Chapter 216
The imperial palace archive. A corner of the library lit by the soft glow of mana stone lamps.
Hanna Usar was reading a book.
The paperwork for her dispatched assignment, the registry project, had been set aside for the moment. She was reading Moonlight Below, Maximilian's autobiography.
"......"
She read in silence, drinking in the lines one by one. Just as she had in her Empire Point days, pulling all-nighters to work through military theory, she held a pen in one hand and drew red underlines beneath every passage that mattered.
"...... A people is a bond that shares a historical identity and bloodline."
She murmured the line quietly aloud, then copied it carefully into her notes.
"To share in the sublime awareness of being Aran...... through oral traditions passed down across the ages......"
The scratch of her pen nib.