The ancient library became their home for the next several days. Every morning, golden sunlight streamed through the collapsed ceiling, illuminating countless dust particles that drifted lazily through the air. The once-grand hall remained eerily quiet, disturbed only by the turning of pages, the scratching of charcoal across paper, and the occasional collapse of another rotting bookshelf somewhere in the distance.
Zhu had quickly discovered that libraries were dangerous—not because of monsters, but because of boredom.
She was currently lying upside down across an old reading table, one leg dangling over the side as she absentmindedly spun a broken quill between her fingers.
"How," she groaned dramatically, "can there be so many squiggly lines?"
Across from her, Herkid didn't even look up. "They're runes."
"They're squiggles."
"They're symbols."
"They're fancy squiggles."
Mara giggled quietly while organizing another stack of preserved books. After weeks of traveling with Zhu, she had come to realize that this playful banter was Zhu's favorite pastime—a performance she put on regularly, first with Faral, and now with Herkid.
"I think Herkid has given up trying to correct you," Mara noted.
"He has."
"I have not," Herkid replied, his eyes never leaving the page.
"You just did."
"...I suppose I have."
Zhu smiled triumphantly. "I win."
"You won nothing."
"I won the argument."
"There wasn't an argument."
"There was in my head."
"...That explains much."
Zhu gasped dramatically. "Mara!"
"Yes?" The older girl looked up, thoroughly amused by Zhu's pouting face.
"He insulted me!"
"I did," Herkid agreed readily.
"See? He admitted it!"
Mara laughed. "You probably deserved it."
"I am surrounded by traitors." Zhu folded her arms, looking aggrieved.
Let Herkid focus, Faral's voice echoed inside Zhu's mind.
I'm helping morale, Zhu replied mentally.
You are creating chaos.
Morale requires chaos.
Faral would have shook his head if he had one, "where did you even hear that?"
Zhu muttered aloud, shrugging. She was mostly just bored. Having never learned to read, being surrounded by thousands of ancient texts was both exciting and deeply daunting.
Catching her fleeting wave of frustration, Faral spoke again in her mind. Would you like me to teach you how to read while Herkid deciphers the rune book?
Zhu sat up straight, her eyes lighting up. "Would you really?"
Of course.
"Let's begin now!" Zhu clapped her hands, her voice echoing into the quiet space.
Herkid and Mara both looked up, quickly realizing that Zhu and Faral were having another telepathic conversation. Shaking his head fondly at the girl, Herkid returned to his work and soon lost all track of time.
The ancient tome rested carefully upon the largest surviving reading desk, its violet cover shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon light. Every page was dense with thousands of tiny runes—some no larger than grains of rice, others stretching across expansive diagrams.
The deeper Herkid studied them, the more fascinated he became.
"They're not words..." he whispered softly. "They're instructions."
Mara looked over. "What do you mean?"
Herkid carefully traced one of the complex diagrams, hovering his finger just above the paper. "The runes don't record language."
"They don't?"
"No." His eyes brightened with realization. "They describe relationships."
Zhu rolled onto her stomach, resting her chin in her hands. "Relationships?"
"Between mana."
She blinked. "...You've already lost me."
Faral's voice resonated through the air. "Herkid is correct."
Herkid's face lit up. "Really?"
"The civilization that created these runes did not write spells. They wrote rules."
"Exactly!" Herkid nodded enthusiastically. He grabbed a piece of charcoal and began sketching three simple circles across a loose sheet of parchment. "Look. If these were ordinary words..." He labeled them beneath: Fire. Water. Wind. "...each word would have a fixed meaning."
Everyone nodded in understanding.
"But runes aren't like that." He smudged out the words and drew sweeping lines connecting the shapes. "When these symbols connect... their meaning changes." He added another intersecting line. "The position matters. The distance matters. The order matters."
Soon, the simple drawing resembled an intricate, glowing web.
"It's like..." Herkid searched for the right word. "...building a machine."
"A suitable analogy," Faral agreed. "Each rune performs a single function."
"But together..." Herkid's eyes widened as the realization fully set in, "...they become something entirely different."
Faral sounded pleased. "Precisely."
For the next few hours, the two bounced ideas back and forth, dissecting the ancient language like scholars in an academy rather than survivors huddled in a crumbling ruin.
As time passed, the book slowly revealed its secrets. At first, Faral could barely recognize individual symbols, but then—as had happened several times before—a wave of deep understanding quietly surfaced within his mind.
It was a familiar phenomenon. Whenever Faral encountered knowledge far beyond his current understanding, fragments of clarity would simply appear, as though an immense library was hidden somewhere deep within his consciousness, unlocking only when he turned to the right page. He never questioned where it came from, nor did he speak of it—not even to Zhu. He simply kept studying alongside Herkid.
By sunset, dozens of copied diagrams covered the table.
Mara stared at the sprawling sheets. "They all look identical to me."
"They're completely different," Herkid insisted. He pointed to two nearly identical circles. "This rune faces north, while this one is rotated less than a finger's width."
"...That's different?" Zhu asked skeptically.
"It changes everything!"
Zhu groaned, flopping back onto the table. "I officially hate runes."
"You don't even understand them."
"Exactly."
"Rotate the lower binding rune," Faral instructed, cutting through the chatter.
Herkid frowned, scanning the page. "This one?"
"No. The one beneath it."
Herkid carefully adjusted the symbol on his parchment. Instantly, the entire chaotic pattern snapped into place. His breath hitched.
"No..." he whispered, his eyes racing across the page. "This isn't... it isn't a spell."
Faral remained silent as Herkid frantically compared three separate diagrams, then four, then six.
Finally, Herkid looked up, his hands trembling with excitement. "It's an array."
"What kind of array?" Mara asked.
"A spiritual array."
The room fell quiet.
"The runes aren't casting mana," Herkid explained, tracing the path toward the center of the design. "They're guiding it. This entire formation exists for one single purpose..." He swallowed hard. "It creates a bridge."
"Continue," Faral urged quiet authority.
Herkid's finger followed the lines. "The spiritual energy flows here... then divides... before reconnecting at the center. It temporarily links two separate spiritual consciousnesses."
Zhu sat up straight. "...In normal-people words?"
Herkid let out a breathless laugh. "It creates a path between souls."
"Oh." She nodded slowly. "Alright then."
Faral's voice carried unmistakable satisfaction. "You've found it."
The atmosphere in the library shifted instantly. Until now, they had been searching blindly. Now, they had direction.
Herkid eagerly flipped through the remaining pages, but his excitement slowly waned. "...Wait." He frowned, comparing one page to the next. He let out a heavy sigh. "We can't use most of these."
"Why not?" Mara asked.
"Because they're incomplete."
Many of the pages had been destroyed over the centuries—entire sections were missing, corners were scorched away, and water damage had erased crucial instructions. A protective spell had kept the tome from rotting away entirely, but time had still taken its toll.
Herkid lowered his head. "The knowledge survived... but time still claimed its price."
Zhu walked over and gently rested a hand on his shoulder. "We only need one."
He looked up at her.
She offered him a warm smile. "You don't have to rebuild an entire civilization, Herkid."
"...Just one array," he murmured.
"Exactly," Faral agreed. "One is sufficient."
Taking a deep breath, Herkid nodded. "You're right."
He turned page after page, evaluating each incomplete design. "Not complete... too damaged... requires materials we don't possess... no..."
The late afternoon stretched into evening. Then, Herkid froze.
"I found it."
Everyone gathered around the desk.
The diagram before them was unlike the others—larger, far more complex, and remarkably well-preserved. Twelve concentric circles surrounded a central symbol unlike anything they had seen before, with dozens of runes spiraling outward like flowing rivers before converging into a single, elegant design.
Faral became unusually quiet. "This is the one."
Herkid barely heard him, his focus entirely consumed by the page. "This array..." he whispered, "...temporarily opens a pathway into a mental world."
Mara inhaled sharply. "Zhu's mindscape..."
"Yes," Herkid breathed.
Faral chimed in, his voice ringing with clarity. "The pathway allows an independent spiritual consciousness to enter and leave the mental world without causing permanent damage to the host."
Zhu blinked. "...That sounds important."
"It is," Faral answered. "It is the foundation of our entire plan."
Herkid carefully closed the tome and looked at the mountain of copied diagrams scattered across the table. "There are over four hundred unique runes involved in this single formation."
Zhu's smile faded. "...You're joking."
"I wish I were."
"And you have to learn all of them?"
"No," Herkid smiled faintly. "I only have to understand enough to recreate this exact array."
"Oh. Well, better you than me." Zhu patted his shoulder sympathetically.
Mara chuckled softly. Realizing how late it had gotten, she excused herself to go prepare their evening meal.
Faral's voice nudged Zhu gently. "You have your own learning to do..."
Zhu's excitement instantly vanished. "You stinky Faral," she grumbled under her breath.
The fading rays of sunlight disappeared beyond the broken ceiling as the ancient library settled once more into silence. For centuries, the knowledge hidden within its walls had waited for someone capable of understanding it.
Today, it had finally found them.