Chapter 11 A Miracle Between The Pages.

Chadwick sat perched on the edge of a study table, a dusty rag in his hands as he half-heartedly wiped down a stack of lexicons.

The silence of the library was almost soothing, making him realize why Clovis spent so much time here.

But then that solitude broke when the doors came open and Clovis walked in.

“Well, look who decided to grace us with his presence. Where have you been? It’s a surprise you actually left your nest to visit the real world for once.” Chadwick chirped the moment he saw the librarian walk in, a smirk breaking through his exhaustion.

Clovis paused, giving the boy an unimpressed stare from his single good eye. “You finally got your tongue back, I see. I thought the ritual yesterday had permanently silenced you.”

Chadwick shrugged, dropping the rag onto the table and crossing his arms. “Well, it’s a miracle indeed, what’s up, old man?”

“The only thing up right now is my name being on everyone’s lips,” Clovis muttered, his voice dropping bitterly as he walked past the desks.

“They are down there claiming I caused the fracture. I mean, even in my supposed death, they can’t just let my body lay in peace. The paranoia in those council chambers is grating.”

Chadwick let out a laugh, leaning back against the table. “Well, technically… you are kind of the reason why the sky fractured.”

Clovis glared at him, before turning his back on the boy. He walked toward one of the shelves, his fingers scanning the spines of the forbidden texts before tightly pulling out a thick volume.

Chadwick’s smile faded as he watched Clovis open the book. “Where do you think this Krag beast would be hiding? An apex predator that smart isn’t just sitting in a closet waiting to be found.”

“Probably at the Rift directly beneath the school,” Clovis said, his voice grim as he flipped through the pages. “Or deep within the ruins of the collapsed Aethelgard. It needs a place dense with volatile, unrefined mana to sustain itself.”

Chadwick frowned, taking a step closer to the librarian. “If it’s as brilliant and ruthless as you say… why hasn’t the creature just attacked us to find you already.”

Clovis stopped flipping the pages and stared down at the text, “Because,” Clovis whispered, “despite its brilliant strategy, it still fears and respects the Mage of Ruin enough to stay away. It knows that if it strikes too early, it risks waking the monster it is trying so desperately to erase.”

Chadwick’s smirk returned as he leaned against the mahogany bookcase. “Say… I’d love to see you in your prime, old man. Did you always have that one bad eye?”

Clovis shook his head slowly, his focus never leaving the script running beneath his fingertips. “No,” he murmured, his voice flat. “I got slashed in the eye.”

Chadwick leaned a fraction closer, his curiosity piqued. “Is it really that bad?”

Clovis stopped reading, the silence stretching between them for a long moment before he turned his head, “Do you want to see it?”

Chadwick nodded enthusiastically and slowly, Clovis raised a hand to the side of his face, untied the weathered strap and peeled back the dark patch that had covered the right side of his face for decades.

Chadwick’s mouth fell open as he let out a breath, his hands hovering in mid-air as if he wanted to reach out but didn’t know if he dared to touch it.

The eye itself was milky white, dead and sightless, but it was the damage around it that drew the breath from Chadwick’s lungs.

“The blade went in too deep,” Clovis explained, his voice eerily calm as he raised a finger, gently tracing the thick lines of the scars that radiated outward from the dead socket, snaking down his cheekbone and disappearing under his high collar.

“It didn’t just take the sight. It shattered the orbital bone and severed the localized mana channels. If the strike had been a millimeter to the right, it would have split my skull cleanly in half.”

Chadwick swallowed hard, “What even happened?” He breathed.

Clovis paused, his hand freezing over his cheek, as he seemed to remember before he quickly pulled the patch back over the wound, tying it securely into place.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Clovis said quietly, turning his attention straight back to the text in front of him. “At least… not today.”

Clovis rested his hands flat on the book with an exhale, “So… I was in an emergency meeting with the Magisters just now. And welp, they are starting to suspect. Or at least, the Grand Magister is.”

He let out a dry, humorless laugh, rubbing the back of his neck before looking up at Chadwick. “The man actually thinks himself smart. He was practically salivating, trying to trap me in my own words.”

Chadwick blinked, a bit surprised by the casual dismissal. “I mean… isn’t he? The Grand Magister has ruled this entire academy for what? Five years now? You don’t hold a seat like that by being an idiot.”

“Five years is a blink of an eye, boy, and sitting in a high chair doesn’t deem you smart,” Clovis scoffed, waving his hand as if brushing away a fly. “You should squish that logic immediately and try to be more like me.”

Chadwick arched an eyebrow, “You mean… cold, cynical, and completely unfeeling?”

Clovis nodded smoothly, his face entirely deadpan. “Yes. Indeed. It keeps you alive.”

Suddenly, Clovis froze. His fingers halted on the edge of a yellowed page he had been about to turn. His single eye narrowed, focusing intensely on the deep crease where the pages met the binding.

“Well,” Clovis murmured, “Look what we have here.”

Using two fingers, he carefully pinched something nearly invisible out of the binding and lifted it into the candlelight. It was a single strand of hair, caught loosely between the pages of the ledger.

Chadwick leaned across the table, squinting at the librarian’s hand. “What is that? A stray hair?”

“Not just any stray hair,” Clovis whispered, “This book details the exact celestial seals holding back the entities. Someone was reading this very page recently, and they were careless. It seems we may have just found the physical trace of the person who aided the Krag’s escape.”

Chadwick frowned, leaning back. “Hold on. That doesn’t add up. You said the intruder that night was a Royal Spy—you recognized the cloak. Masters of magical infiltration, remember? A ghost like that doesn’t leave hairs pressed in a ledger.”

Clovis went very still, the strand held up between two fingers, and Chadwick watched something cold click into place behind his single eye.

“No,” Clovis said slowly. “He doesn’t. A true Royal Spy would never have been seen unless he chose to be seen. And he would never have run the way that intruder ran—panicked, graceless, tripping over his own feet.” He turned the strand in the candlelight. “The cloak was real, boy. The man inside it was not. The descendants didn’t send one of their ghosts into my Archive. They dressed a puppet in a dead guild’s colors and pushed it through my doors. Someone expendable. Someone already inside these walls.”

“A student,” Chadwick breathed.

“A student,” Clovis echoed grimly.