Morwen was gone. Vanished into the swirling, opalescent mists of the Library's heart, leaving behind a silence more profound than any Kaelan had yet experienced. It was the silence of a dream dying, of a compass needle spinning free, its true north erased. The weight of her shattered purpose pressed on the sacred air of the canyon.
Kaelan took a step after her, instinct urging him to follow, to not let the only familiar thing in this terrible world disappear.
"Do not."
The Librarian's voice was not a command, but a statement of fact, as immutable as the stone around them. He had not moved. His form seemed woven into the light and silence of the place.
"She'll be lost," Kaelan protested, his own voice a harsh whisper in the hallowed quiet.
"She has been lost for a very long time," the Librarian replied, his ancient eyes holding a depth of understanding that felt both cruel and compassionate. "You cannot find someone who does not wish to be found. And you cannot offer a map to someone who has just discovered their destination does not exist. Her journey is now internal. Interrupting it would be a violence."
The truth of it settled on Kaelan. Morwen was beyond his reach. The Weaver was gone; only the grief remained. He was truly alone.
The fear that thought provoked was sudden and cold. He was in the heart of the most powerful place in the Echoing, a place that held the answers he desperately sought, and he had no idea what to do. He turned from the mist that had swallowed Morwen back to the serene, terrifying figure of the Librarian.
"You said… you said I could learn," Kaelan said, the plea clear in his voice. "You said I was using the wrong fuel."
The Librarian regarded him for a long moment, the symbols on his light-tablet flickering silently. "The potential is in the paradigm. You have been a thief, snatching echoes and paying for them with your own stolen currency. You must become a scholar. An interpreter. The power is not in the taking, but in the understanding. Follow."
He turned and glided down one of the silver pathways, not waiting to see if Kaelan followed. Kaelan hurried after him, the pearlescent walls seeming to lean in to listen.
They stopped before a crystalline formation unlike the others. It was not a proud spire or a perfect cube. It was a rough, uncut geode, its exterior a dull, grey stone. It pulsed with a faint, erratic, reddish light.
"This echo was Received recently," the Librarian explained. "It is raw. The moment of death of a great horned leviathan of the crystal depths. Its pain is immense. Its fear, overwhelming. A Scribe such as yourself, in desperation or anger, might Record this echo and unleash it as a weapon of pure terror and agony. The Tax would be commensurate—perhaps the memory of your greatest fear, making room for its own."
Kaelan looked at the geode, and even without touching it, he could feel the edges of its anguish, a psychic heat radiating from it.
"Now," the Librarian said, gesturing to the geode. "Do not Record it. Do not seek to own it. Simply… listen to it. Read it as you would read a text. Understand its composition."
Hesitantly, Kaelan reached out, holding his palm near the rough surface. He closed his eyes, trying to quiet the part of him that screamed to seize, to capture. He pushed aside the instinct of Somatic Script and reached for the new, fragile sense the Architect had awakened—the desire to simply know.
He focused past the overwhelming pain, the terror. He felt for the edges of the memory, as Morwen had taught him with the spire, but without the intent to use. He listened.
And slowly, he began to hear more than just the scream.
Beneath the pain was a profound love for the crushing, beautiful depths it called home. Beneath the fear was a fierce, protective instinct for its young, a desperate hope they had escaped the hunters. The memory was not a single note of agony, but a complex chord—a life, entire and vivid, culminating in a final, devastating moment.
"It's… not just the pain," Kaelan whispered, his eyes still closed. "It's a whole life. The pain is just the loudest part."
"Exactly," the Librarian's voice was a soft approval. "Now. You have understood the echo. You have appreciated its full spectrum. You have, in a sense, honored it. Now… draw on it."
Kaelan's eyes snapped open. "Draw on it? But you said not to Record—"
"Not the echo itself," the Librarian corrected. "Draw on the energy it radiates. The pain, the fear, the love—they are all energy. The Echoing is made of this energy. Weavers manipulate the ambient field. You, a Scribe, can draw directly from the source. But you do not need to take the source. A reader does not steal the light from a page to see the words; they use the light that is already there."
The concept was dizzying. It was a complete rewiring of everything he knew.
"Try," the Librarian urged. "Reach for the energy of its pain. Not to keep it, but to borrow its intensity. Shape it. Not as a weapon, but as a shield. A shield of shared suffering."
Trembling, Kaelan focused again on the geode. He let the raw, red agony wash over him, but this time, he did not try to bottle it. He let it flow through him, a terrible, powerful current. He imagined that current not being stored in the vault of his mind, but being channeled through him, shaped by his intent.
He pictured a shield, not of light or metal, but of hardened grief.
He focused, and the air in front of his palm shimmered. A disc of hazy, crimson light flickered into existence. It wasn't solid, but it hummed with the leviathan's devastating pain. It was a shield woven from borrowed anguish.
The effort was immense. It was like trying to hold the course of a raging river with his bare hands. His body shook with the strain, sweat beading on his forehead. This was not easier than Recording; it was harder. It required constant, immense focus.
But.
The internal vault did not open. The Tax was not demanded.
He was not paying with his own memories. He was using a different kind of fuel—the energy radiating from the echo itself.
After a few seconds, his concentration broke. The crimson shield dissolved into motes of red light that faded away. He slumped, gasping for breath, utterly drained mentally, but whole. His past was intact.
He looked at his hands, then at the Librarian, awe and exhaustion warring within him.
"I… I didn't lose anything," he breathed.
"You expended effort," the Librarian corrected. "You strained your mind and spirit. You are tired. That is the cost of shaping power. Not the cost of purchasing it." He gestured to the geode. "The echo remains. Unchanged. You used its light to see, but you did not steal its candle."
It was a revolution. It was freedom.
Tears of relief welled in Kaelan's eyes. The terrifying, inevitable erosion of self had a brake. There was another way.
"It is only the first step," the Librarian said, his tone tempering Kaelan's euphoria. "Shaping ambient energy is vastly more difficult than unleashing a stored Recording. It requires immense focus, practice, and emotional fortitude. In a moment of panic, you will likely fall back on old habits. You will Record and pay the Tax. The path to mastery is long."
He looked toward the mist where Morwen had vanished. "And you will not be able to walk it here. The Library is a place of learning, not a refuge. You must go back into the chaos. You must practice with echoes that are not yet refined. You must learn to find the harmony in the dissonance."
The fear returned, colder now. Go back out there? Alone? Without Morwen? Without even the desperate goal that had driven him here?
"I can't," Kaelan said, the words small in the vast canyon.
"You must," the Librarian said, his voice final. "Your first lesson is complete. The next must be learned in the field. There is a world unraveling out there, Scribe. And you now hold the first thread of how to mend it."
He turned, his form beginning to blend back into the shifting colors of the wall. "When you are ready, the path out will be clear. Remember: Read, do not Record. Understand, do not Use. Be a scholar, not a thief."
And with that, the Librarian was gone, leaving Kaelan alone in the Repository of Final Moments, armed with a devastating new knowledge and a future more terrifying than his past had ever been. He was free from the inevitable Tax, but condemned to a harder, more uncertain path.
He was no longer a prisoner to his power.
He was its student. And the tuition was paid in trial and terror.