The library had no ceiling. Where once there might have been polished beams and colored glass, now there was only skyless dark—the vast emptiness that hovered above the city like a second roof. Wind murmured faintly through the upper stone, and Silas barely noticed it anymore.
The fire they'd built in the library's central atrium crackled softly. They sat around it with open books and tired expressions. Most of the shelves had long rotted away, but the books—sigil-locked, sealed against decay—had survived.
Velira flipped a page slowly. Her brow furrowed in quiet concentration.
> "Water isn't... soft. Not really," she muttered aloud, tapping a diagram. "It's density. Weight. It says here: The path of pressure does not yield—only delays."
She glanced up. "Why didn't anyone tell us that before?"
Cass let out a breath from where he sat perched on a shattered pedestal. "Because most people never get far enough to need to know. Or don't want us to ask questions." He gave a crooked smile. "Typical cathedral thinking."
Silas remained silent, listening.
He had known these things. Not in these exact words, perhaps—but close enough. Long before they'd entered the ruins, he had understood that the world's magic was not built on fairytales, but on laws. Relentless, inescapable laws.
But hearing Velira and Cass begin to uncover them now... it felt like watching seeds push through frost-hardened soil.
---
Cass flipped a few pages ahead and scowled.
> "Light Path. Path of clarity, they call it. It's not about healing like they say in sermons. It's about making things visible—whether you want to or not. Truth that sears."
He ran his thumb across the text, reading more in silence before shaking his head. "It says here that Light casters often suffer mental strain. That too much 'clarity' becomes unbearable. That's why most Light path adepts burn out or… withdraw."
Velira looked up sharply. "You're not like that."
Cass gave her a lazy smile. "Maybe not yet."
The fire shifted, casting longer shadows.
Silas stirred then, speaking gently. "You've got time. Understanding what it really is… that's the first step. The rest comes slower."
Velira blinked at him. "You speak like someone who's read all of this before."
> "I've been thinking about it a lot," Silas replied with a shrug. "Magic isn't just willpower. It's… physics, chemistry, reactions. Systems. If Water is pressure, you can calculate how it compresses or bends. If Light is clarity, you can shape that clarity—make it target only what you want to see."
Cass raised an eyebrow. "You sure you're not hiding a cathedral degree under that coat?"
Silas smirked. "Wouldn't that be a story."
---
Later, as the fire dwindled to embers, Velira sat cross-legged with a second book open in her lap. She had begun sketching spell structures in the dirt, refining what she'd just learned.
> "So… if I can control the pressure of the water instead of just summoning it, that might let me form shapes without needing full volume. Condense it. Sharpen it."
Silas nodded, though carefully. "Try drawing the pressure lines in spirals. It holds better that way."
Velira gave him a sideways look. "That sounds oddly specific."
"I read something similar a while ago," he said, and left it at that.
Cass stood, stretching his arms and groaning. "If I ever see another diagram again, I'm going to start glowing from the eyes."
> "Maybe you should," Velira quipped. "Then we wouldn't need lanterns."
They chuckled—tired but genuine.
---
They stayed up longer than they meant to. Every now and then, one of them would exclaim quietly at something new they'd found—a detail left unspoken in any of the city's current teachings. Most of the knowledge here was old, even primitive in language, but beneath the crude script were foundational truths.
At some point, Cass tapped one of the cracked wooden beams above them.
> "This place wasn't meant to last. But the people who built it… they knew things. They weren't just mages. They were thinkers."
Velira glanced at Silas. "Do you think they were trying to warn us? Or guide us?"
Silas looked at the books, then at the empty dark beyond the broken ceiling.
> "Maybe both."
He felt the pull of something again—not fate, not vision, just weight. The weight of understanding. The deeper you dug into the foundations, the harder it became to pretend everything was stable.
---
As sleep finally took them—Velira curled up near her water-bound effigy, Cass sprawled out with his arms over his eyes—Silas remained awake for a while longer. He held his book tightly, reading the same page again and again.
> Darkness is not evil. It is collapse. The eventual return of all things to stillness. It does not hate. It simply undoes.
He didn't fear that. Not anymore.
But he respected it.
And he intended to master it—no matter what it cost.