My new life was a meticulous, chillingly precise piece of architecture. Every day was a brick laid in the foundation of my new purpose, and every night was the mortar of hoarded power.
The Verdant Archive became my world. The cold, green-hued light of the floating orbs was my sun and my moon. The silence, broken only by the skritch of ancient parchment, was my new soundtrack. I was no longer a frantic, cornered rat. I was a spider, sitting at the center of a new, complex web, patiently waiting.
My cover was my research. My mission for Damien—finding the "Warden's Sigil"—was a perfect, unimpeachable excuse. I requisitioned maps, I studied architectural diagrams, I delved into dwarven metallurgy and the history of pre-Imperial smithing. I was, on the surface, the most diligent researcher Damien could have ever wished for.
And she was always there.
Seraphina Vael was the archive's other permanent resident. We were the two, silent, opposing forces in this cold, dead place. I would be at a table in the cartography section, unrolling a massive blueprint of the academy's foundations, and I would feel her, three aisles over, in the Runic Theory section.
Her presence was a constant, low-grade thrum against my nerves. It was a silent, unending accusation. She never spoke to me. She never approached me. But her gaze, when it passed over me, was a physical weight. It was cold, it was clinical, and it was filled with the utter, crushing disappointment of a judge who has already passed sentence.
She was my witness. My jailer. The one person who saw the monster and knew it was a mask, and the coward behind it.
She was also, in a way, my shield. Her presence was a reminder. It kept the cold, logical thing I was becoming from consuming the last, human part of me. It was the anvil against which I was sharpening my resolve.
Today, my hunt was twofold.
For Damien, I was "investigating" the dwarven clan. I had a heavy, illustrated tome, Forged in Stone: The Lost Clans of Ironspine, open on my desk. It was my prop. It was the lie.
My real work was happening on a small, worn piece of parchment I had hidden inside the larger book. It was a perfect, hand-drawn copy of the faint diagram from Roric Alastair's journal. And I was cross-referencing it with the official, Level-Four Foundation Schematic of the library itself.
Alastair's "faint diagram" was not a map to a grand, hidden door. It was, I was discovering, far more clever than that. It wasn't a room. It was a path. A series of forgotten, seemingly disconnected utility tunnels, maintenance shafts, and magical-conduit pathways.
I spent hours tracing the lines, my mind a cold, logical engine, filtering out the noise. The schematics showed a thousand such tunnels. But Alastair's sketch... it highlighted a specific, seemingly illogical route. It went down. Deeper than the Verdant Archive. Deeper than the sublevels shown on any public map.
It led to a place, a single point on the schematic, that was marked simply: UTILITY CONFLUX 7-BETA.
It was listed as a minor, inactive node for the academy's magical power grid. A place no one would ever have a reason to go. According to the notes, it hadn't been physically accessed in over a century, since the last warding-grid update.
A maintenance conduit... a bypass.
This was it. Alastair had hidden his "Scribe's Path" in the most boring, most overlooked, most bureaucratic part of the entire academy's design. It was not a grand, hidden tomb. It was a janitor's closet. A janitor's closet that led to hell.
I had the location.
I sat back, the massive, public blueprint spread out before me, my tiny, secret map hidden from view. I finally had it. The location of the door. And I had the key—the cold, empty mind-state I was practicing every night.
A shadow fell over my desk.
My heart didn't leap. The cold, logical part of me simply... noted. I looked up.
Seraphina was standing there. She had broken our silent, unspoken truce. She was standing at my table, looking down at the scattered maps, the dwarven history book, the schematics.
Her eyes were not on me. They were on my work. The sheer, obsessive, and meticulous volume of it.
"You're enjoying this," she said. Her voice was not a question. It was a flat, disgusted statement of fact.
"I am a scholar," I replied, my voice a cold, neutral rasp. "I am... thorough."
"You are a scavenger," she shot back, her voice a low, furious whisper that cut through the silence of the archive. "You are picking through the bones of this academy, looking for a new weapon for him. All this... this intelligence... and you are using it to find a new, more efficient way to be a monster."
She pointed to the book on dwarven metallurgy. "What is this for? Who are you planning to hurt next, Lucian? What family are you researching, what weakness are you digging for?"
Her accusation was a perfect, terrible, and ironic mirror of the truth. She thought my research was for a new victim.
I met her gaze. The old me, the "prisoner," would have flinched. But the new me, the spider, saw an opportunity. Not to hurt her. But to reinforce the mask.
"You are right about one thing, Vael," I said, my voice as cold and green as the light in the room. "I am thorough. But you are wrong about my motives."
I leaned in, my voice dropping. "I am not a scavenger. I am an architect. And an architect must know the entire foundation, even the rotten parts... especially the rotten parts. Now, if you'll excuse me, you are interrupting my work."
I did not break eye contact. I held her furious, disappointed gaze with my own cold, empty one. I was using the very "emptiness" I had been practicing on her.
I felt her recoil. My Soul Resonance felt her confusion, her disgust, but also... a new, faint flicker of fear. She was not looking at a "coward" anymore. She was looking at the cold, logical thing I had been practicing to become.
Without another word, she turned and walked away.
I watched her go, then slowly let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. The encounter had been... a success. My mask had held. My real secret was safe.
I had the location. I had the key. And I had a perfect, unassailable cover.
The next step was no longer research. The next step was infiltration.