Brandt left the private dining hall, the heavy oak door thudding shut behind him with a sound of finality.
The silence of the corridor was a balm after the chaotic, high-pitched energy of the twins. His head still throbbed, a dull, rhythmic reminder of his foolishness the night before, but the food—hot, heavy, and plentiful—had begun to do its work.
The white-hot spike of the migraine had dulled to a manageable ache, and the leaden weight in his limbs was receding, replaced by the stiffness of a body that had been pushed too far, too fast.
He walked with purpose, his small boots tapping a steady rhythm on the cold flagstones.
'Make a list.'
Falk's final instruction replayed in his mind, a gravelly echo.
'Record whatever I borrow. Whatever I read.'
It was a strange request. In his old life, scrutiny like that would have triggered every alarm bell in his paranoid profiler's mind. It would have smelled of surveillance. Of control. Of a trap.
But here, in the cold, pragmatic reality of Rimescar, it felt… different.
He analysed the Master-at-Arms' expression, dissecting the memory of his scarred face and cold blue eyes. There had been no malice there. No suspicion. Only a deep, grim curiosity.
'He isn't trying to censor me. He wants to see what kind of Lord I intend to be.'
Falk had invoked his mother. He had spoken of a Lord needing to be more than just a sword. The list wasn't a leash; it was a progress report.
'I can live with that.'
He accepted the condition. It was a small price to pay for unfettered access to the accumulated knowledge of centuries.
He navigated the keep, his path taking him away from the bustling, noisy heart of the fortress and towards its silent, northern edge.
The corridors here were older, the stone blocks larger and rougher, hewn from the mountain before the refinement of later generations. The air grew colder, stiller, smelling less of woodsmoke and cooking, and more of the deep, penetrating chill of the earth itself.
He finally reached his destination.
The library tower.
It stood apart from the main residential wing, a square, formidable structure of black granite that looked more like a prison than a place of learning. It had no large windows, only narrow, defensive slits that peered out suspiciously at the frozen world.
Brandt pushed against the heavy, iron-bound door. It groaned, a screech of protesting metal that echoed in the quiet hallway, before swinging inward.
He stepped inside, and the atmosphere shifted instantly.
It was a vertical space, a silo of silence and shadows. The library did not sprawl; it climbed.
The air here was frigid, kept deliberately cool to preserve the fragile contents within. It was thick with a unique, intoxicating perfume: the dry, dusty scent of decaying paper, the sharp tang of old, cured leather, and the faint, lingering smell of soot.
'Knowledge.'
It smelled like history. It smelled like answers.
Brandt looked up. The room was a hollow shaft, lined entirely with towering, dark-wood shelves. They rose from the stone floor, stretching up, and up, climbing into the gloom until they disappeared into the shadows of the high, vaulted ceiling.
They were packed. Thousands of books. Scrolls tucked into honeycomb-like cubbies. Heavy, iron-clasped tomes that looked like they hadn't been moved in a century.
A narrow, wooden gallery ran around the upper level, a fragile-looking walkway suspended in the gloom, accessible only by a tight, spiralling iron staircase in the far corner.
In the nearest corner, a small, hooded fireplace sat cold and dark. A comfortable, worn chair was positioned before it, surrounded by a small fortress of stacked books.
'Maester Eamon's spot.'
Brandt remembered the librarian. A man even older than Vorin, nearly blind, who spent his days guarding the fire to ensure it never burned hot enough to threaten the paper, and protecting the books from those who had no business reading them.
But the chair was empty. The hearth was cold.
Brandt stood alone in the silent, towering cathedral of paper.
'Perfect.'
He walked further into the room, his footsteps swallowed by the vastness of the space. He ran a hand along the spine of a book on the nearest shelf. The leather was rough, cracked with age, and cold to the touch.
He paused, a sudden, sharp thought striking him.
'I can read this.'
It was a simple thing. A basic skill. But in this world, in this brutal, feudal era, it was a superpower.
Most of the people in this keep—the guards like Garret, the servants like Elara—were illiterate. They lived and died without ever deciphering the scratches on a page. But Brandt, the heir, had been tutored since he could speak.
'I don't have to waste months learning the alphabet. I don't have to ask someone to read to me.'
He had the keys to the kingdom. He just had to find the right door.
He stood at the base of the spiralling iron stairs, looking up into the shadows. His mind began to catalogue his needs, a frantic, hungry list.
'I need to know everything.'
He needed to understand the kingdom's political structure. Who were their enemies? Why was the border a cold war?
He needed to know about the monsters. Lilith had mentioned beasts. Things that lurked in the dark. He needed a bestiary.
He needed history. He needed to know how this world worked, its gods, its myths, its lies.
'But not today.'
Today, there was only one priority. One burning, agonising, essential need.
'Magic.'
He needed to understand what he was.
He needed to understand the energy that coursed through his veins, the power that had enhanced his muscles, and the backlash that had nearly crippled him. He was an Augmenter. A nine-year-old anomaly. He was blindly walking through a minefield and needed a map.
He gripped the cold, iron railing of the staircase and began to climb.
The metal steps rang softly under his boots, a chime that ascended with him into the darkness. The air grew warmer as he rose, the heat trapped in the high ceiling.
He moved along the shelves, his eyes scanning the spines.
He didn't need titles. He needed subjects.
He passed rows of what looked like estate ledgers, their spines marked with dates. He passed a section of crumbling scrolls that smelled of dried herbs—Vorin's domain, likely medicine.
Then, he found it.
It was a section set apart, the books larger, their bindings heavier. The leather here was dark, some of it dyed a deep, ominous blue or a stark, warning red. There was no dust here. These books were used.
He pulled one from the shelf. It was heavy, a solid weight in his small hands. The cover was unadorned, save for a single, embossed symbol—a circle, bisected by a line.
'Theory.'
He opened it. The pages were vellum, thick and creamy. Diagrams covered the text—complex, geometric drawings of the human body, overlaid with networks of lines that matched the sensation of his own channels.
'This is it.'
He snapped the book shut and tucked it under his arm.
He continued his search. He found another, its spine cracked and worn, the title faded to illegibility. But a glance inside revealed dense, blocky text discussing the nature of Conjurers and their pathway.
He took that one, too.
He found a third, a slim, black volume that felt cold to the touch. It dealt with the dangers. The warnings. The limits of the human soul and body.
'Safety.'
That was the most important one.
He stood on the narrow, creaking gallery, three heavy tomes clutched to his chest. It was a heavy load for his small arms, but he didn't feel the strain.
He looked down at the empty chair by the cold fireplace.
'This is where I start.'
Brandt descended the spiralling iron staircase, the heavy tomes clutched tight to his chest. He moved to the corner, to the small, hooded fireplace that Maester Eamon usually guarded.
The chair was old, its leather seat cracked and worn smooth by decades of the librarian's weight. Brandt sat. He placed the stack of books on the small, dusty table, pushing aside a half-melted tallow candle.
He didn't hesitate. He opened the first book—the heavy volume on theory.
He began to read.
It was not a casual skimming. It was not the bored, dutiful study of a child forced to learn his letters. It was an interrogation.
He attacked the text. He tore the meaning from the sentences, dissecting the grammar, analysing the diagrams, hunting for the logic that underpinned the magic. He was a starving man at a feast, and he was gorging himself.
The hours began to bleed away.
The single, pale beam of sunlight that cut through the high arrow slit moved across the floor, a slow, silent clock. It crawled over the dusty flagstones, climbed the table leg, and eventually fell across the open pages of the book.
Brandt didn't notice.
He didn't notice the cold creeping into his extremities. He didn't notice the stiffness in his neck or the dry scratchiness in his throat.
He had entered a state of total, absolute focus.
It was a feeling he remembered from his old life, from the long, caffeine-fuelled nights spent poring over case files, crime scene photos, and psychiatric evaluations. It was the feeling of the hunt. The world outside the page simply ceased to exist. There was no keep, no Rimescar, no Lilith. There was only the data.
He was in a flow state—a trance of pure, unadulterated cognition.
He wasn't just reading the words; he was saving them. He felt as if his mind were a physical vault, and he was shovelling information into it, stacking it, organising it, locking it down. The concepts of mana circulation, of the delicate balance required to prevent the very backlash he had suffered… it all clicked into place with a cold, satisfying precision.
'Yes. That makes sense. The channels are conduits, not storage.'
He turned a page, his eyes scanning the text with a hungry, rapid intensity.
And then, it happened.
The sensation was sudden, but not jarring. It felt… correct.
The air in front of his face seemed to tear. It wasn't a sound, but a vibration, a subsonic hum that resonated in his teeth. A wisp of thin, black smoke, a sliver of pure, absolute void, curled into existence above the open book.
It twisted, coherent and sentient, writing itself into the air.
At the exact moment, the whispers returned. A dry, sibilant cacophony of a thousand ancient voices, speaking in a perfect, terrifying unison inside his skull.
Brandt didn't flinch. He didn't recoil.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked a new skill!]
[New Skill unlocked!]
[Silent Acquisition (Passive)] - To the hungry mind, words are but prey. You possess the ability to devour written knowledge through a mere glance, assimilating the full contents of a text rapidly and retaining it with flawless clarity. However, the weight of knowledge remains absolute.
The text hung in the air, glowing with a dark, baleful light.
Brandt stared at it.
'A skill?'
He had dismissed the System. He had filed it away as a haunting, a curse, a mechanism of his torment. He had assumed it was a static cage.
But it was reactive.
'It… rewarded me.'
He re-read the description.
It was poetic. It was dark. And it was... advantageous.
'Too good to be true.'
His profiler's instinct kicked in. Nothing was free. Every gift had a price. But this… this was a passive skill.
'I got this because I was reading. Because I was focused. Because I was… 'hungry' for the information.'
The logic was simple. Brutal. If an intense, flow-state reading session unlocked a learning skill… what would happen if he applied that same intensity elsewhere?
If he entered that same, cold, hyper-focused trance while swinging a sword… would he unlock a combat skill? If he did it while enduring pain… would he unlock a resistance?
'Yes.'
The answer was a cold, grim certainty. The System was not just watching him suffer. It was watching him perform.
He looked down at the book in his hands. He needed to test this. Immediately.
He closed the heavy tome on theory. He reached for the second book. He hadn't read it yet. He hadn't even opened it past the first page.
He opened it now.
He didn't read. He didn't scan line by line. He just… looked.
He let his eyes sweep over the two open pages, a single, fluid glance that took less than a second.
The sensation was visceral. It felt as if a cold, liquid stream of data was being injected directly into his frontal lobe. There was no vocalisation in his head, no reading voice—just… insertion.
He blinked.
He knew it.
He knew every word on those two pages. He could recite it, word for perfect word, backwards if he wanted to.
'Incredible.'
He flipped the page. Glance. Knowing. Flip. Glance. Knowing.
He moved through the book, the pages rustling in the silent library. It wasn't reading anymore. It was downloading.
In five minutes, he had finished a book that should have taken him a week to study properly.
He snapped the book shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet tower. He placed it on the table, his hand resting on the cracked leather cover.
He looked up at the towering shelves. Thousands of books. A lifetime of knowledge. History, politics, magic, monsters.
Before, the sight had been daunting. A mountain he had to climb, step by painful step.
Now?
'It's a buffet.'
He let out a long, slow breath, a sigh that was half-exhaustion, half-relief.
'I have a lot of work to do. But… much less than I thought.'
He stood up. His body protested, his joints stiff from hours of sitting in the cold draft. His stomach, which he had ignored for hours, gave a violent, painful lurch.
'Lunch. I need food.'
He gathered the books—the one he had finished and the ones he hadn't. He couldn't leave them here. He needed to maintain the appearance of study. He would take them to his room, add them to Falk's list, and return them later.
He pushed the heavy door open and stepped out into the corridor.
The air here was warmer, smelling of roasting meat and woodsmoke. The keep was alive, the distant sounds of daily life drifting from the main hall.
Brandt walked, his small frame casting a long shadow in the torchlight.
His mind drifted back to the data he had just inhaled.
He knew what he was now. He knew how his power worked. He knew the rules of the game.
And he had a cheat code.
A small, cold smile touched his lips. It wasn't a smile of joy. It was the smile of a man who had just found a knife in a dark room.
He was ready to start cutting.