Elara lost any desire to continue comparing meditation methods.
She pulled Kelira’s manual over and began leafing through it from the beginning, pausing at each illustration only long enough to register its structure before the induced dizziness grew too severe. The chapter sequence, explanations, and remaining diagrams matched what she remembered from her own copy; the difference appeared solely on page seventeen, where a knot of tangled vipers replaced the shifting silhouette.
Kelira leaned over Elara's book, trying to inspect the illustration more closely, but squeezed her eyes shut almost instantly and turned her head away.
“Damn it, I feel sick…” she muttered, planting her elbow on the desk and pressing a hand to her forehead. “How can you even look at that?”
Elara nudged the manual away. Her neighbor sat motionless for a good while, waiting for the nausea to pass. When she finally opened her eyes, they were red-rimmed and watery, as though merely looking at the drawing had taken more out of her than all their previous exercises combined.
“You probably need mental strength like yours to even use it,” she said, carefully straightening her back. “I barely caught a glimpse.”
Elara looked down at the familiar figure shedding its human form stage by stage, only to gradually piece itself back together. She had chosen this diagram precisely because she could hold her gaze upon it without ill effects, but until now, she had chalked that up to the natural trial and error of finding a compatible illustration. Now, she was beginning to wonder whether someone familiar with her constitution could have anticipated that very choice.
She glanced briefly back at the serpents in Kelira’s book. That image had also felt somewhat more bearable than most, and had her own manual lacked the shifting figure, she likely would have settled on it instead.
Did someone swap a single page on me? Sylvara certainly had the means, but how could she predict which diagram Elara would pick? And why slip something into the book that actually aided her meditation if the goal was to see her dead?
She glanced toward her left shoulder, where the dark red codex hovered, shut and silent. The absence of a warning brought mild relief, though she immediately recalled how little she grasped the rules governing its inscriptions. The book's silence neither explained where the diagram had come from nor guaranteed that continuing to use it remained safe.
Every piece of starter equipment had been delivered by the maid whose body she had inspected on the conveyor slab just yesterday. Someone could have tampered with the manual before the bundle was delivered, or even earlier while the supplies sat waiting in storage; Elara had no way of knowing whose hands it had passed through before reaching her door. The longer she turned it over in her mind, the harder it was to treat the anomaly as a fortunate fluke.
The diagram had already helped her survive mortal peril once, but that alone wasn't enough reason to keep leaning on it without question.
“You’re Elara, right?” asked an apprentice sitting on her other side, leaning across the bench.
She looked seventeen or eighteen, towering conspicuously over the girl even while seated. She had been absorbed in her own notes until now, but was now looking straight at the open page, clearly hooked by the overheard exchange.
“Where did you get that diagram?”
“Have you seen it before, Senior Sister?” Elara asked, resting her hand along the edge of the manual.
“Senior Sister… I like a girl who knows her manners.” The apprentice flashed a broad grin, sliding a fraction closer. “I saw it in a text once. First and second ranks don't use the same meditation manuals, and if memory serves, that diagram isn't supposed to appear until the second-rank edition.”
Her gaze traced the sequence of transformations before cutting back to Elara’s face.
“I’ll give you a point if you let me make a copy.”
The girl didn't reply right away. Beneath her fingers lay the edge of the book, while behind her eyes flashed the face of the maid on the slab. She didn't know if the girl's death had anything to do with the manual, but the senior apprentice's interest at least confirmed the diagram was not entirely unknown.
“I can agree, but aren't you worried it might be dangerous?” she asked. “You said yourself it's meant for second-rank apprentices.”
“Don't you worry about that.” The girl licked her lips, her eyes glued to the drawing. “So, what do you say? Will you let me copy it?”
Elara hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. She had voiced her reservation, and the senior apprentice evidently knew more about the diagram than she did, yet remained eager to pay for access.
After class, the three of them headed up to the ninth floor of the Ash Wing, where the buyer tracked down someone equipped to reproduce the sketch. Once the copy was finished, Elara asked to have the promised point transferred at the registry directly to Kelira’s account, settling her debt on the spot.
The senior apprentice regarded them with a knowing smirk.
“Hardly earned it and already handing it all over to your friend? Look at you, running your own little racket.”
Kelira’s spine snapped rigid and she took a step forward, but Elara caught her by the sleeve before she could offer anything beyond a furious hiss.
“It’s settling a debt,” she explained calmly. “Thank you for the transaction.”
The buyer merely shrugged and walked off with her fresh copy, while Kelira glared after her for several paces.
“What an idiot. Eavesdrops on half a sentence and invents a whole fairy tale.”
“The important part is you got your point,” Elara answered, letting go of her sleeve.
They parted ways shortly after, as Elara still needed to renew her loan on the Flesh Reforging treatise. Yesterday's descent into the Pale Ossuary had swallowed her transcription time, leaving her notes incomplete, and returning the volume unfinished meant losing access to essential passages. Shelling out for another day stung, but with steady earnings in sight, the expense was easier to swallow.
***
Elara returned to her room around midday, finding a different maid stationed outside her door. The woman appeared older than the dead girl, with a worn face and tense shoulders that drew the coarse cloth of her uniform taut over a full bust. As she carried the meal toward the table, her hands trembled so noticeably that the bowl clattered against the tray, broth nearly sloshing onto the wood.
“Forgive me, at once… my apologies,” she stammered, ducking her head, though in the end she spilled nothing.
Elara looked at her pale face, struggling for a moment to find the right words. In the end, she merely nodded toward the door, granting permission to leave, an exit the maid took with palpable haste.
Perhaps she knew about her predecessor’s demise and feared a similar end. Or perhaps she knew something more, and Elara had no way to distinguish ordinary servant terror from the dread of exposing someone else's scheme.
She fetched her meditation manual and laid it beside the food, increasingly convinced she ought to show it to Caldra. Her mentor had just taken her on and was counting on the salvaged materials, giving her at least a practical stake in keeping her new helper alive.
Reaching for the food, Elara paused.
If someone could swap a page in a book, they could just as easily lace a meal.
She stared at the dish, hunting for a rational counter-argument against her own paranoia. If Sylvara wanted her poisoned and had the reach to do it, she likely wouldn't have waited until today, and a maid's trembling hands were hardly proof of anything. Even so, the mere fact that the thought had crossed her mind was enough to kill whatever appetite the scent might have stirred.
I can't live like this, suspecting every meal and every page. I have to buy some time, and above all, stop being someone Sylvara can toy with whenever she pleases.
Gathering her manual and transcription supplies, she left the room, leaving the untouched lunch behind.
Down in the Pale Ossuary, no delivery awaited her today. The lamp above the conveyor hatch burned a dull, sickly yellow, and the bare belt sat motionless. Elara set her books down and listened for sounds from beyond the curtain. Eventually, a faint rustle confirmed she wasn't entirely alone down here.
“Senior Sister, are we working today?” she called out toward the leather strips.
On the far side, something slammed heavily against hard stone, followed by a silence long enough that Elara started to regret opening her mouth at all.
“Can’t you see the damn lamp?” an irritated voice finally snapped. “Trying to give me a heart attack? Who blabs out of nowhere in a place like this…”
“I apologize,” she said, stepping half a pace back.
Had she been sitting surrounded by cadavers and heard an unheralded voice nearby, her reaction likely would have matched. She gave it a beat before speaking again.
“I only wanted to know if we're required to remain at our stations until the shift ends when there are no deliveries.”
“What else are you gonna do? Slip off and bungle Mentor Caldra’s assignment? Do that, and tomorrow you’ll be riding down that belt yourself.”
Elara looked at the dark stains between the rollers and decided she had received an unambiguous answer. She had left yesterday after hearing deliveries were concluded, but clearly she couldn't take every lull as permission to pack up.
She sat at the desk, spreading out the Flesh Reforging text and her unfinished notes. The room smelled foul, and knowing what might roll out from under the curtain made relaxing impossible, but she had a table, a chair, and writing tools. If she had to wait out the clock, she could at least put the hours toward copying.
At first, she flinched at every scrape from the adjoining chamber, but in time, the text absorbed her enough that she stopped tracking the ambient noises. She copied explanation after explanation, faithfully reproducing glyphs and cross-checking her drafts against the original to ensure no minute detail - one that could spell disaster during an actual procedure - slipped through.
When she checked the time again, seven was approaching, and Caldra still hadn't appeared.
Elara set down her quill and pressed a hand to her stomach, which had been complaining about the skipped meal for hours. After a few days of steady nourishment, adjusting back to hunger proved harsher than she expected, and standing too quickly brought dark spots dancing across her vision.
If I don't catch her today, what do I do tomorrow? Starve again because I'm terrified of my own serving tray?
The thought of turning to Vespara crossed her mind, but she dismissed it almost immediately. Every plea meant placing herself in her grasp, and Elara still possessed nothing with which to pay for another favor. Vespara would gladly remind her of the elixir and the short-term gains bought at the cost of future growth.
The girl pulled her meditation manual closer, wondering if she could still catch Caldra at the upper laboratory once her shift ended, when a familiar voice echoed from the doorway.
“No bodies today?”
Caldra walked in, glancing at the vacant station without noticeable annoyance. Elara shot up from her chair, catching the book as it nearly slipped off her lap, and hurried toward her mentor.
“Mentor, I wanted to ask about something…”
“Make it quick, then. I’m pressed for time.”
Elara opened the manual to page seventeen and held it up for Caldra to view the drawing.
“This is the manual I was issued for meditation. Today I noticed that this diagram…”
The mentor’s eyes fell upon the page, her haste instantly replaced by sharp interest. She studied the progressive distortions of the silhouette, then looked down at the girl.
“An Erosion Diagram?” she asked, her finger resting against the open leaf. “You are a mere first-rank apprentice, and you are already using this to meditate?”