There was no accusation in his tone, no anger or frustration. Just a statement of fact, delivered with the cold precision of a judge pronouncing sentence.

"I want answers," I said, stepping forward into the circle of light cast by the oil lamp on his desk. "You're the only one who can give them."

Still, he didn't look at me. His attention remained fixed on the iron plate before him, as if my presence was nothing more than a minor distraction from more important work.

"Answers," he muttered, dragging his quill along the plate again. Each stroke sent tiny sparks flying, brief flashes of light that illuminated the deep lines carved into his weathered face. "Isn't that what they all want? Answers, solutions, miracles. And when they get them, they demand more until you're nothing but a drained husk, a hollow shell of what you once were."

He set the quill down with deliberate care, placing it in a groove worn smooth by countless repetitions of the same motion.

Then he looked up at me for the first time.

Sharp, sunken eyes. Pale as frost on a winter morning. Unblinking and ancient, they seemed to pierce through flesh and bone to examine the very essence of my soul.

"But you're different," he said, his voice as flat as a blade drawn across a whetstone. "You already know that there are no miracles."

I said nothing, because the truth of his words hit me like a physical blow.

Because he wasn't wrong.

Varis rose from his stool with slow, deliberate motion, like an old machine winding itself up after years of disuse. Every movement was calculated, economical, as if he'd learned to conserve energy for only the most essential tasks.

"Sit," he said, gesturing to a low bench near the table.

I did, settling onto the worn wooden surface that had clearly supported countless other seekers over the years. The bench groaned slightly under my weight, and I caught the faint scent of old leather and ink that seemed to permeate everything in this place.

He reached into the shelves behind him, his movements sure and confident despite the chaos that surrounded us. From among the countless scrolls and plates, he selected a thin copper plate etched with tangled lines of glyphs. The metal caught the lamplight as he dropped it onto the table between us with a soft clink.

"This," he said, his voice taking on the tone of a teacher beginning a lesson, "is a segment of the Eastern Barrier's auxiliary lattice. The same array you tampered with."

Liora watched silently from the side, her hands clenched behind her back so tightly I could see the whites of her knuckles. Her breathing was shallow, controlled, as if she were trying to make herself invisible.

Varis continued, his voice calm and cutting like a surgeon's blade.

"You claim to want understanding. Then you will read this."

I frowned at the plate, leaning forward to examine the intricate patterns etched into its surface.
The glyphs were elegant, more beautiful than any calligraphy I'd ever seen. Shapes layered atop one another in loops and angles, each glowing faintly with a pale blue light that seemed to pulse in rhythm with my heartbeat. The craftsmanship was exquisite, each line perfect, each curve flowing into the next with mathematical precision.

But beneath the beauty, I could already see the logic. The underlying structure that held it all together.

It wasn't language, not in any conventional sense.

It was math. Pure, crystalline mathematics given form and substance.

I traced one glyph with my finger, careful not to touch the activation lines that threaded through the pattern like veins of light.

"This one controls directional flow," I said slowly, watching the way the lines branched off it like the tributaries of a river. "Acts as a sort of valve. Regulating current between nodes."

Varis's eyes narrowed, just slightly, but I caught the subtle shift in his expression.

I moved to the next glyph, my confidence growing with each connection I made.

"This links to a reinforcement node. It multiplies resistance when strain thresholds are passed. A stabilizer."

Liora let out a quiet breath, almost too soft to notice, but in the oppressive silence of the Archive, it sounded like a thunderclap.

I kept going, my mind racing as the patterns began to make sense.

Piece by piece, I picked apart the array, following the logic like a detective pursuing clues through a labyrinth. I traced the cause-and-effect chains like solving a brutal circuit diagram, each connection revealing new layers of complexity.

It wasn't easy. My head began to throb as I forced my mind to process concepts that had no equivalent in my previous experience. Half the glyphs weren't even designed to be readable in any conventional sense. They were legacy code, relics from an earlier age that had been patched over with newer additions that barely held together.

But it made sense.

Because it was a system. Flawed, outdated, held together by the arcane equivalent of duct tape and prayers, but a system nonetheless.

After what felt like hours but was probably minutes, I looked up from the plate. My eyes watered from the strain, and I could feel the beginning of a headache building behind my temples.

"It's unstable," I said simply.

Varis's lips twitched. Almost a smile. Almost.

"Explain."

I tapped the copper plate, pointing to three separate glyph clusters that had been nagging at me throughout my analysis.

"Resonance loops here, here, and here," I said, my voice growing stronger with each word. "All pulling from the same frequency band. It creates oscillation under high load. That's why the barrier nearly collapsed."

Silence fell over the Archive like a shroud. Even the constant drip of water seemed to pause, as if the very stones were holding their breath.

Then Varis chuckled, a low, rasping sound, like leaves on a dry wind.

"Interesting," he murmured, his ancient eyes studying me with new appreciation. "You're not fast. But you are correct."

He picked up the plate and tucked it away among the shelves with the same careful precision he'd used to retrieve it.

"You lack context," he said, turning back to stare down at me with those penetrating eyes. "You don't know the root glyphs. The foundations of the system itself. Without those, you're a blind man mapping a labyrinth by touch."

I met his gaze, steady and unwavering despite the weight of his scrutiny.
"Then teach me."

Liora looked at me sharply, her eyes wide with something that might have been admiration or horror. But she said nothing.

Varis studied me for a long, unsettling moment. I could feel him weighing my words, measuring my resolve, searching for any sign of weakness or false bravado.

Then, slowly, he nodded.

"Glyphs," Varis said, returning to his desk with the fluid grace of a man who had performed this ritual countless times before, "are not spells. They are functions."

He pulled out another plate from a different section of the shelves, this one simpler but somehow more profound. Three glyphs arranged in a perfect triangle, their lines clean and unadorned.

"One glyph channels," he said, tapping the first with a fingernail that rang against the metal like a bell. "One glyph modifies." Tap. "One glyph binds." Tap.

Each touch sent ripples of light through the etched lines, the glyphs responding to his presence like flowers turning toward the sun.

"Every spell. Every barrier. Every weapon. All of them boil down to these three roots, arranged in endless configurations."

I leaned in, watching the way the glyphs pulsed faintly under his touch. The simplicity was deceptive, like looking at the basic components of a machine and only gradually realizing the complexity of what they could create when properly combined.

"Channel. Modify. Bind," I repeated, testing the words on my tongue.

Varis nodded, and for the first time since we'd entered the Archive, something that might have been approval flickered across his features.

"Think of it like architecture," he said, his voice softening slightly, taking on the tone of a master craftsman sharing his deepest secrets. "You shape the flow, you alter its behavior, then you lock it into place. The art lies in the arrangement."

He turned the plate toward me, and I saw the genius of it. The perfect balance, the elegant simplicity that concealed infinite complexity.

"This is the foundation," he said, his voice heavy with the weight of millennia. "Learn it, or die fumbling in the dark."

I studied the glyphs again, seeing them differently now. Not as mysterious symbols from an alien culture, but as tools. Building blocks that could be combined and recombined to create wonders or horrors beyond imagination.

It was simple.

Elegant.

Terrifyingly powerful in its implications.

A hard magic system, bounded by logic but limitless in its combinations.
And the entire kingdom was built on it.



Later, as I left the Archive with Liora, my head still spinning from the session like a man who'd consumed too much wine, she spoke quietly beside me. The corridor seemed brighter after the oppressive atmosphere of the Archive, and I found myself blinking in the torchlight.
"You impressed him," she said, almost grudgingly, as if the admission cost her something.
I snorted, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "Lucky me."

She hesitated, her steps faltering for just a moment before she found her rhythm again. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight I'd never heard before.

"He never offers the root glyphs to outsiders."

The words hit me like a physical blow, and I stopped walking. "Why did he give them to me?"

Liora glanced at me, her expression unreadable in the flickering torchlight. Shadows played across her face, hiding her thoughts behind a mask of darkness and flame.

"Because you're not an outsider anymore," she said softly.

I didn't answer, couldn't answer. The implications of her words settled over me like a cloak, heavy with responsibility and danger.

Because I wasn't sure if that was a victory or a warning.

The corridor stretched ahead of us, leading back to the world above, where political games and assassination attempts waited like hungry predators. But something had changed in those depths beneath the palace. Something fundamental had shifted in the way I saw myself and my place in this strange new world.

The root glyphs burned in my memory like brands, simple yet profound, offering power beyond imagining to those who understood their true nature.

And as we climbed the spiral staircase back to the surface, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just crossed a line from which there was no return.