10. Leith
Leith
Ipeel off from Asha and Hale the second we clear the courtyard, because I’ve got somewhere to be, and it isn’t a lecture on Death Magic for Advanced Users taught by a professor who thinks himself untouchable because he outranks half the faculty in seniority.
The building I want sits at the eastern edge of campus, half-buried under ivy for decades. The records office. The place where SilverGate keeps track of the mundane details nobody bothers stealing because nobody thinks they matter.
Student records with histories.
My parents’ names are on file somewhere in this building, and so are the two clans who disowned them for daring to fall in together. I’ve never looked. I’ve never wanted to. Some doors you leave shut because what’s behind them can’t change anything and can only make everything worse.
Except that isn’t true anymore. There’s a face on a dead god that matches mine, and Asha’s mirror keeps insisting the past belongs in the present.
The door to the records office resists the first push.
I put more weight behind it, and it groans open, releasing dust and the particular staleness of a room nobody bothers airing out.
Shelves stretch back further than the exterior suggests, which means SilverGate has folded space in here, same as everywhere else.
There is no one in here. No one needs to be.
I let death magic spread from my hand across the nearest shelf, the way I did at the archive door. Records respond differently to the dead than they do to the living. Every filing system in this realm eventually ends up cataloguing someone who’s died, and my magic knows how to find those threads.
The shelves nearest the door hold current students, filed alphabetically, bound in ordinary paper that smells like ordinary paper.
I move past them, deeper into the stacks where the folding starts to bend the aisles into shapes that shouldn’t exist in a building this size.
The dust thickens. The light dims, though I can’t see a single lantern or ward providing it in the first place.
Death magic pulls at something further back. I follow it.
The archive tightens into a single row of cabinets that look older than the rest, iron rather than wood, no locks visible on the fronts. I search for a marker and find one etched directly into the metal, letters worn down by handling that stopped a long time ago.
Withdrawn Lineage Records.
That doesn’t sound promising.
I press my palm to the first cabinet. Death magic sinks into the iron. Cold answers, then silence. The cabinet doesn’t open. I push harder, and the metal groans without giving way.
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
Death magic floods my palm. The cabinet shudders. Something inside it moves, papers shifting against papers, and the door cracks open with a sound like breaking bone.
I reach in.
The first file carries a name I don’t recognise. The second, the same. I pull a third, and my mother’s name stares up at me in faded ink.
Livia of the Thornwood Reapers.
There isn’t much to go on. A bunch of academic records and achievements that she had at SilverGate Academy.
I shove it back and reach for the next cabinet. My father’s name should be here. Jackson of the Hollow Reapers.
The cabinet slams shut.
I jerk back. Death magic surges around my hands, ready for whatever SilverGate thinks it’s doing, but nothing attacks. The cabinets simply seal, one after another, iron doors locking with heavy finality.
“Open,” I command.
They don’t answer.
I press on the metal until my palms ache, but the iron doesn’t yield. Death magic coils around the cabinets and finds nothing to grip. Whatever sealed them did so thoroughly, and my power recognises the signature.
SilverGate itself.
It’s the realm deciding I don’t get to see what I came for.
I step back and consider my options. I could burn through the iron with concentrated death magic, but that would alert every defensive system in the building.
The cabinets click.
One door opens. Just one. The others remain sealed, but the third cabinet from the left stands ajar, the gap dark and inviting.
I don’t move.
SilverGate doesn’t offer gifts. It offers traps dressed as solutions, problems wearing the face of opportunity. I’ve watched it redirect students into corridors that didn’t exist five minutes ago, watched it open doors for creatures it wanted to consume.
But I also know what waits in files SilverGate wants hidden.
I cross to the open cabinet and reach inside. My fingers brush paper, then leather, then something that feels like bone beneath a thin covering. I pull it free.
A journal. Black cover, worn at the edges where countless thumbs have opened it before mine. No title on the cover. No name inside the front leaf when I crack it open. Just dates, written in a hand I don’t recognise, spanning back further than my parents’ birth.
I flip forward. The entries grow more recent, then stop entirely thirty years ago. The final page carries a single line in different ink, darker, pressed harder into the paper.
The Hollow God endures.
My eyes narrow. I read it again, searching for context in the empty space around it, but the journal offers nothing else. Just that declaration, left like a marker for someone who might understand.
I don’t understand. That bothers me more than it should.
Footsteps sound in the aisle behind me. I close the journal and shove it into my jacket before turning, death magic coiling ready at my fingertips.
They disappear, moving through the stacks with no hurry or urgency.
I breathe out and slip towards the exit without looking back, because turning around would admit I’m running from something I can’t name. The door groans shut behind me, and the rain hits my face, cold enough to clear my head.
The Hollow God endures.
I repeat the words under my breath as I cross the courtyard, watching students stream around me without noticing. They’re heading to lectures, to meals, to ordinary lives built on ordinary foundations. My parents’ names sit in sealed cabinets, and something wanted me to find that phrase instead.
Asha would push until I explained everything. She’d demand the journal, read it in front of me, and probably set it on fire if it offended her. Hale would suggest burning the entire records office. Tobin would already be three theories ahead, connecting threads I haven’t seen yet.
I keep walking.
The eastern tower rises ahead, its windows dark despite the morning hour. Death magic shifts beneath my skin, restless in ways it wasn’t before the archive. Before Asha pressed her palm to my chest and woke something that recognizes her.
I shouldn’t have left her. That knowledge sits heavy as the journal in my jacket.
But I needed answers she couldn’t give me, and now I have words that mean nothing and everything, written by someone who knew enough to leave them where only death magic would find. I change direction before I reach the eastern tower.
Asha can survive one lecture with Hale. Tobin went to the library for answers, which means he has probably forgotten food, sleep, and basic self-preservation. I have a journal hidden in my jacket that SilverGate selected for me, and keeping it to myself would be stupid.
The admission doesn’t make me walk any faster.
Rain drives against the library windows. I take the steps and enter to find Verne behind her desk, dry, composed, and already staring at me.
“You,” she says.
“Me. Is Tobin here?” I ask.
“He entered before dawn.”
“And?”
“And he hasn’t left.”
“Thanks,” I mutter and head towards the third floor, purely on instinct.
I reach the deities section, where control has broken down.
Silver power covers three shelves. Books float above the floor, open pages turning in rapid bursts. Symbols burn across the surrounding wood. Tobin stands in the centre with his back to me, one hand raised towards the stacks.
He hasn’t noticed me.
That is unusual.
“Tobin.”
His magic strikes before he turns.
I send death into the silver attack and kill it halfway between us. Power drops onto the carpet in bright fragments.
He faces me. His silver eyes carry no surprise. “You shouldn’t approach quietly.”
“You knew I was here.”
He smirks.
“What have you found?”
“Too much that contradicts itself.” He lowers his hand. The floating books remain suspended.
I pull the journal from inside my jacket. Every floating book slams shut.
The impact hits the shelves together. Silver symbols vanish from the wood, leaving Tobin and me in sudden silence.
He looks at the journal. “Where did you get that?”
“The records office.”
“What were you doing in the records office?”
“Looking into my parents.”
His attention lifts to my face. No judgement appears, which is fortunate for him. “And SilverGate gave you that?”
“It did.” I hold out the journal. “It sealed every cabinet except the one containing this.”
Tobin doesn’t take it. Silver magic gathers over his fingers and reaches towards the black cover. The journal reacts before his power makes contact. It opens in my hand, pages turning rapidly until they stop at the final entry.
The Hollow God endures.
Tobin reads it once. Then again.
“That’s irritating,” he murmurs.
“I came here for insight.”
“You came to the wrong place. I’ve spent hours discovering that every recognised history of StormGate was altered.”
“By Yseld?”
“Possibly. Several records contradict the archive, the temple carvings, and each other. Someone kept changing the account whenever a new ruler claimed the crown.”
I put the journal on the nearest table. It closes.
“What’s a hollow god?”
“Usually, a divine vessel without its original power. Sometimes it means a dead god whose authority survived.”
“Useful distinction.”
Silver magic touches the cover again. This time, the journal stays closed. Tobin pushes more power into it, controlled and precise. Purple marks surface through the leather. They crawl over the cover and settle into ancient script.
Hollow is not empty. Hollow is hidden.
Tobin studies the words. “Can you translate that?”
“You can’t read it?”
“No.”
My death magic reaches for the journal. Black threads leave my fingers and enter the cover. The words brighten.
I read them aloud.
Tobin’s attention sharpens. “The archive opened your magic to sovereign records. Asha can read the same script.”
“She carries sovereign death.”
“So do you.”
“I’m a reaper.”
“You keep saying that as if repetition will make it the complete answer.”
I give him a cold stare. “You’ve spent too much time around Asha.”
“Nowhere near enough.”
The journal opens again. Pages turn beneath my hand, stopping near the middle this time. Blank paper waits for several seconds before black ink rises through it.
The first sovereign divided death to preserve it.
Tobin pores over it, his silver power spreads over the table, locking every page in place before the journal can close. “Read it out loud.”
“The first sovereign divided death to preserve it.”
His silver eyes move over marks he can’t understand. “The crowned god.”
“Probably.”
The book tears away from Tobin’s magic and launches itself upwards, slamming shut before it shoots off the stacks and disappears.
“Oh, well done,” I remark. “You scared it.”
“I didn’t scare it.”
“It escaped.”
Tobin looks towards the gap where the journal vanished. “We need it back.”
“Insightful.”
He sends silver magic through the shelves. It branches across the wood, searching every book it touches. Nothing answers.
I let death spread across the carpet.
The library contains thousands of dead authors, dead subjects, dead languages. Their traces crowd my senses until I separate the newest disturbance from the rest. The journal left a black trail behind it. It leads through the deities section and descends into the floor.
“It went down.”
“Restricted archive?”
“No. The trail moves towards the hidden passage behind Verne’s desk.”
Tobin’s expression changes. “Asha saw her book go through that wall.”
He releases the floating books, and they return to their shelves
We head silently downstairs.
Verne’s desk stands empty.
That bothers me. She watched me enter minutes ago. She wouldn’t abandon her post unless the journal reached whatever waits behind that wall.
Tobin sends silver magic over the stone. “Still no doorway.”
“The trail ends here.”
“It doesn’t end. You said Asha saw it continue through.”
“I can’t see what she sees.”
Tobin glances at me. “Touch the wall.”
“I’ve touched enough sentient architecture today.”
“Your magic opened the archive.”
I glare at him, but place my palm against the stone.
Death enters the wall and vanishes.
No resistance meets it. No ward tears it apart. The power simply goes somewhere I can’t follow.