The day after the Resonant test, the recruits got a rare bit of free time.
Most of the others went to the lounge to think about the past few days. But Carter felt restless.
He needed answers, something to make sense of the impossible reality he’d been thrown into.
Paige was willing to go with him. Her scientific curiosity matched his own desperate need to understand.
Together, they decided to find the heart of the Library’s knowledge: the Great Archive.
They followed the signs. Their path led them to a quiet, tucked-away wing of the headquarters.
They came to two huge doors made of bronze. Each one was easily 15 feet tall.
They were etched with swirling patterns that seemed to shift and move when Carter didn’t look right at them.
The doors were open slightly. From inside, a soft, gold light spilled into the hall.
It carried the rich, strong smell of old paper, leather, and dust.
They stepped inside. Carter’s breath caught.
The Great Archive wasn’t a room; it was like a cathedral. It was a huge, open space that seemed to ignore the rules of physics.
Tall columns of white marble, with gold threads running through them, stretched up for what felt like miles. Their tops were lost in the soft, gentle glow of the impossibly high ceiling.
A giant, shining chandelier hung there like a captured star. Between these columns, round bookshelves made of a dark, shiny wood rose in huge, stacked towers.
Each one held thousands of leather-bound books.
Sunlight, pure and white, streamed through impossibly tall, arched windows of stained-glass set high in the stone walls. It cut through the dusty air in bright, solid beams.
Tiny, shining specks of dust, or maybe magic, danced and swirled in these beams of light. A long, fancy carpet, woven with detailed geometric patterns in red and gold, ran down the middle of the hall.
It led to a large desk that looked like an altar. The air was still and silent.
It was filled with a deep, quiet hush that seemed to swallow all sound. It was a safe place for knowledge.
Carter felt a sense of wonder that was almost like religion.
“Incredible,” Paige whispered. Her voice was a breath of pure wonder.
She took off her glasses to wipe them, as if to make sure she was seeing it right. “The sheer amount of information… it’s… it’s beautiful.”
They walked down the middle aisle. Their footsteps echoed softly in the huge, silent space.
At the large, fancy desk, an old woman sat hunched over a huge, open book. She was ancient.
Her face was a delicate map of wrinkles. Her silver-white hair was pulled back in a simple, neat bun.
Half-moon glasses sat on the end of her nose. She looked up as they approached.
Her eyes, a warm, smart brown, crinkled at the corners as she smiled. She gave off a gentle, grandmotherly warmth that was immediately comforting.
Her eyes passed over Paige and rested on Carter. A spark of sharp, smart interest showed in her warm eyes.
“Ah,” she said. Her voice was soft and gentle, like the sound of dry leaves rustling. “The young man who gave the Council a reason to be quiet for once.”
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Word travels fast in a place as quiet as this.”
“Welcome to the Great Archive, children. I am the Head Librarian.”
Paige looked at Carter. Her brow was creased in confusion.
“The Council?”
“What is she talking about?” asked Paige.
The Librarian gave a gentle, knowing smile. “You weren’t in the council chamber, were you, my dear? Your friend here made quite the impression.”
“Our Director, in his great wisdom, decided to test the boy’s potential with a rather… forceful demonstration.”
She chuckled softly, a warm, pleasant sound. “Let’s just say Mr. Cross’s reaction was not what anyone expected. Even some of our most experienced mages were left speechless.”
Paige’s eyes widened. She looked shocked and full of scientific wonder.
She turned to Carter. Her mind was clearly racing.
“You used your magic? Already? What did you do?”
“I… I don’t really know,” Carter stammered. He felt a flush of embarrassment go up his neck. “It just… happened.”
“The most powerful magic often does, in the beginning,” the Librarian said. Her voice was like a soothing balm. “It’s a gift of instinct, not of intellect.”
“The rarest and most powerful of these gifts is what we call thought-based casting.”
“Thought-based casting?” Paige whispered. The term was clearly something she had read about in the Lexanomicon but never seen.
“But the Lexanomicon says that’s… legendary. Almost mythical.”
She looked at Carter with a completely new expression. Her eyes were wide with a mix of scientific awe and pure disbelief.
He wasn’t just another recruit anymore. He was a living, breathing oddity, a piece of data that went against all known rules.
“Indeed,” the Librarian said. Her warm, brown eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “A gift possessed by only a few throughout history.”
“Our founder, Solomon, was one such person.”
She leaned back in her large, carved chair. A faraway look, full of memory, came into her eyes.
“He was a man of great vision. He understood, better than anyone, the real true nature of magic.”
“It is quite a hard legacy to live up to, I imagine, but his son Gabriel carries on his work. He carries his father’s burden, and his father’s hope.”
Carter and Paige looked at each other. They were starting to understand.
Gabriel, the Director, was Solomon’s son. The six thousand year old war wasn’t just a historical fight; it was a family history of cosmic proportions.
I remember Gabriel saying that the Library itself had existed that long… But Gabriel is 6,000 years old!?
How is that even possible? Are magic creatures immortal? Or just him?
How does he look so young? How could anyone stay sane for 6,000 YEARS!?
Both Carter and Paige are clearly having the same thought.
The weight of that discovery settled over them. It was heavy, suffocating.
“Feel free to look around, children,” the Librarian said. She gestured to the tall shelves around them. “Knowledge isn’t meant to be kept under lock and key.”
They left the main desk and started to wander through the maze-like aisles. The sheer size of the place was too much.
Carter ran his fingers over the old leather covers of the books. The titles were written in languages he couldn’t even begin to read.
The air was thick with the smell of history, of knowledge gathered over thousands of years. He felt impossibly small, a single, unimportant reader in a library built by gods.
Paige, however, was in her element. Her eyes darted from shelf to shelf.
Her mind was clearly sorting and comparing everything she saw. She pulled out a heavy book covered in dust.
Her fingers traced the faded gold writing on its cover.
“This is incredible,” she whispered. Her voice was filled with a reverence that was almost religious. “This section is completely about magical plants.”
“Look at these drawings… glowing mushrooms from the first forests, plants that are alive from before the First Language… this is a lifetime of research in one aisle.”
She moved to another section. Her excitement grew with every step.
“And this… this is alchemy. The first texts. Most of this was thought to be lost forever, destroyed by the Order.”
“To be able to study this, to see the first formulas…” She stopped.
Her scientific curiosity took over everything else.
“Most of the recipes for magical creatures in the Lexanomicon are blacked out,” Paige said. Her voice was a little breathless.
She finally turned back to the Librarian. Her mind was clearly full of a thousand questions.
“I was hoping to find more information here. I specifically want to know why using a human base is so strictly forbidden.”
The Librarian’s kind face grew dark. A deep, old sadness filled her eyes.
“Because it is a deep and terrible sacrifice, my dear,” she said. Her voice was a low, serious whisper.
“To be changed is to have your very soul, your DNA, your thoughts, forced and violently rewritten.”
“It is a pain beyond understanding, a violation of the natural way. That is why it is forbidden except in the most desperate situations.”
She looked up. Her gaze seemed to go through the ceiling, towards the offices of the leaders above.
“The Director and the Branch Heads… what they did was a good and necessary act. A sacrifice of their own humanity for the sake of this Library, for the sake of the world.”
“But it is a path no one should ever have to walk again.”
Paige looked quieted. Her face was pale and horrified.
While she thought about this grim truth, Carter kept looking through the nearby shelves. He pulled out a large, heavy book.
Its cover was plain black leather. He couldn’t read the title.
But the detailed silver diagram on the cover showed a chimera, its three heads snarling.
He flipped through the pages. His eyes scanned the detailed drawings of griffins, basilisks, and other creatures he had only read about in stories.
The writing was unreadable, but the pictures were clear. Then, he found it.
A section at the very back of the book. Its pages were yellow and brittle with age.
The entry was short, not finished, almost like a note at the bottom. It was a picture of a creature he had never seen before: a perfect human shape, held up by what looked like pure energy.
Below it was a single, strange word he somehow knew, though he didn’t know from where.
Homunculus.
The writing below the picture was broken. Parts of it were faded and couldn’t be read.
But the drawings were clear enough. They showed an artificial human, a perfect body created not by mixing existing life, but from pure, raw magic itself.
“What is this?” Carter asked. His voice was a low, curious murmur. He held the book out for the Librarian to see. “A homunculus?”
The Librarian peered over her glasses at the open page.
“Ah, that. An old, idea text. It’s not a complete work. It’s more of a thinking exercise than a real recipe.”
“We’re not sure when it was written, or by whom.”
She met Carter’s eyes. Her warm, brown eyes held a strange, unreadable light.
“It’s just a theory, my boy. Such a creature has never been made successfully.”
But as Carter closed the book, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Librarian wasn’t telling the whole truth.