Although Elara had to pause her practice regularly to meditate and replenish her spent Aether, she was still mastering rune construction faster than the rest of the new intake.
As the class drew to a close, several of the girls were still struggling to form their very first symbol correctly, their sheets covered in dead strokes stripped of even a flicker of magic.
She had no intention of treating her progress as proof that the hardest part was behind her, however.
If a mere three basic runes were enough to drain her reserves dry, casting an actual spell would demand something her body simply wasn't capable of sustaining yet, regardless of how clearly she pictured the matrix in her mind.
Rather than moving on to unfamiliar patterns, she circled back to the ones she had already learned and began tracing them with greater care, focusing on maintaining a steady, even flow of energy.
She wanted to curb unnecessary waste to squeeze more out of the same pool, rather than drawing the eyes of the entire room with a flare of magic every time she sketched a single stroke.
If half of what I channel into the quill bleeds away along the way, I can at least try to stop wasting it…
Even one extra rune would be better than having to stop after the third every single time.
When class ended, she thanked Kelira for offering to walk back together, but explained that she had something else she needed to check first.
She then went to have her reserves measured. She could no longer build her plans solely on Caldra’s open disgust and Mara’s comparison to an undersized bowl.
Stepping out of the testing chamber, she lingered by the wall for a moment, staring down at her hands.
Three AU was an exceptionally meager score, even for someone who had kept her expectations low from the start.
After the morning exercises, she already understood how rapidly she burned through her available reserve, and measuring that number against the required ten made three months feel even shorter than it had during her late-night talk with Vespara.
I need to more than triple my reserves…
Just sitting with the crystal sphere won't get me there in time, even if I do nothing else.
Remembering her mentor’s remark about spare materials for the laboratory, she adjusted her satchel and headed up the inclined passage toward the ninth floor of the Ash Wing.
If the safe path couldn't yield the required results, she at least had to investigate what lay beyond it before fear convinced her to turn away.
***
By the entrance to the Hollow Archive sat a woman whose uniform suggested she tended the library, though the way she pressed her back flat against the wall bore no resemblance to someone quietly awaiting readers.
Every few moments, she jerked her head up, staring in terror at the ceiling, before snapping her gaze down to the floor, as though anticipating an attack from both directions at once.
Elara approached cautiously and asked about the borrowing terms, but received no response. The woman didn't even look her way, wholly absorbed in watching something the girl couldn't see.
After a brief hesitation, Elara glanced up and checked beneath her feet, but found only ordinary stone surfaces. She didn't take that as proof that nothing was there, so she backed away from the seated figure and stood at the threshold to take in the interior.
A delicate mist drifted between the towering bookshelves, hanging like a sheer veil near the front.
Deeper inside, however, it thickened so heavily that the rows steadily lost definition until they dissolved entirely into white, making it impossible to judge how far the hall extended.
The ends of the shelves bore large tier markers, starting from zero and one. Elara studied them, then followed the central straight aisle, pausing at the threshold between two sections.
Some titles along the spines were written in Veyl Script, but the majority used other magical languages she didn't recognize.
Even the simplest markers produced a faint tension behind her eyes, and the sight of foreign symbols instantly reminded her of the apprentice found mutilated in the flowerbed.
I'll find the subject I need and won't browse along the way…
Just because they let you in doesn't mean every book is meant to be opened.
She scanned the nearest shelves once more, then pressed forward until her silhouette vanished among the towering rows and the fog.
Shortly after, several other new apprentices arrived at the entrance. One approached the seated woman and reached out to touch her shoulder for attention, but before her fingers could make contact, the entire figure vanished into thin air, leaving only bare stone wall in front of her.
The girls exchanged uneasy glances and drew closer together, suddenly far less eager to explore the shelves on their own.
“Do we really have to go in there?” Janessa Vale asked, peering toward the thickening mist. “At least in our rooms, people don't vanish when you try to ask a question.”
“That maid already went in,” a girl with sharp features countered. “You’re not about to say you’re more of a coward than she is, are you?”
Deyra, hovering slightly to the side, let her eyes wander down the empty aisle and remained quiet for a moment.
“We can wait,” she finally suggested. “Let’s see if she actually comes back.”
Ever since the confrontation outside Elara's room, she had been treading more carefully, but the way she stared into the depths of the archive left little doubt about which outcome she was hoping for.
She didn't have to wait long, however. After a while, a familiar silhouette emerged from between the stacks, carrying a single book.
Elara stopped at the entrance and looked around, searching for the woman she had tried to question earlier. The spot by the wall was empty, and the cluster of girls watching her didn't make it any easier to figure out whom she was supposed to check out with.
“How do I borrow this?” she asked, directing the question more toward the entryway itself than the group. “Do I need to record the title somewhere?”
“Two magic crystals per day,” a voice answered from right beside her.
Elara turned her head and saw an older woman who had appeared so quietly that not a single footstep had betrayed her approach.
She bore a striking resemblance to the figure previously seated against the wall, though her face looked considerably older, and impatience had replaced the terror.
The girl looked from the volume to her pocket, where the borrowed crystals rested. She had anticipated a fee, but the realization that a single day would consume nearly half her funds briefly dampened her desire to ask anything further.
Two a day… Which means I can't just take it back to read at leisure in the evenings.
She counted out the crystals, handed them over, and turned toward the exit without attempting to haggle.
She had to make the most of the time she had paid for; lingering at the threshold with the painful sting of a lighter pouch wasn't getting her any closer to finishing a single page.
The older librarian turned her gaze toward the remaining apprentices.
“Are you borrowing something as well? If so, be quick about it.”
The girls shook their heads almost in unison. With three months until their first evaluation and introductory manuals still bristling with concepts they didn't understand, spending two crystals on another dangerous tome sounded like the scheme of someone entirely incapable of reading the room.
“Then stop blocking the aisle.”
The woman vanished before anyone could answer, and the group began retreating back into the corridor, looking far less confident than when they had arrived.
***
After a short rest, Elara arrived at the laboratory around two in the afternoon, carrying the borrowed book and a fresh stack of blank parchment.
Selecting an empty section of the counter, she readied her quill and began transcribing the text, working meticulously so that returning the original wouldn't leave her with flawed notes.
Angeline and Deyra arrived soon after, but much like the day before, each took a distant station. Elara made no attempt to initiate conversation, wholly absorbed in copying sentence after sentence and checking that no vital rune was missed.
Just before three, the door swung open again, and Mara walked in accompanied by an agitated woman. She was speaking to her while scanning the room, but when her eyes caught Elara at the table, her gaze locked on her for a moment.
“You may go. I’ll call on you if I need anything,” she dismissed her companion, then headed straight toward the girl.
Deyra started to stand, clearly expecting the senior apprentice to approach her, but Mara walked past without pausing.
Deyra sank back into her seat while Mara’s fingers tapped lightly against Elara's counter.
“Mara,” Elara greeted, looking up and immediately standing. “Good afternoon.”
She kept her tone even, though the sight of that familiar face inevitably dragged back the memory of a paper-thin sheet of skin stretching from the doorframe.
This time, a head sat behind the cheek, a full body behind the shoulders, yet the girl couldn't shake the prickle of unease.
“You did a good job cleaning yesterday,” Mara said with a smile. “Better than I would have done myself, honestly. Still, I’ve decided that maintaining the entire laboratory might be too much for you, so you don't need to worry about it anymore.”
Elara’s fingers tightened slowly against the edge of the parchment.
She didn't know whether Mara had learned of the bandaged woman's nighttime intervention, or if the mere presence of a living apprentice was enough to make her change tack. She wasn't about to bring up her rescue, but being relieved of duty brought a much more practical worry: without labor, she had no currency to pay for instruction.
“And if I need guidance with my studies…?”
“You just ask,” Mara cut in. “Mentor Caldra instructed me to look after you.”
“Thank you,” Elara replied, squaring her shoulders and letting a flicker of gratitude show on her face - one she didn't have to entirely fake.
From the outside, the exchange looked like an ordinary interaction between a helpful senior apprentice and a beginner. Neither mentioned the dolls, the red bin, or the missing hours swallowed between Mara’s departure and the arrival of her savior.
Mara studied the girl, having concluded that regardless of how she had survived the night, she was no longer someone to be recklessly endangered.
Her agreement with Sylvara was fulfilled, and entangling herself further in someone else's vendetta without clear compensation would only court unnecessary trouble.
A modicum of courtesy was far more prudent.
“Are you transcribing a book?” she asked, nodding toward the filled sheets.
“I borrowed it for a single day. I want to copy as much as I can so I can study later without paying for every extra day.”
“Let me see. I’ll show you which sections are actually worth your time.”
Mara reached for the volume, her friendly expression unchanged, but the moment she turned the cover toward herself, her fingers froze.
She read the title, glanced up at Elara, and then looked back at the book, as if checking whether the girl hadn't merely brought a similarly bound manual by mistake.
It was a treatise on Flesh Reforging - the very category of material she had directed her toward yesterday.
Back then, tossing out a casual remark about reaching for higher-ranked knowledge had rolled off her tongue just as easily as the warning that it would mean staking her life.
“You seriously intend to read this?” she asked.
Elara nodded, and Mara didn't hand the book back immediately.
Her gaze drifted down to the filled sheets, which already showed that the girl had taken yesterday's offhand advice far more literally than the senior apprentice had ever anticipated.