Oryth wasted no time. The moment he stepped into the library, his eyes began scanning the shelves with systematic precision, looking for anything that might contain knowledge about magic. The books themselves were beautiful in their own right—leather-bound volumes with covers that looked like they'd been pulled straight from medieval times, ornate and carefully crafted. The contents, he discovered as he pulled down volume after volume, were far more refined than the children's stories his parents had read to him. The language was more formal, the prose more sophisticated, the presentation more serious.
But finding what he needed proved frustratingly difficult.
There didn't seem to be any organizational system to the library. Books weren't sorted by subject or author or any other logical categorization he could discern. Historical texts sat next to poetry collections. Religious treatises shared shelf space with what looked like adventure novels. Everything was jumbled together in a way that would have driven any proper librarian insane.
Which meant he had to look everywhere.
He started with the lower shelves, the ones he could reach easily without assistance. He pulled books down one after another, examining their covers, flipping through their pages, trying to determine their contents. Most were immediately disappointing—stories, poems, dramatic plays, religious texts expounding on the virtues of the King and the divine right of rulers. Fiction and propaganda and artistic works that, while potentially interesting in their own right, contained nothing of practical value to him.
As the first hour stretched into the second, then the third, Oryth felt his initial excitement beginning to curdle into anxiety. He'd hoped the library would contain hundreds of useful volumes—texts on magic, on history, on the natural laws of this world, on geography and science and all the accumulated knowledge of this civilization. But the more he searched, the more he realized that the actual number of genuinely educational books might be disappointingly small.
Most of what his family owned was literature in various forms. Entertainment, not education. Stories meant to be enjoyed, not studied.
The anxiety grew sharper as he continued his fruitless search. What if books about magic were incredibly expensive? What if his family—noble though they were—simply couldn't afford such texts? Or worse, what if his parents and ancestors had never been capable of wielding magic themselves, and therefore had never bothered to acquire books on the subject? It would make sense, in a way. Why would a non-magical family invest in expensive magical treatises they could never use?
But he couldn't accept that. Not yet. Not after waiting five years for this opportunity.
He kept looking, pulling down book after book, his small hands working methodically despite the growing frustration. Poetry. Drama. Religious doctrine. Historical fiction that was more fiction than history. A treatise on proper etiquette for noble families. Another collection of poems. More stories.
Nothing about magic.
By the time the afternoon light began to shift toward evening, he still hadn't found a single book about magical theory or practice. But he had found something else—a thick volume with Geography of the Known World embossed on its spine.
It wasn't what he'd been primarily looking for, but knowledge was knowledge. He pulled it down and carried it to one of the reading chairs, settling in to skim through its contents.
At first, nothing seemed particularly remarkable. Maps and descriptions of various regions, written in the formal prose typical of scholarly works. He flipped through the pages, absorbing information about mountain ranges and rivers and major cities, building a mental picture of the world's layout.
And then something made him stop.
The shapes. The coastlines and mountain ranges in these partial maps—why did they look so familiar?
He went back several pages, examining the maps more carefully now. A particular curve of coastline here, the configuration of a peninsula there, the distinctive shape of an inland sea. Individually, they seemed like ordinary geographical features. But taken together, arranged in the particular way they were shown across these different regional maps...
His eyes widened.
"It can't be..."
His heart began to race. Panic surged through him, hot and immediate. He flipped frantically through the pages, looking for something specific—a complete map of the continent. But the book didn't have one. Instead, it had multiple detailed maps of different regions, pieces of a larger whole that were never shown together.
Oryth's hands were shaking as he carried the book to the desk. He found blank pieces of paper stored in a drawer, pulled out the inkwell that sat ready for use, and began working with frantic intensity.
He copied each regional map onto separate sheets, his hand moving as quickly as he could make it while still maintaining accuracy. The eastern regions. The western coastlines. The northern territories. The southern peninsulas. Each piece carefully transcribed, the geographical features meticulously reproduced on individual pages.
When he had them all copied, he spread them out on the desk and began arranging them like a puzzle, fitting the edges together where they overlapped, aligning rivers and mountain ranges, connecting the coastlines.
The shape that emerged made his breath catch in his throat.
Europe.
He was looking at Europe.
Not an exact match—the precision was different, some proportions seemed slightly off, certain details didn't align perfectly with his memories of maps from his previous life. But the overall outline, the fundamental shape, the relative positions of major geographical features... it was unmistakably Europe.
And based on the book's descriptions of where his family's lands were located, he was somewhere in the center of it.
A parallel world.
The concept had been pure speculation in his old life, relegated to science fiction and theoretical physics. The idea that there might be other Earths, other versions of reality running alongside the one he'd known, diverging at some point in history or perhaps having always been separate. He'd encountered the theory in books and movies, had dismissed it as entertaining but ultimately fictional.
But what if it was real? What if he was living proof of it?
If this was Earth—a different Earth, but Earth nonetheless—then how did the Skarreth fit in? They didn't match anything from his world's history or biology. Humanoid reptiles with tails and superior physical strength... nothing like that had ever existed in the fossil record he remembered. Nothing in human history or paleontology suggested such a species.
Unless...
An awful idea began forming in his mind.
What if they were descendants of dinosaurs? What if, in this version of Earth, the extinction event had never happened—or had happened differently, allowing certain species to survive and evolve? What if the Skarreth were the result of millions of years of reptilian evolution, shaped by circumstances that never occurred in his original world?
And the mana core—what if that was the key to their survival? An extra organ, a biological adaptation that changed everything about how evolution proceeded on this version of Earth? If humans had mana cores here, and if the Skarreth did too, then perhaps that fundamental difference had created a completely divergent path of development.
It was just a theory. Probably wrong in dozens of ways he couldn't even anticipate. But it was something, a way to understand how this world could be both familiar and utterly alien at the same time.
But more important than the Skarreth, more crucial than understanding the biology of this parallel Earth, was the implication of what he'd just discovered.
If this was a parallel world, and if his soul had traveled from his Earth to this one...
Then maybe he could go back.
Maybe magic could bridge that gap. Maybe if he learned enough, if he mastered the ability to bend reality the way mages in this world apparently could, he could find a way to return. To see Mia again. To apologize for leaving her. To somehow make right what death had torn apart.
The hope that flooded through him was almost painful in its intensity. For five years, he'd clung to the vague possibility that reincarnation might somehow lead him back to her, but it had been abstract, directionless, more prayer than plan. This was different. This was concrete. If parallel worlds existed, if souls could cross between them, then there might be a mechanism, a method, a technique he could learn and use.
His determination to master magic, already strong, crystallized into something absolute. He had to find books about magical theory. Had to learn how external manifestation worked. Had to understand the principles that governed reality in this world well enough to exploit them, to push past the boundaries that separated one Earth from another.
But even as hope surged, questions multiplied.
How had his soul made the journey in the first place? What mechanism had transported him from a hospital bed in one reality to a newborn body in another? Was it random, some cosmic accident that happened to occur at the moment of his death? Or was there a pattern, a natural law that governed such transitions?
And the Skarreth—if his theory about dinosaur descendants was wrong, then what were they? Where had they come from? Were they native to this Earth, or had they crossed from somewhere else entirely?
More questions than answers. Always more questions. But at least now he had a direction, a reason to believe that his ultimate goal might not be completely impossible.
He forced himself to breathe, to calm down, to think clearly. First things first. He needed to find books about magic. Needed to learn the basics of external manifestation. Needed to build his knowledge systematically before he could even begin to think about reality-warping techniques that might allow interdimensional travel.
And he needed to study the history of this world more thoroughly. If he could understand how this Earth had diverged from his own, he might find clues about the nature of the barrier between them, about how souls or matter or energy might cross from one to the other.
But all of that required books. Required knowledge. Required the one thing he still hadn't found despite hours of searching.
He carefully gathered up his hand-drawn maps, folding them and tucking them into his shirt. He'd take them to his room, hide them somewhere safe. He didn't want anyone to know he'd drawn them, didn't want to explain why he'd been so interested in assembling a complete map of the continent. Better to keep this discovery private, at least for now.
Then he returned to the shelves, to his systematic search, with renewed urgency.
The rest of the afternoon passed in frustration. Book after book yielded nothing useful—more fiction, more poetry, more religious texts that praised the King and warned against the sins of ambition and pride. The irony of that last part wasn't lost on him, given what he was trying to accomplish.
By the time the light began to fade and he knew he'd need to return to his room soon, he still hadn't found a single volume about magic.
That night, he went through his training routine with mechanical precision, depleting his core before sleep as he'd done every night for five years. But his mind was elsewhere, churning through the implications of what he'd discovered, planning his next steps, burning with the need to find what he was looking for.
The next day, he returned to the library as early as he could, this time armed with a chair that he could use to reach the higher shelves. If the magic books weren't on the lower levels, then they had to be higher up. Maybe they were deliberately placed out of easy reach, protected from casual browsing or childish hands.
He worked systematically, moving the chair along the shelves, climbing up to examine titles and contents at eye level, then moving on to the next section. The anxiety grew with each passing hour. Every book that wasn't about magic felt like a personal insult, a waste of his precious time.
He found more history books, which he set aside for later examination. Found texts on law and governance, on economics and trade, on agricultural practices and animal husbandry. Useful knowledge, certainly, the kind of information that would help him understand this world better. But not what he desperately needed right now.
The day wore on. Morning became afternoon. Afternoon stretched toward evening. His hands ached from pulling down books, his neck was sore from craning upward, his legs were tired from climbing up and down from the chair countless times.
And then, just as the light was beginning to fail and he was starting to think he'd have to come back tomorrow for another fruitless day of searching, he found it.
The book was on a higher shelf, tucked between what looked like a historical chronicle and some kind of philosophical treatise. He almost missed it entirely, his eyes glazing over from hours of disappointment. But something about the spine caught his attention—the quality of the leather, perhaps, or the way the title was embossed.
Introduction to Magic.
His hands trembled as he pulled it down. After so many years—five years of training, five years of experimenting, five years of desperate curiosity—he was finally, finally holding a book that might contain actual answers about how magic worked in this world.
The cover was the fanciest he'd seen in the entire library. The leather was supple and obviously expensive, dyed a deep burgundy that seemed to shimmer slightly in the fading light. The title was stamped in gold leaf, elaborate and proud. Even the binding was superior, clearly made to last for generations. Whoever had written this book, or whoever had commissioned its creation, had wanted it to feel important, valuable, worthy of respect.
It felt expensive in his hands. Felt significant in a way that transcended its physical properties.
Oryth climbed down from the chair carefully, clutching the book to his chest. His heart was racing, his breath coming faster than it should from such minimal physical exertion. This was it. This was what he'd been searching for since the day he'd been reborn in this world.
He carried the book to the reading chair, settling into it with reverent care. The library was quiet around him, peaceful in the evening dimness. Outside, he could hear distant sounds of the household going about its evening routines, but here, in this moment, it was just him and the book.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm his trembling hands, trying to settle his racing thoughts enough to actually absorb what he was about to read. Five years of waiting. Five years of training blind, building his foundation without understanding the principles that should guide its construction. Five years of questions without answers.
And now, finally, he might find what he'd been looking for.
Oryth opened Introduction to Magic and began to read.