Orion woke before dawn, cheek pressed to the pages of Arcane Structures: A Linguistic Approach. His neck ached, and one side of his face bore a perfect imprint of the book’s sigil.

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and yawned without sound. The library was still and cold around him, shadows stretching long in the half-light. A gentle hush lingered, the kind only old buildings could hold.

  His light spell had faded in the night.

  And yet, something glowed.

  A flicker of pale blue shimmered beneath the far shelf—brief as a breath, then gone.

  He frowned.

  "Residual enchantment?" he murmured, standing and brushing off his robes. His tone was neutral, observational. No fear. Just interest.

  He summoned a new orb with a soft, “Lux parvos,” and crouched beside the shelf.

  The dust was thick here—no one touched this section often. He brushed it aside, revealing a seam in the wooden floor. Not natural. Precision-cut. About the size of a cellar hatch, but flatter, with a shallow circle in its centre.

  No lock. No hinges.

  The kind of thing you might press your hand into.

  He stared at it for a long moment.

  “There’s a ninety-three percent chance this is magically sealed,” he said to no one in particular. “Possibly keyed.”

  He knew better than to poke strange magical objects without reading the manual.

  But this one didn’t have a manual.

  So, he did the stupid thing.

  He hesitated, then pressed his palm to the circle.

  The floor clicked.

  Something beneath shifted.

  The panel opened soundlessly, revealing a stairwell spiralling down into blackness.

  Orion’s eyes lit up.

  "Obviously I'm going in," he muttered, and started down.

  The air grew cooler as he descended, the scent of parchment giving way to stone and old magic. His light spell bobbed beside him, illuminating smooth, root-woven walls and the occasional etched glyph.

  He counted the steps. Thirty-one in total.

  At the bottom: a door. Simple. Seamless. No handle.

  But carved into the surface, in precise, mathematical lettering:

  Knowledge belongs to those who ask the right questions.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  “What was this place built to protect?”

  The door opened.

  Of course it did.

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  The room beyond wasn’t vast, but it was deep—a cylindrical chamber carved into the tree’s ancient roots, lined with curved shelves. No windows. No candles. But each book emitted a faint inner light, just enough to see titles.

  He stepped inside carefully, his pulse quiet but quick.

  Most of these books had never been catalogued.

  No one in Stillmere had mentioned this place.

  Which made it even better.

  He ran his hand along a shelf, eyes flicking over titles.

  Binding Principles of Elemental Disobedience.

  Seventh Syntax: The Unspoken Conjunction.

  Warding Theory in Post-Collapse Hexcasting.

  And—

  The Hollow Lexicon.

  He stopped.

  He’d seen that name before. Briefly mentioned in a banned volume he’d stolen ten minutes with last spring, before it was confiscated by the regional cleric. A book supposedly written during the pre-Division era, when magic was raw and unstable, and no one really understood what it could do.

  He pulled the volume from the shelf.

  It didn’t move.

  A small brass plate sat beneath it, where the book should have been.

  Orion knelt and read the inscription aloud.

  “Transferred to the Grand Academy Archive under Article IX—Restricted Texts, Dangerous or Unverified. Date of removal: Eighty-two years ago.”

  He stared at the empty space.

  Then stood.

  Then laughed, just once, short and breathless.

  “Oh, come on.”

  Back upstairs, he searched every corner of the library for a mention of the Lexicon.

  No one had a copy.

  Not in Stillmere. Not in the local lending records. Not even in the personal notes of the former librarian, who’d been obsessed with spell containment theory and once tried to turn a wasp nest into a security ward. (It didn’t work.)

  The Lexicon was gone.

  But not lost.

  Just moved.

  To the Grand Academy.

  He sat back in his usual corner, the book plate in his lap, brain already spinning.

  The Academy was far. South, past the Blackridge Peaks. Expensive. Selective. The kind of place where tuition cost more than a house.

  But also…

  The only place where he could read that book.

  And maybe—just maybe—find answers.

  Because the Hollow Lexicon wasn’t just theory. It was pre-theory. Magic before rules. And there was something about that era, about what was lost and locked away, that tugged at him harder than anything else.

  Like a riddle missing half its words.

  And Orion hated unfinished riddles.

  The next day, he walked the edge of the village festival.

  He didn’t go in, of course.

  Too many people. Too much forced noise. A boy had already tripped and shouted something about “knife-ears” at him before running off.

  Orion barely noticed.

  He was thinking.

  The Grand Academy took applicants.

  He wasn’t sure how many from backwoods towns like Stillmere.

  But he was sure about his odds—if they measured potential by memory, discipline, and raw magical control, he could argue his case. Politely. Rigorously. With diagrams, if needed.

  He returned to the library and retrieved a blank ledger.

  Time to plan.

  His father barely looked up from the forge when Orion announced it.

  “I’m applying to the Grand Academy.”

  The older man didn’t react at first. Just hammered a glowing ingot flat.

  Then, without turning: “Figured you would. You always had that look.”

  Orion blinked. “What look?”

  “The ‘not gonna stay here’ look.”

  Over the next few days, he compiled his case.

  Letters of recommendation were tricky—he didn’t have many people who liked him, but he had plenty who respected his mind.

  The librarian. The apothecary. Even the priest, who begrudgingly admitted that Orion’s annotated corrections on local theological records were “impressive, if obnoxious.”

  He copied his spell notes. Sorted them. Indexed them.

  He sketched spell diagrams by hand, complete with error notations.

  He wrote a letter—no, thirteen drafts of a letter—until it said exactly what he meant:

  That knowledge was a discipline.

  That magic was a language.

  And that he intended to speak it fluently.

  The application packet was sent by owl courier.

  Orion watched it vanish into the sky, then turned back toward the hollow-tree library—his sanctuary, his forge.

  There was no acceptance letter coming.

  Only an invitation to prove it.

  Every prospective student had to pass the Academy’s entrance exam. In person. In front of masters who’d seen every trick in the book—and several that weren’t written down.

  Which meant he had to go.

  He had four days to pack, six spellbooks to review, and exactly one chance not to make a fool of himself.

  So he made a list. Then a backup list. Then started cross-referencing caravan schedules with weather patterns.

  As dusk fell, he whispered, “Lux parvos.”

  The light flared to life.

  And under its glow, he began preparing to leave the only place that had ever made sense to him—because out there, past the peaks, was the one book he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  And if The Hollow Lexicon was waiting at the Grand Academy?

  Then so was he.

  Because even if they said no—

  He’d find another way.