I barged into the reading room, barely holding two tall stacks of books and documents in my arms.
The dim lighting didn’t help.
Nearly stumbling as I navigated through the shadows, I finally reached the table where Michael was seated and slammed the towering stacks down in front of him.
“You’re late,” he commented, not bothering to look up from whatever he was reading under the soft glow of a desk lamp.
“The second floor is a damn maze,” I grumbled, collapsing into the chair across from him. “And why is the Archives so dark?! Every corner of this place is pitch black! I know the Academy is definitely rich enough to light up a place this big!”
Michael finally glanced up, lazily sliding the books I had bought for him toward himself. “You do realize this is a library and not a sunbathing lounge?”
I scoffed. “That’s still no excuse. There’s not a single ceiling light in any of the reading rooms! The streetlamps outside barely work, and the whole second floor is so shrouded in shadows you can’t even see around the corners.”
He shrugged. “This place was built ages ago, during the dark times. They didn’t have the resources or manpower to fully illuminate it back then, and now they can’t risk a reconstruction project because the knowledge stored here is too valuable. Just use a flashlight.”
I threw up my hands. “That’s not enough! I nearly tripped over a chair just trying to find this table.”
Michael hummed noncommittally, flipping through one of the documents. After a few moments, he raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Wow. You actually found everything on my list.”
“Of course,” I said, grabbing a book from my own pile — the ones I’d brought for myself.
He tilted his head. “What’s that?”
I waved a hand. “Just doing some research of my own.”
“Here?” He narrowed his eyes.
I shot him a pointed look. “If you don’t like it, feel free to find another reading room. I’m not wandering around in the dark again until it’s time to leave.”
Michael sighed, shaking his head. “You really have a problem with the dark, huh?”
I glared. “No, I have a problem with ambush spots. Do you know how many horror stories start with ‘The library was eerily dark, and then—'”
“You do realize this is the Academy, not a haunted mansion?” He rolled his eyes.
I pointed toward a random corner of the room, where the shadows seemed just a little darker than anywhere else. “Tell that to whatever’s lurking back there.”
Michael glanced at the spot, then shrugged. “Pretty sure it’s just a librarian taking a nap.”
I choked. “You’re joking.”
He smirked. “Maybe.”
I narrowed my eyes but decided not to press further.
If I started hearing breathing from the darkness, I was deploying my full Soul Arsenal and obliterating this damn place.
…After that, we fell into silence, drowning ourselves in research.
What was I studying?
Warlock Marks.
That day when we were on the plane to Ishtara, Selene Valkryn looked at my tattoo and asked me if it was a Warlock Mark.
That, in itself, wasn’t so strange. But the way she looked when she posed that question definitely was.
She looked… shaken.
I made a mental note then and there to find out exactly what a Warlock Mark was.
Selene was going to be an enemy one day.
A stupidly strong enemy.
In the game, it had taken all the heroes at their prime to work together, a ridiculous amount of luck, and a well-planned ambush to defeat a weakened Selene.
Honestly, if Juliana and Lily hadn’t played crucial roles in that fight, Michael and Alexia wouldn’t have been able to kill her.
Selene was that strong.
In fact, I’d say she was just as strong as my father, if not more. Definitely more, though.
Regardless, she wasn’t someone I could afford to take lightly.
And if a simple tattoo was enough to unsettle her, I needed to know why.
That… and also because, back in Ishtara, when I was on the verge of death — about to be swallowed alive by a Spirit Beast — I felt something.
I felt a strange chill pierce my right forearm.
Right where that tattoo was.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I was imagining it.
But I didn’t like unexplained coincidences.
And I sure as hell didn’t like mysteries.
So while I was still in the Archives, I figured I might as well dig up everything I could on Warlock Marks — whatever they were.
So, what was the problem?
Well, after flipping through ten books, seven vaguely worded reports, and a handful of logs filled with all kinds of supernatural jargon… I had nothing.
Nothing except a few children’s stories.
Children’s stories.
That was all I had to work with.
Out of everything — tomes detailing ancient Spirit Beasts, logs of forbidden alchemy experiments, even records of the Spirit Realm’s known history — only fairytales mentioned anything remotely similar to what I was looking for.
Which meant one of three things:
One, Warlock Marks were so rare that most records had been erased from history.
Or — more likely — two, I just hadn’t been able to dig up the right research materials.
And lastly three, they could be the symbol of some criminal organization or secret society.
There were numerous secret societies in this world.
And plenty of villainous groups branded their members, just like the yakuza did in the past.
Either way, I had nothing useful.
There were a few interesting stories, though. Like:
‘The Boy Who Wished Upon a Black Star.’
I skimmed through its pages.
The premise was simple — a foolish boy made a wish under a dark star. He begged for strength.
The star granted it. But in return, the boy slowly lost his shadow, his voice, and eventually, his name.
By the end, he wasn’t even human anymore. Just a walking husk, existing only to fulfill the star’s will.
Dark. But hardly unique.
I grabbed another storybook.
‘The Nameless King.’
Another tale of a king making a pact for power. He gained unmatched strength, ruled without equal, and then — shockingly — vanished from all records, as if history itself refused to acknowledge he had ever existed.
I frowned.
The other stories were no different. They all followed the same pattern.
Someone wished for power or fame or something more profound.
In return, they lost something equally valuable. Either that, or their wish was twisted so cruelly that it became a curse.
And in the end, every single one of them was forgotten by the world and given a haunting title — The One Who Was.
The moral of all those tales was the same — Be careful what you wish for.
I shut the last book and sighed.
This was stupid.
At best, these dark little fairytales were written by the same author. Nothing more.
I was wasting my time.
Leaning back in my chair, I glanced up — only to see Michael staring at me. I squinted. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I just never saw you this serious before. What are you reading?”
I scowled. “Doesn’t concern you.”
“Fine, don’t tell me.” He scoffed. “But aren’t you curious about what I’m researching?”
My scowl deepened. I sneered. “How much do you overestimate your own importance? Why the fuck would I care what you do?”
After a brief silence, I shrugged. “Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you’re researching the Death-Zone where your parents disappeared.”
Michael raised a brow. “You knew about that? I don’t remember ever explicitly telling you.”
“The whole high school knew.”
Michael practically gasped in mock exaggeration. “And yet you still bullied the orphan son of two martyrs?”
I rolled my eyes. “Michael, if I stopped my guys from picking on every single nerd with a sob story, they would’ve gone on a riot.”
Michael gave me a flat look. “You’re a jerk.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m a self-aware hypocrite. Get your facts straight.”
He groaned. Then, after a beat of silence, he continued, “The thing is, I never got my parents’ bodies. The authorities only recovered their belongings, claiming they couldn’t find them at all. But my father was one of the top survivalists. If he were alive, he would have made it back. And my mother was the best brawler in her Guild. Not only did no one track them down, but there wasn’t even a proper report on their disappearance.”
Michael leaned forward, over the stacks of books and documents he’d just spent hours sifting through — probably finding nothing useful, just like me.
“Even if they did die, the trackers, the clairvoyants… someone should’ve sensed something about them.” His voice dropped slightly. “I know I could be wrong, but my gut tells me something’s off.”
Ah.
He and his gut feeling.
Even in the game, while he wasn’t the smartest, Michael had a knack for sniffing out conspiracies.
Well, I knew what happened to his parents.
But I couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Because aside from the fact that I’d gain nothing from it, now wasn’t the right time for him to find out the truth.
I sighed. “Yeah, that’s very sad, dude. But… who asked?”
Michael stared at me in disgust. “You really are a—”
Then he stopped.
I stopped too.
Fwooo—
The shadow in that corner of the room… it moved.
I stammered, “D-Did you see that?”
“…It must be our imagination, right?” Michael swallowed hard.
We both waited, unmoving.
Then, in a display of unnatural speed, I hurled the storybook in my hand toward the shadowy corner.
Silence.
No sound came.
Not even the thud of the book hitting the ground.
Just as we were about to stand, the book suddenly came flying back.
I barely caught it before it smacked me in the face.
“…..”
“…..”
We stared at each other. Then at the book. Then back at the darkened corner.
Slowly, Michael picked up the desk lamp and shone it at the shadows.
The warm glow cut through the dimness, revealing… absolutely nothing.
No movement. No lurking figure. Just shelves stacked with dusty tomes and a section of books arranged in an oddly perfect row.
I stood up as calmly as I could.
Michael did the same.
Then—
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“No! No! No!”
We ran.
Straight out of the room.
Out of the Archives.
And I personally swore to never set foot in that place again unless absolutely necessary.