Chapter 21 #2
He’s right, and the sight of the endless shelves, the smell of old paper and untold knowledge, is a balm to my frayed soul. But it’s a bittersweet comfort. The most wonderful place I’ve ever seen is now my gilded cage.
I won’t let it deter me. Pushing aside the ache in my chest and Seb’s cryptic words, I find a secluded reading table in a quiet alcove and dive in.
My Cognitive Resonance hums to life, a roaring chorus of whispering texts, and I exert my will, concentrating all my intent on a single target: the echo-beast.
Hours blur into one long, continuous stretch of research.
I cross-reference data from ancient bestiaries and Warden field reports, my fingers flying across the pages, my notebook filling with frantic script.
My magic snags on one chilling passage, a footnote in a dusty tome: Beware the avarice of the Ashcroft lineage, for in each generation a Collector is anointed, one who seeks not to mend the pieces, but to gain mastery for their own ends.
Ashcroft! The dead eccentric whose estate started this whole thing. Could he have been this “Collector”? For some reason, the title sends a shiver down my spine. This feels important. Not just a clue, but a cornerstone of a mystery I don’t yet understand.
But I can’t afford to get sidetracked, so I file it away and turn back to the central contradiction: the illogical data point that’s been bothering me since the railyard. My power hurts the beast, but it also seems to make it stronger. It’s a paradox, and that makes it important.
My notes mock me, the answer just beyond my grasp, like a word on the tip of my tongue. Frustrated, I push back from the table and begin to pace, mind racing, searching for a pattern I’ve missed.
One: The beast is unusually drawn to my magical signature, to me specifically. Two: My harmonizing power makes it recoil, yet also makes it more solid. Three: I can track its static, feel it like a dissonant note resounding in my own soul. It’s a connection I can’t explain.
My eyes fall to my open notebook, my thumb brushing past a page from my first day of research here. A hastily scribbled question I’d written catches my eye: “Possible origin: triggered by the shard’s initial activation?”
I stare at the words. This. Is this the connection?
I’ve been treating this like two separate research projects: “The Shard” and “The Echo-Beast.” But what if that’s wrong? What if they aren’t two subjects, but two sides of the same equation?
The thought is a jolt of electricity. It’s a new hypothesis, a new research approach entirely.
Ignoring the library’s rush of whispers, I call on my Cognitive Resonance; but this time, I focus on the relationship between the two targets.
I hold both concepts in my mind, instructing my magic to cross-reference them as it searches.
Then, across the alcove, a leather-bound tome that had been unremarkable until now draws the glimmering tendrils of my magic.
They fetch it from its high shelf, ancient dust motes dancing in the iridescent glow, and the book drifts slowly, purposefully, down to my table.
When it falls open, the light settles on a passage of text, making the archaic script nearly pop from the page as my mind effortlessly translates the words.
When the Great Core was Sundered, its purpose was shattered, its many aspects torn asunder.
When the very heart of its Harmony was fractured, the wound it left was an echo of that deafening silence—a chaotic memory, forever seeking, forever hungry, tethered to the shard.
It does not truly live, nor is it dead. Pray it does not take form.
The echo cannot be slain, it will feed ad infinitum. Until it can be made whole.
The pieces click into place. My shard is the “Harmony” that was fractured.
Whatever this “Great Core” was—I’m walking around with a fragment of it.
Holding up my arm, I inspect the crystal mark with newfound awe and the sudden, crushing weight of significance.
This isn’t just some random magical artifact, some weird supernatural manifestation. This is something fundamental.
And now I finally have the information I need to deal with the echo-beast. It can’t be killed until it’s made whole. And I’m the only one who can do that.
At the railyard, that’s what was happening. I was manifesting it, giving the echo more substance through its connection with my shard. But I stopped too soon.
For the first time in weeks, a fragile hope takes root in my chest.
And that’s when an urgent voice from the main library area intrudes.
“Say that again? A surge that big, centered downtown?” Drawn by the undisguised alarm in Seb’s tone, I move to the edge of my alcove. He’s standing with another Warden, their faces pale in the soft light.
“It’s a chaotic signature, all right,” the other Warden says, his voice tense. “Unprecedented. And it’s right in the middle of—damn it—the Lumina Festival.”
Lumina Festival. The old tome slips from my fingers, thudding onto the rug.
No. It can’t be.
With hands that tremble so badly I can barely control them, I fumble for my phone. My thumb swipes frantically across the screen, scrolling back through my texts with Em, my pulse hammering in my ears.
And then I see it. The casual, damning words:
Em
btw, I told Dad I’d go with him to that Lumina Festival since u ghosted him.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. This can’t be happening. Em. And Dad. They’re at the epicenter.
Forgetting the scattered books, my meticulous notes, everything—I burst out of the alcove.
“Seb!”