Chapter 58
Hoku held the candelabra out to one side and slowly pulled on the mirror with his other hand.
The panel swung outward on hidden hinges, thick and solid as a normal door, and he took an involuntary step back, not a sound accompanying it.
Beyond it lay only a dark, narrow recess carved into the wall, a small walk-in closet suffused with an unsettling aura.
He swallowed and shook his head, trying to calm his nerves. '...It's not like I'm afraid of the dark,so why do I feel more uneasy than before?'
"Seems they're fond of secret doors," he muttered under his breath.
"An eccentric lot, yes," Lunhard agreed flippantly. "You should find a change of clothes here, though. And judging by your stature, they'll fit you well enough. I won't peek, of course. Take your time."
Hoku hesitated at the threshold, half-expecting a trick.
Instead, Lunhard merely turned back toward the shelves, pretending to examine a book and granting him the courtesy of privacy.
The chance to shed his ruined clothes was too tempting to resist.
After a moment, Hoku ducked under the low frame and stepped inside the hidden closet, pulling the door nearly closed behind him so that not even a sliver of the Archive Hall remained visible.
He straightened to his full height. The little room was surprisingly tall—nearly matching the Archive Hall's lofty ceiling—though just as cramped as one would've guessed from outside.
Holding the candelabra aloft, he found himself in a tiny five-foot-square workspace cluttered with heaps of detritus.
Directly in front of Hoku stood a wooden valet rack beside a small dresser, with drawers hanging half-open.
To his right loomed another tall mirror draped with a dusty canvas cover, but to his left was a low shelf piled with stacks of yellowed papers and old ledgers, alongside disassembled laboratory apparatus—beakers, glass tubing, and an oxidized brass scale.
Cobwebs hung from the mouths of the larger glass vessels as well as in the corners of the furniture, like transparent curtains.
'So at least one part of his story checks out,' Hoku inwardly noted.
This secluded nook seemed like the vestige of an experiment chamber, bearing clear signs that someone had once used the space for research.
Stepping over a loose pile of papers, Hoku approached it.
A few garments hung neatly from the valet's bar, almost as if someone were expected to return and change into them at any moment.
He lifted a white dress shirt from its hanger and discovered a pair of ash-gray trousers behind it, with a leather belt already looped through the waist.
A charcoal-gray vest lay folded on top of the adjacent dresser, and on the floor below stood a pair of black lace-up boots.
As it turned out, the entire ensemble looked eerily close to Hoku's own size.
He set the candelabra on the corner of the dresser and shook out the white shirt to loosen its wrinkles.
As the warm candlelight bathed him, he could see a constellation of minor injuries, fine cuts crisscrossing his chest and arms, and dark bruises blooming along his ribs and back.
Hoku plucked a minute glass shard from his left forearm, a bead of blood welling up as he wiped it away on the sleeve of his tattered shirt before casting the ruined garment aside.
'These must have been from the mirror's explosion,' he thought.
The shirt he slipped into was simple and high-collared, fastened with a neat row of small buttons down the front.
As he secured them one at a time, his thoughts drifted back to Lunhard's explanations.
From the man's manner of speaking, it was evident he had not been trying to be mysterious or evasive.
If anything, his answers had been disconcertingly straightforward, even considerate.
Yet for all his fluency, Lunhard had a way of circling back to his reasoning, answering what was asked while gently easing the focus toward Lamb and the Archivists, as though the matter were best understood there, and not in what went unsaid.
One thing, however, still left Hoku skeptical. Lunhard's name kept turning up.
Nearly every passage bore some trace of Lunhard.
And yet, each time, even those who spoke of it seemed less sure of his identity than unsettled by it.
Hoku recalled Li's cavalier remark about encountering Oliverou's puppets during his passage, which placed the pattern at odds with the rest.
If Lunhard had been associated with one of the present passage keepers, then whatever he'd supposedly arranged at the beginning was likely not handled by him alone.
But, if he only has a contract with Oliverou… then who is the third passage keeper?' He dwelled on the question. 'Was the passage already unstable because there had been none, or is it simply someone we have yet to come across?'
…
Within minutes, Hoku had gotten fully dressed in the new clothes, a simple, utilitarian combination of ash-gray trousers, a dress shirt, and a dark burgundy vest that made him look as though he belonged to another era.
'If looking the part were enough,' he sighed.
Hoku retrieved the candelabra, then turned back toward the entrance.
The closet door was barely ajar as he'd left it.
He nudged it open with his shoulder and stepped through, ducking under the low lintel to re-enter the vast room.
His new boots made a distinct sound against the floor as he emerged.
Lunhard stood with his back to him, apparently engrossed in tidying a few loose papers on the desk, and turned as Hoku approached.
For an instant, his expression faltered. His eyes widened, and a perplexed look passed over them before his placid smile returned.
"Much better," Lunhard remarked. "Those suit you quite handsomely."
Hoku raised an eyebrow at the unexpected mirth in Lunhard's voice. A fleeting suspicion crossed his mind and was dismissed almost immediately.
Soon after, Lunhard turned away, restlessly strolling toward the far side of the room.
Just as Hoku stepped into the center, glistening sparks skittered along the edges of his vision.
He glanced down and nearly recoiled as pale blue-white light bled through the stone beneath his feet, tracing outward in fine lines.
He stood transfixed as the glowing filaments snaked farther across the limestone with each passing second, splitting off toward the surrounding walls.
"What in the world…?" he murmured under his breath.
Hoku narrowed his eyes, tracking two of the pale tendrils as they flourished toward the massive bookshelves along the far wall.
The remaining pair curled in the opposite direction, expanding back toward the shelves flanking the entrance. At several junctions, the lines converged into circular nodes and intersecting geometric shapes, each pulsing softly with pale light.
A stir of alarm ran through him at the thought that his presence might have triggered a trap.
He instinctively leaned away, and one of the glowing tendrils curled after his boot as if drawn by the motion.
He stopped moving.
It only encircled the tip of his boot for a moment before continuing along its path. For an instant, it seemed to squirm against the stone, like a pale insect writhing in place.
His arm slackened, and the candelabra lowered a little.
Along the floor, the lines steadied, as though their apparent motion were falling apart.
It was only the light's unsteady glow playing tricks on his eyes.
Across the room, Lunhard observed the phenomenon with a resigned expression. He let out a quiet, rueful sigh. "Ah… I had hoped we would have a bit more time for pleasantries," he muttered. "Perhaps I should have warned you to avoid stepping directly into the center, as I did."
Hoku briskly peered up at Lunhard. "...So I did this?"
"With those candles, yes," Lunhard replied.
He didn't appear even slightly alarmed; on the contrary, he seemed mildly disappointed.
Hoku was at a loss for words as the man continued, "No need to worry, we've simply activated the archive's mechanism ahead of schedule."
The ivory light from the floor cast eerie shadows upward across their faces, illuminating Hoku's confused frown.
"This is what you were talking about earlier," Hoku said slowly. "Though I thought it was only supposed to respond to certain people?"
Lunhard offered a cryptic smile. "Subjectively speaking, it does."
He stepped carefully around the glowing engravings at the center of the floor and moved to Hoku's side. "Light will reveal what's there, naturally. However, as I mentioned, it's only useful to someone with the right knowledge."
"Then it's a property of the material? Like light refracting through a diamond?" Hoku inquired.
Lunhard cupped his chin, considering. "That analogy isn't far off. A diamond is just dull until light passes through it, after all. But, unlike a diamond, which merely refracts light, Basilite depicts its own interpretation."
He tapped the ground twice with his heel, and something subtle gathered toward his foot.
"The candles are only a medium; what you're seeing settles where you do."
Upon hearing this, Hoku made an immediate connection, 'Mars had mentioned a similar concept…
The third passage phenomena manifested in accordance with someone's weaknesses, which was why only I had noticed the door's disappearance at the time.'
As Lunhard cleared his throat, he reached into the candelabra and lifted one free, wax trailing down his fingers as he drew it closer.
Directly beneath Hoku, the stone gathered into a shallow form, and within it the Roman numeral I became discernible.
'It's—'
At the base of the next shelf, another marking had appeared, bearing II.
"Is it because he's holding a candle?" Hoku understood immediately.
He turned toward the opposite wall, where further markings appeared along the remaining shelves—III, followed by IV.
Lunhard's deep voice sounded from behind him. "Take a few steps back."
After adjusting his belt, he crouched and lowered the candle to demonstrate the precise angle.
Hoku drew a slow breath and followed suit, retreating several paces from the center and bringing the candelabra down with him.
The response unsettled him more than he expected.
From nearer the floor, what had appeared askew from above coalesced, and the four Roman numeral plates altered in turn as their markings skewed into inverted reflections.