Elian breaks the silence. His voice carries a thin note of hesitation, a tremor that betrays his true objective.
?Master Silas... I was thinking. Would you give me permission to consult the old testimonies written by the explorers? I mean those regarding the most dangerous areas of the Wastelands. Like the Cursed Marshes.?
Silas lifts his gaze from his plate. His eyes scrutinize the boy over the rim of narrow spectacles, sharp as shards of glass.
?Why would a young librarian want to fill his head with the terrors of the outside, Elian??
?I want to understand the world we live in. Even if I may never set foot outside the Castle? Elian responds. He tries to sound pragmatic, grounded. ?When Giada returns from her expedition, I want to have useful information to compare with her accounts. I want to help her where I can.?
, he says in the silence of his mind, omitting the rest.
Silas remains still for a few moments. Then, a nod of the head accompanies a faint, bitter smile.
?I consent. To know what the men of the past truly witnessed, without the filter of official reports, is the best antidote against the prejudice of those who remain secluded here. Truth is often more frightening than we imagine, but at least it is free.?
Zech clears his throat, emboldened by the Master’s openness.
?And me, Master? May I read something as well? But nothing about war reports or maps of toxic ruins. I’d like something... adventurous. A work of literature, perhaps.?
Silas observes Zech. A trace of tenderness struggles to hide behind his mask of academic severity.
?Reading can only do you good, Murphy. I will look for something for you that does not speak of rubble. If such a thing still exists.?
***
In the following days, Elian drowns in worn diaries and handwritten chronicles. Page after page, he finds the same shadows described by Captain Cortez. The "spectral illusions," the voices crawling through the ruins, the sudden madness, and those unnatural beings that snatch anyone who remains in the dark within the Cursed Marshes. It is all there, in black and white, confirmed by generations of men now reduced to dust. But there is a void: no one explains it happens. The Church remains silent. The colony does not ask.
***
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One evening, as Silas is putting away his tools with methodical movements, Elian decides to push further.
?Master, I have read everything. But no one writes of the origin of these phenomena. Nor do they hypothesize. There is only the conviction of some explorers, the ones most worn in the mind, regarding a "Lord of the Old World." It seems the rules of nature changed after the Fire Avalanche. As if today’s world no longer answers to the laws of three centuries ago.?
Silas stops. The atmosphere in the Library suddenly grows heavy, thick with a weight that makes the candle flames shiver.
?You have hit the mark, Elian? Silas says. His voice is low, vibrating with a gravity that resonates in the boy's chest. ?The world we inhabit today is not a ruined version of the previous one. It is a world with a different grammar. What the explorers call the “Lord of the Old World” is humanity's desperate attempt to give a name to a force it cannot control—one that dominated the ancient world. Before the Fire Avalanche, man believed he was the absolute master. Now... now it is evident we are merely unwelcome guests in a house that has changed its locks and its owner. And the Marshes? They are where the old and the new collide with the most violence.?
A chill runs down Elian’s spine. Silas is confirming his suspicions, but he is doing so with a perspective that defies everything taught at the Castle. The silence grows dense. Silas stares at an indefinite point between the shelves, his gaze lost in a pain that time has only faded, never erased. He does not tell Elian of the woman who once walked beside him. A companion in arms and in life whom the mists of the Cursed Marshes took forever.
?See, Elian? Silas resumes, his voice veiled. ?I was not always a man of paper and ink. Once, I too wore the gear of an explorer. I carried a rifle and a sword. I walked through the mud and saw the Wastelands before you were even born. Then, I decided I had traveled enough. I had myself assigned to the Library. Here, I found men different from the soldiers and the generals. They were cultivated minds, guardians of fragments of the past that the colony preferred to ignore. They taught me to look beyond the crosshairs.?
Silas leans toward Elian. The candlelight carves deep canyons into the wrinkles of his face.
?The Apocalypse was not just fire and ash. It was triggered by an uncomfortable truth—a revelation that shattered the very foundations of what man believed himself to be. That knowledge disintegrated the arrogance of scientists and the dogma of the religious in an instant. The men of that time were not ready. That truth divided them, leading them to crave a change so radical it provoked immense civil wars, unprecedented in blood and ferocity. The world did not fall because man was evil, but because he could not bear the weight of what he had discovered.?
Elian asks: ?Are you referring to the Dark Witnesses? Were they the ones who revealed that “forbidden truth”? Those whom the Church defines as a “diabolical heresy”? But more importantly, how did simple human beings come into possession of a truth capable of destroying the world??
?Yes, boy. The Dark Witnesses were ordinary people who, for reasons I still struggle to grasp, had revealed something that humanity at its technological peak could not endure.?
Suddenly, Silas seems to shake himself. He realizes he has spoken too much to a boy who has only just begun to turn the first pages of a truth too heavy for a human soul. He recomposes himself, returning to the detached guardian he has always been.
?But I am getting ahead of myself. If you wish to confront topics of such magnitude, you must first receive an education better than the one they gave you at the Academy or the Chapel. That is enough for today. Return to your work, Elian.?
Elian walks away, his heart hammering against his ribs. A suspicion begins to crystallize in his soul: perhaps General Valerius is right. Perhaps Silas is indeed a subversive, a man who no longer shares the pillars that hold the High King's Castle together. But as he thinks back to the spying mission he was assigned, a cold certainty takes root:
No. He will not be a spy. He will not use Silas's trust to destroy the only source of knowledge that might, one day, save the girl he loves.