Ilyari shifted on the bench near the central table, the dim light from the high stained-glass window catching the curve of her braid. Dust particles floated lazily through the air. Tazien lay sprawled sideways in a chair, arms folded across his chest, his head leaning against the cool marble wall. His eyes were closed, but not asleep.
“Still waiting?” he asked without opening them.
Ilyari sighed, stood, and paced toward the nearest shelf. “If we’re going to be baited, we might as well pretend to nibble.” She pulled a few older volumes off the stack and dropped one beside her brother. “Here. Read this. Or at least look like it.”
Tazien opened one eye. “How noble.”
She cracked a smile. “Well, we’re nobility now, remember? Start practicing.”
Before he could reply, the double doors burst open again.
Two servants entered, arms laden with more tomes—thicker, heavier, older than the previous batch. They dropped them on the central table with a solid thud, then stepped back. Behind them, another pair followed, bearing sealed containers of low-grade mana crystals in velvet-lined cases. And last, Veska and Lorn swept in, their robes rustling with ceremonial precision.
“I trust you’ve had time to rest,” Veska said smoothly, without waiting for a response. “Your next round of assessment has arrived.”
Tazien raised an eyebrow. “You know, most people just hand out scrolls.”
“These are gifts,” Veska replied, her tone too sweet. “Gifts of enlightenment. Let’s see if you’re smart enough to unwrap them properly.”
She gestured toward the stack. Among the topmost books were:
-
Fundamental Rune Theory and the Binding of Light
-
Mana Pathways: Evolutionary Imperfection and the Philosophy of Completion
-
Echoes of the Fallen Lineage: Pre-Divide Theories and Unclassified Languages
Ilyari’s fingers hovered near the last one.
The leather was dark, almost black, and when her eyes focused, she saw the faint embossing—an elegant glyph, broken in two.
The same broken glyph that had marked the earlier volume.
But this one pulsed.
Softly. Rhythmically.
Almost like it was breathing.
Tazien reached out first. His fingers grazed the cover—and his pupils flared with silver light.
“Tazien?” Ilyari said, voice sharp.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, though he blinked fast like shaking off a glare. He looked down at the page he’d opened.
And then he froze.
“Ilyari… the page. It’s not… the words…”
She leaned over.
To her, the page bore rows of old prose written in formal script. Complex but decipherable. A blend of theological philosophy and high-order mana commentary.
But when Tazien looked at it—his eyes glowing faintly again—the words unraveled.
Line by line, the ink shifted. Letters pulled away from their positions, rearranged, rewrote.
Until a new message formed.
To the Living Heirs of Nyameji—
The Empire hides its lies in language. But you were born to rewrite what was broken.
Mana is a dead dialect. Code is the living truth beneath it. They teach fragments; you possess the syntax.
Complete their spells. Correct their flaws. Make the world believe they taught you well.
Tazien’s throat tightened. “It knows us.”
Ilyari’s breath caught. “What?”
“Not just what we are,” he whispered. “Who we are. Ilyari, look.”
She reached for the book—when her fingers touched the page, the message faded. The words transformed and shifted as she read the page.
"This is amazing. We have to memorize this. It's too bad you don't have Wyn reading yet. This is crazy. And it knows WHO we are."
He nodded slowly, flipping a page. More text shifted beneath his gaze, arranging into diagrams and notations—elegant constructions that looked like mana theory… but weren’t.
They were Royal Code.
Fractals of syntax concealed inside incomplete spellwork. Code phrases disguised as glyph augmentations. One section even explained how to rewrite spell casting rituals using alternate intonation—so subtly different that no instructor would detect it, yet powerful enough to double the output.
Ilyari leaned in. “Can you memorize it?”
“I think it’s… memorizing me,” Tazien said. “Every time I focus, the lines shift again. Like it’s showing me more based on what I understand.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Like an adaptive archive.”
“And it’s teaching me how to pass as a perfect student,” he murmured. “By improving their broken theories without revealing ours.”
They shared a long, silent glance.
“We shouldn’t stay on this page too long,” Ilyari said finally. “We'll take turns memorizing it. Then we'll get to the rest of it.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Tazien flipped to a different chapter—one with plain, unmarked theory on mana conservation. It was boring, harmless, safe to the naked eye.
he torches in the East Archive burned low, casting amber shadows along the stonework. It had been over two hours since Veska and Lorn had left them with the reading test, and now, the air had turned thick—pressurized, expectant.
Ilyari sat in one of the deep alcove chairs, a thick book on noble jurisdictions open in her lap. She’d already read the volume once, but she turned the pages again for show. Beside her, Tazien slouched with theatrical boredom, holding a spine-worn guide to ceremonial mana arrays at an odd angle, barely pretending to read.
“They’re trying to make us squirm,” Ilyari murmured, eyes not leaving the page.
“I’m two pages away from becoming a wall sconce,” Tazien said under his breath. “We’ve been in here so long I think that portrait just blinked at me.”
Ilyari was about to retort when the door burst open with a heavy thud.
In came a procession of assistants—three young men in Academy livery, arms full of crates and scroll tubes. Following them were two robed figures. Veska walked with her hands behind her back, her jaw locked. Lorn trailed behind, gaze unreadable as ever.
Without a word, the servants began to lay out the new materials.
Several books were dropped onto the podiums—slimmer, more arcane volumes, some bound in strange leathers with mana-etched clasps. A box of raw mana crystals was set beside them, each gem humming with untapped energy. The final tome was placed alone at the center.
It was wrapped in gray cloth, tied with a thin ribbon of golden string.
Veska nodded at the center tome. “This one,” she said smoothly, “was recently rediscovered during a vault audit. We believe it holds insight into incomplete mana constructs—potential enhancements to the curriculum. Consider it advanced theory.”
She turned to leave. “You’ll be tested again shortly. Use your time wisely.”
The door clicked shut.
Ilyari approached the central tome with caution, her fingers pausing just above the ribbon. Tazien joined her, but the moment his hand brushed the cover—
His eyes glowed.
Not fully—not like the old days when the glyphs would light across his irises—but just enough. Enough for Ilyari to see the flicker. Enough for him to draw a sharp breath and whisper, “It’s talking to us.”
The title on the front read: The Third Breath: Advanced Mana Theory and Applied Flow States.
But when Tazien opened it—
The pages shimmered.
Words bent. Shifted.
The ink rearranged itself before their eyes, revealing language hidden between lines—shimmering glyphs written in logic, not sound. Code. And not just any code.
Royal Code.
The first page didn’t offer theory.
It greeted them.
To the surviving heirs of Nyameji. You are not alone. What was hidden is not lost. What was altered can be repaired. This book will not teach you how to rise—but how to remain unseen until you must.
Tazien whispered, “This isn’t teaching. It’s recruitment.”
Page after page shifted under their fingers—describing how to integrate Royal Code into modern mana use without detection. Diagrams of incomplete mana circles were shown side-by-side with corrections hidden as “optional stabilizing runes.” Faulty rituals were revealed to be intentionally weakened—the real patterns twisted by dogma.
Each correction cloaked itself as an academic upgrade.
One chapter was labeled Refinement of Mana Threads in Noble Lineages. But beneath, it showed how to rebind fragmented glyphs into functional expressions of Royal Code—wrapped in false terminology.
Another page spoke of Mirror Theory Applications. But behind the mirrored text, it detailed illusions—how to mask glyphwork inside mana echoes.
“Ilyari,” Tazien whispered, “we could use this. Not to cast. Not yet. But to… mask. Hide what we already do.”
Her eyes were wide. “They planted this. But not for us. This was a trap.”
He nodded. “And now it’s our weapon.”
For two hours, they read in silence, memorizing line after line. Ilyari took careful notes in reverse glyph, embedded into ribbon lace that no one else could decode. Tazien encoded memory prompts into his spellweave gloves, knotting the knowledge into muscle.
When they were done, they closed the book.
And set it aside.
Deliberately.
Tazien pulled one of the mana crystals from the crate and fitted it into the small glass containment loop provided. He etched the theoretical stabilizer rune from the book—incorrectly, on purpose. Then he poured mana in.
Crack.
The crystal split with a sharp pop, sending a brief flash of light through the room.
“Oops,” Tazien said, far too brightly.
Just then, the door slammed open again.
Veska’s eyes swept the scene. Lorn raised an eyebrow.
“What happened?” she demanded.
Tazien gestured to the remains of the crystal. “Tried a theory from the book. Miscalculated. Guess I don’t really understand the advanced stuff.”
Veska’s lips pressed into a line. “Let’s see how little you understand, then.”
Another verbal assessment followed—lightning-fast questions hurled like blades. Ilyari and Tazien answered nearly everything from the prior books flawlessly.
But when they came to the last book—the book of camouflage—they hesitated.
Fumbled.
Ilyari referenced the wrong page. Tazien misquoted a stabilizer glyph. They cited one theory as “something about harmony and tides” and referenced a mana loop as “the spinny thing that looked like a pastry.”
Veska scowled. Lorn quietly marked their responses.
When it was done, Veska’s tone was clipped. “You showed improvement. Enough to justify your seat. Barely.”
They bowed, quiet and humble.
The moment the masters left, Ilyari turned to Tazien with a ghost of a smile.
“Spinny thing that looked like a pastry?”
He grinned. “They’re lucky I didn’t say donut glyph.”
Tazien nodded, serious now. “And they’re teaching us how to survive in a world that wants us erased.”
He looked toward the door.
“We just have to make sure no one knows we’ve been taught. So now, lets eat so we can leave this place.”
The silverware didn’t clink tonight. It scraped.
The dining hall was almost empty, save for the faint hum of servants refilling mana lamps and the slow clatter of cutlery from the masters’ table. Master Veska sat rigid in her chair, not even looking at her food. Her roast was untouched, her wine dulled to a syrupy red film in the bottom of her cup. Her eyes stayed fixed on the flickering flame of the lamp beside her, jaw locked in thin-lipped dissatisfaction.
Across from her, Master Lorn cut into his food with careful, silent motions. He waited until Veska exhaled through her nose for the fourth time before speaking.
“So,” he said mildly, “you’ve finally stopped counting how many days we have left?”
Veska’s hand tightened around her fork. “Five.”
Lorn chewed, then said, “We could give the money back.”
“I can’t,” Veska snapped. “I spent it.”
Lorn blinked. “You what?”
“I invested in advanced mana theory manuals. Lecture sets for the Upper Tower qualifying boards.” Her voice was clipped. “They were limited release.”
“You took a bribe fully,” Lorn said quietly, “to sabotage children, and spent it trying to promote yourself.”
Veska’s gaze snapped to his, cold and sharp. “I took a guarantee that those children would not make a mockery of our institution. That they would fail. That Ilyari and Tazien would crumble under pressure.”
Lorn didn’t answer.
“And instead,” she hissed, “they’ve turned the house into a symbol, won over three noble houses with sewing, dodged a trap in the archives, and made fools of us.”
“You could say they’ve... passed their tests,” Lorn said lightly, though his gaze remained unreadable.
Veska’s fork landed with a hard clink against the plate. “They read the books.”
“The restricted books,” Lorn confirmed.
She stood up, pacing a line behind her chair. “They read them. They’re trained in the Code. They knew what they were looking at. And yet they lied. They pretended to be ignorant. We can’t prove they understood it… but that book wasn’t in the room by accident.”
Lorn sighed. “So what now?”
Her next words came like frost. “We make it their accident.”
He looked up. “You’re going to plant it.”
“They’ve already touched it. Their fingerprints, their glyph traces, their scent. If it’s found in their satchels or under their floorboards, it will look like they stole it. That they kept it. That they meant to use it.”
Lorn’s face hardened. “That would invoke the Emperor’s decree. Unauthorized possession of Royal Code texts…”
“Is treason,” Veska finished. “Which will ensure they never see a single step of Academy marble.”
There was a long pause. The servants were gone now. The hall had dimmed.
Lorn set down his knife. “I hadn’t spent my share.”
Veska raised an eyebrow.
“I was actually planning to return my share. I haven't been feeling much like an Academy Tutor. I've been feeling like a sham. Half educating them and tarnishing my reputation in the process. But despite us half-teaching them, they excel. I've seen enough to know when I am on the wrong side of things, high born nobles or no.” he said. “But I won’t stop you. You can do as you like.”
Lorn stood and Veska’s mouth twisted into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Then stay out of my way.”
She got up and roughly brushed past him and she swept from the hall, cloak trailing like a billowing shadow.