Chapter 117: Two names
By the time the last candle flickered out in the corridor, I was still sitting in front of the book.
Caspian Arvell.
A name that meant nothing, and yet gnawed at me like something half-remembered from a dream. The pages of the book remained stubbornly blank to ordinary eyes—but I wasn’t just relying on my eyes anymore.
With a flick of my wrist, I activated the Grimoire of Patterns. A silvery shimmer passed through my pupils as the skill aligned my senses to detect subtle, repeatable phenomena—shifts in mana flow, embedded sequences, pattern echoes. It didn’t immediately unlock the book’s secrets, but it did confirm one thing: this was enchanted.
Deeply.
And recently.
Which meant someone had planted it.
"Books with zero text and maximum attitude," I muttered. "I swear, one day I’ll just fake my own death and open a bakery."
Still, I flipped back to the first page and focused. Slowly, the faint runes reappeared—like they were being coaxed out of hiding by my attention. Most of them were unfamiliar, but a few shapes tickled my memory. Archaic constructs. Pre-Integration rune logic. Dead languages that even the library’s Index had given up on.
Which begged the question: who the hell was Caspian Arvell, and why was he writing in a script that predates half the academy’s wards?
I copied down a few symbols and stored them in the Grimoire. The page shimmered briefly—accepting the pattern, but not unlocking anything new. Damn. Not enough repetition. Not yet.