Early morning in Laos Keep's library was a quiet, deliberate thing. The place didn't boast the sprawling marble grandeur of a royal capital's archives, nor did it resemble the cramped, spiderweb-draped scribe's rooms of the countryside. It was something in between — functional, dignified, and above all, used.
The long, high-ceilinged hall was lined with rows of dark oak shelves that had absorbed generations of ink-stained fingers and candle smoke. The air was thick with the faint scent of parchment, leather, and mana-ink — a particular metallic tang that clung to books dealing with spell theory. The lantern-crystals overhead glowed with steady amber light, holding the room in a perpetual sunrise hue, while the narrow leaded windows let in pale ribbons of actual sunlight from the eastern wall.
At the far end of the hall, behind a desk much too large for him, sat Logos. His small frame barely disturbed the deep green velvet cushion, but the desk was cluttered like the workspace of a seasoned scholar: an open inkwell, several piles of books, loose parchment sheets covered in neat diagrams and marginalia. In his hands was a thick tome: Mana with Physiology by Thaumic — a controversial text Lucy had once described as "half genius, half suicide note."
The chapter he was reading concerned the miasma organ — a semi-spiritual, mana-reactive structure present in all living beings capable of magic. The text described it clinically: a filter, a conduit, a lens through which mana flowed. Whether a person could wield magic at all depended on whether this organ had "awakened." Most people's miasma stirred into life naturally during adolescence; some never awakened at all.
But Logos' interest was fixed on the more dangerous section — the one describing how to force an awakening early through disciplined meditation and precise mana-channel stimulation. The method was theoretical in most academies, forbidden in others.
Alright, let's try this, Logos thought, closing the book carefully.
He slid down in his chair, crossed his legs on the seat, and closed his eyes.
Eight hours later, the library was lit entirely by crystal lanterns, the sunlight long gone.
Logos opened his eyes.
"So this is awakening," he murmured.
Around him floated a cloud of motes — small, dust-like particles of dark violet light, shifting lazily in the air as though underwater. They pulsed faintly in rhythm with his heartbeat, each one carrying a fragment of something deeper — a whisper of raw, untamed mana.
He barely had time to observe them before the sound of hurried footsteps broke the stillness. The heavy double doors banged open, and Lucy burst in.
"Are you alright?!"
She was halfway to him before her stride faltered. Her eyes locked on the motes drifting around his chair. Her mouth opened slightly. "Is that… mana discharge?"
"Yes," Logos replied evenly, as though she'd asked about a spilled inkwell.
Lucy blinked once, twice, then strode toward him, skirts swishing. She crouched so they were eye to eye, her gaze scanning his small frame with the same focus she might use when appraising a damaged artifact.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"No."
"Are you dizzy?"
"No."
"Any nausea? Headache?"
"No."
"Is your vision—"
"No," he interrupted, his tone not impatient, but oddly patient — like a teacher gently steering a wandering student back to the lesson. "I have awakened. I am perfectly fine."
Lucy's lips pressed into a line. For the first time Logos could remember, she looked genuinely angry — and something else, too. Not fear exactly, but close enough to taste.
"Why didn't you tell me you were about to awaken?" she demanded. "It could have been dangerous. If the mana went berserk inside the miasma channels, you could have been crippled… or worse — dead!"
Logos tilted his head slightly, as though replaying her words. "I mean… the theory described in Thaumic's Physiology worked, so—"
"You mean the method with a fifty percent mortality rate, written by Thaumic the Senseless?" Lucy's voice rose. "That accursed theory?!"
He blinked slowly. "Hear me out. I took three weeks to mix and match elements from other meditations. I even added—"
"No." She cut him off sharply. "I don't care what you added. You are six years old, and you do not gamble with your own life like this."
He regarded her for a moment, unblinking. "I calculated—"
"You are not a number on a page!" Lucy snapped, then drew a sharp breath through her nose, visibly forcing herself to lower her tone. "Logos… there are reasons people wait for awakening to happen naturally. A rushed awakening can leave scars on your mana lattice. You might not feel it now, but years from now—"
"It won't," he said simply.
Her eyes searched his face for the arrogance she expected, but there was none. Just certainty.
She straightened slowly, one hand pressed against her forehead. "Fine. But you're going to learn control before you take one more step in this… whatever you're planning."
"Alright," he agreed.
"Think of it like a muscle," Lucy instructed. "Pull it back in. Not all at once — just ease it into your core."
Logos closed his eyes again. The drifting motes slowed, their violet glow dimming. Lucy felt the air lighten — the faint, storm-before-the-lightning pressure dissolving like mist.
When the last mote winked out, she let out a slow breath. "Better."
But her gaze lingered on him, the tightness still in her shoulders.
"You look angry," Logos said.
"I am," Lucy admitted. "Because you didn't tell me. And because you don't seem to understand how close you came to not waking up at all."
"I understood the risk," Logos said, calm as ever.
"That's not the same as respecting it," Lucy muttered.
He tilted his head again, studying her expression like she was an unusual diagram. For all her sharp words, she was unsettled. Not because of what he had done — but because of what it meant he could do.
Outside, somewhere deep in the keep, the bells tolled the evening hour.