Bruce woke and lay still for a long time.
The room was in its pre-dawn quiet. His soul-body had finished the late-E consolidation overnight. The interior chamber inside him, that architectural space he could now navigate on both its levels, was fully stabilized. He could feel his reserves at full capacity for the first time since arriving in the realm. He had room for many words now, many seals, many shapes of ink.
He did not get up immediately but thought about what the day was going to be.
The Library of Small Voices was not a hunting portal. It was an archive. He would not be advancing his rank there. He would not be earning soul points there. He would be reading. Reading what other souls had written about their conversations with the Codex, if the old soul was correct. Reading the records of the previous cases at the orb, if those records existed.
He would be, in the language of his old life, doing 'the study before the surgery.'
