The library did not creak.
That was the first thing Alaric noticed as he moved deeper between the shelves—no groaning wood, no sighing hinges, no settling of old beams. The ruins were ancient, and yet the silence felt maintained rather than accidental, as though the air itself had been trained to behave.
His light spell hovered near his shoulder, pale and steady, casting long shadows that stretched across fallen tomes and broken stone like fingers reaching for him. Dust swirled lazily in the glow each time he took a step. The smell was dry paper, old leather, faint mildew, and beneath it all a thin metallic sweetness that reminded him of coins left too long in a damp purse.
Behind him, somewhere beyond the mithral doors, he could still hear Gina faintly—her voice threaded through hidden channels like an echo carried by a throat the walls had grown.
"Alaric!"
The sound tightened his chest.
He did not want her to find him deeper in the ruin, not because he enjoyed her fear, but because he knew what adults did when they saw danger wrapped around a child. They dragged you away. They sealed it. They posted guards. They turned discovery into bureaucracy and risk into prohibition.
He had unlocked the first sphere with his own effort.
He would not let the first thing he did with it be surrender.
So he moved.
The shelves rose high, far beyond his light's reach, stacked with tomes arranged in a meticulous order that had survived collapse. Some aisles were impassable where stone and wood had fallen, but many remained intact, as if preserved by enchantment or by the careful stubbornness of elven craft.
The books were beautiful.
Bindings of dark leather stamped with silver leaf. Cloth covers embroidered with patterns like vines and stars. Thin, pale pages with ink that had faded to soft gray rather than rotting away.
Alaric reached for one, fingers brushing the spine.
Letters curled across it—flowing, elegant, maddeningly unreadable.
His old mind tried to translate reflexively, searching for familiar shapes the way one searched a foreign street sign for the one word you recognized. But the language did not yield. It was not common script. It was not imperial. It was not even close enough to be guessed.
So it wasn't D&D Elvish, he realized with a faint, bitter amusement. It just looked like it.
He moved along the shelves, scanning spine after spine. Most were that same indecipherable script. A few were cracked open on tables, pages covered in diagrams that meant nothing to him yet. Some books had been torn apart, their pages scattered like leaves.
He tried not to touch those. Paper this old could crumble from careless breath.
He turned down another aisle and stopped short.
Three tomes sat on a lower shelf that had been spared collapse, their spines plain compared to the ornate elven bindings around them. They looked… out of place. As if someone had placed them there later, or as if they belonged to a different era entirely.
Alaric leaned closer.
The first spine was written in a script he could read.
Imperial common.
His pulse jumped.
He traced the letters slowly with his fingertip, half afraid they would vanish.
Primer of the First Sphere: Basic Arcana for Novitiates
He stared.
This was not just readable—it was meant for someone like him. A beginner. A novice.
His old mind flashed through possibility: had someone else found this place and left these? Had an elf translated? Had the tower once hosted students, and these were teaching aids?
No time. He did not have time.
Alaric tugged the primer free and cracked it open just enough to confirm it was indeed imperial common. Pages of neatly written instruction. Diagrams of mana channels. Lists of simple spells and their mana costs.
A spellbook.
His first instinct was immediate and selfish.
He tucked it into his cloak like a thief.
If Gina reached him before he secured anything, she might confiscate it "for safety." Or worse—report it to the palace, where it would be catalogued and locked away.
This was his.
The second tome had a title he recognized but did not expect here:
The Luminous Court: A Study of the Old Faith of Illyndor
His breath caught again, softer this time.
The old religion.
Not the Gadreonic pantheon, not the Axium Church's singular Valion, not even the Imperial Faith of Lune and Aurora that ruled the palace with divided reverence. This was something older—Illyndor's ancient faith, tied to elves who had lived and worshipped before human empires rose and fell.
Alaric opened it carefully.
The text was also imperial common, though the writing style was archaic and dense. Still, readable.
He skimmed the first page and found references to celestial spirits, to "The Luminous Court," to gods and goddesses who were not named Lune or Aurora, but whose domains—darkness, travel, light, law—felt eerily similar. There were passages about sacred sites, about barriers that tested mana resonance, about words spoken as keys.
Alaric's gaze flicked back toward the mithral doors and the archway's command phrase.
So this place had been built with religious rules woven into its magic.
He tucked the religion tome under his arm for the moment, not yet stealing it, but not leaving it behind either.
The third tome was the most worn, its binding cracked, the corners rounded from use.
Wondrous Implements and the Geometry of Enchantment
Magic items.
Alaric's heart hammered again.
He opened it, flipping carefully through brittle pages. Diagrams of rings, rods, staves, amulets. Notes on materials—mithral, orichalcum, dragonbone. Explanations of how enchantments "layered" like woven cloth, how certain items acted as conduits for mana, expanding a caster's ability beyond their natural sphere.
His eyes caught on a passage and he leaned in, reading greedily.
The book described certain wondrous items—rare, expensive, often lost—that could allow a caster to cast as though they were one sphere higher under specific conditions. Not forever. Not without cost. But enough to bridge a gap.
Alaric's mouth went dry.
That's why I could cast Knock.
Knock—by his old understanding—should have been beyond a first-sphere novice. Yet the mithral doors had responded like it was expected. The archway had opened with spoken phrase and mana resonance as if the ruin anticipated someone at his level.
Meaning: either Zoridia's sphere structure differed from his assumptions… or this place was designed with a tool that boosted the caster.
His gaze flicked to his glowing light spell.
Is the tower lending me power?
Or—
Is something on me lending me power?
He had no time to fully think it through. Gina's distant voice echoed again, closer now, and this time there were other voices too—knights calling his name, the scrape of armor.
They were getting in.
Alaric snapped the magic-item tome closed and shoved it under his arm with the religion tome, spellbook already hidden in his cloak.
He moved deeper into the study.
Past a collapsed desk carved with runes. Past a section of shelves that had fallen into a heap. Past a spiral stair that led upward into darkness—an internal tower stair, cracked but intact enough to tempt him.
He paused at the base of those stairs, staring up.
Up meant unknown. Up also meant Gina might come from above.
He listened.
Metal on stone. Voices. A faint thud, as if someone had leapt down from a ledge.
They weren't coming through the mithral doors. They had found another entrance.
Alaric's jaw tightened.
He turned away from the stairs and spotted a narrow doorway to the side, half concealed by a fallen shelf. It led into a smaller chamber, and the air that drifted out smelled different—less dust, more old oil and sealed wood.
A store room.
Alaric slipped inside.
The room was tighter, lower ceiling, built for storage rather than grandeur. Shelves lined the walls, some sagging. Crates were stacked in uneven towers, many broken, their contents spilled. A few large ceramic jars sat sealed with wax that had darkened with age.
His light spell illuminated the space in pale arcs, catching on metal glints.
Alaric's pulse quickened.
Treasure room, his old gamer mind supplied instinctively.
Or trap room.
He moved carefully, stepping around splintered boards. His small hand hovered near his chest, ready to pull mana if something lunged. But nothing moved except dust.
He opened a crate.
Empty, save for old packing straw.
Another crate held cracked glass vials that had long since dried, the residue at their bottoms a faint shimmering powder. He did not touch it.
Then he found a narrow wooden case, sealed with a simple latch.
Inside lay a scroll.
The parchment was thicker than ordinary paper, edged with silver thread. A small wax seal bore a symbol that looked like a coiling spiral.
Alaric's breath caught.
Not a spell scroll—something else. The System's language in his mind recognized the weight of it.
An ability scroll.
He didn't know how he knew. He just did.
His fingers trembled slightly as he lifted it.
The words on the scroll were written in imperial common, clear and blunt:
EVOLUTION
Below it, smaller text described its function in terms that made Alaric's heart thud harder:
A bestowed ability. When bound to a Tamer, it allows tamed creatures to grow beyond their natural limits, leveling and evolving through accumulated experience.
Alaric went still.
Dawn.
A flash of royal-blue glowing eyes, black hair like night, small hands offering him a carved wooden beast. Dawn Angelique, whose ability was Tamer. Dawn, who the world had already begun to underestimate because she was Lune-bound and female and second-born.
And here, in a hidden store room beneath his fief, lay the means to change her destiny.
Alaric swallowed, throat tight.
He rolled the scroll carefully and slid it into his cloak alongside the spellbook.
His mind raced.
This was meant to be found.
Or perhaps it was a coincidence so absurd it could only be fate wearing logic as a disguise.
He moved to the next shelf.
A long object lay wrapped in cloth. He peeled it back and revealed a shortsword.
Not iron.
Not steel.
A gleaming metal with a faint bluish sheen—mithral or something close to it. The blade was clean, unpitted by time. Its edge looked impossibly sharp, the kind of sharpness that made the air around it seem thinner. The hilt was wrapped in dark leather, and a small gem was set into the pommel—amber-colored, like a captured ember.
Alaric lifted it carefully. It was light, balanced beautifully.
He could almost feel the enchantment sleeping inside it.
A word rose to his mind, unbidden.
Flame.
Alaric whispered it under his breath—not loudly, not as a full spell, but as a test.
The gem at the pommel warmed.
A thin line of fire flickered along the blade's edge, controlled and clean, not consuming the metal but dancing with it like a loyal spirit. It cast orange light against the store room walls, warmer than his pale spell-glow, and the air immediately smelled faintly of heated dust.
Alaric's eyes widened.
He willed the flame off.
It vanished instantly, leaving the blade cool again.
A magic shortsword—one that could produce flame on command and carried an edge that felt like it could cut through more than flesh.
He wrapped it back in its cloth and strapped it awkwardly beneath his cloak using the sash at his waist. The sword was too long for his small frame, but manageable if hidden.
Then his light caught something on a higher shelf: a small ring resting in a velvet pouch.
Alaric stood on tiptoe and reached, fingers barely catching the pouch. He pulled it down and opened it.
The ring was simple, silver band etched with tiny runes that looked like flowing water. No gem. No flashy crest. The kind of ring that looked ordinary until you stared long enough to realize the runes were moving—subtly shifting like ink in a living stream.
His mind flashed back to the tome on wondrous implements.
A ring could be a conduit.
A booster.
A key.
He did not have time to analyze.
He pocketed it.
Outside the store room, voices grew louder—boots on stone, metal scraping, a harsh whisper of urgency.
"—this way!"
"—Your Highness!"
Gina.
Closer now, not echoing faintly through walls, but real, immediate. Alaric's heart jumped.
He turned toward the doorway just as the first armored figure appeared—Knight Gallant captain, sword drawn, eyes wide with alarm.
Then Gina surged in behind him.
Her face was pale beneath the lantern light she carried, her hair slightly loose, her breath coming faster than usual. Her amber eyes locked onto Alaric in the store room like a hawk spotting prey—and for a heartbeat, the expression that crossed her face was so raw it almost didn't belong on her.
Relief.
Then it hardened into fury.
"You—" she began.
Alaric raised both hands quickly, palms out, childlike gesture that looked almost like surrender. "I am not hurt," he said at once.
Gina's jaw trembled. "That is not the point," she hissed, stepping closer. "You vanished. You locked yourself behind a barrier. You walked into ancient ruins and—"
Her gaze flicked over him confirming he was intact, then sharpened as it dropped to the bulge under his cloak where the wrapped shortsword sat awkwardly.
"What did you take?" she demanded.
Alaric's heartbeat hammered in his ears.
He could lie.
He could try.
But Gina would peel truth from him like skin if she had to.
So he chose a different path—partial honesty, anchored by purpose.
"I found books," he said quickly. "Readable ones. About magic. About the elves. And—" He hesitated, feeling the Evolution scroll like a weight against his chest. "And something that could help."
Gina's eyes narrowed. "Help who?"
Alaric met her gaze, steady despite the child's body and the pounding fear of being caught with contraband.
"Help Asmora," he said. "Help me. Help—"
He stopped himself before he said Dawn's name aloud in front of knights. Names were leverage, and this place already offered enough leverage.
Gina's expression tightened, suspicion and dread warring in her eyes. She reached for him, hand hovering as if she wanted to grab him and also wanted to check that he was real.
Then she exhaled sharply, forcing control back into her posture.
"Captain," she snapped without looking away from Alaric, "secure this room. Two men with me. The rest—search for threats. No one touches anything without my say."
The captain nodded, barking orders, and the knights spread out through the store room and beyond, their armor clinking softly, lanterns casting moving shadows across ancient shelves.
Gina crouched so her eyes were level with Alaric's.
Her voice dropped, low and fierce. "We are leaving," she said. "Now."
Alaric's fingers curled inside his cloak around the hidden ring pouch.
"And then," Gina added, each word like a nail, "you are going to tell me everything you did, everything you found, and exactly what you thought would happen if you died down here."
Alaric swallowed.
He looked past her shoulder toward the store room's shelves, toward the dark stairs leading upward, toward the library full of unreadable tomes and secrets that had slept longer than the Empire had existed.
He did not want to leave.
But he also understood that surviving meant choosing battles.
So he nodded once.
And as Gina's hand finally closed around his small wrist—firm, protective, unyielding—Alaric let himself be guided toward the doorway.
Not because he was done with the ruins.
But because he had already stolen enough from them to ensure he would return.