Chapter 15: The Obfuscation's Key
The trio needed a decoding location that was both hidden and possessed enough residual Mote energy to power their combined setup, but not so much that it would instantly flag Kian's external stabilizer.
They chose the Old Refectory Kitchen. It was a vast, disused space located just off the main cafeteria (well away from the rumored purple pudding). The kitchen still housed massive, ancient copper ovens—perfect for drawing Motes to power Kian's device—but the entire area was mostly ignored.
Kian positioned his external stabilizer prototype—a complex, humming bundle of salvaged copper and wire—near a disconnected gas line. "Opal, I need you to push a low-level, volatile surge into this pipe. Just enough to distract the local Mote sensors for thirty seconds. Think of a very specific, annoying song you can't get out of your head."
"Easy," Opal muttered, extending her hands toward the pipe. "I'll think of that terrible jingle for the Muggle insurance company." The motes around her hands began to gather, sparking with the necessary, chaotic energy.
Lance was focused on the table. He had placed the history textbook flat on the steel surface. Next to it, he carefully positioned the brass Chronometer of Silence.
"Ready, Lance?" Kian asked, adjusting the focus dial on his stabilizer.
Lance took a deep breath. This was the moment where his 5% precision had to work perfectly. He had to use the Nullification field of the ancient Regulator to peel back the layers of the Obfuscation Spell on the textbook, without damaging the residual memory inside.
"Go," Lance said.
Opal unleashed a carefully managed burst of chaotic, volatile energy into the copper pipe. The pipe hummed loudly, and the light in the kitchen flickered. Kian's stabilizer immediately drew the resulting chaos into its copper coils, creating a momentary, localized power vacuum.
In that vacuum, Lance acted. He extended his hand, not to touch the Chronometer, but to hold his Stabilizer Matrix parallel to it, exactly half an inch away. He pushed his small, precise control—not to generate power, but to force the Chronometer to function.
The brass rings on the Chronometer instantly shifted, and the deep, velvety black light of nullification flared into existence.
The black light wasn't visible on the textbook's surface, but Lance saw the effect in the golden Motes. The motes above the textbook suddenly peeled back, layer by layer, like old, dusty wallpaper being stripped away. The Obfuscation Spell, designed to make the reader forget the content, was being momentarily neutralized by the Chronometer's opposite function.
The textbook's glossy, reflective plastic cover began to glow—not with gold, but with a faint, internal iridescence.
Lance leaned in, trying to focus on the cover. He pushed his precision harder, maintaining the delicate connection between his Matrix and the Chronometer. He ignored the aching in his skull and the chaotic whine of Opal's power.
The Visual Revelation
As the obfuscation peeled away, the textbook's cover was revealed to hold a secret layer beneath the title and copyright details.
Instead of the mundane title, the surface now showed a complex schematic diagram etched into the plastic.
The diagram was not a picture; it was a blueprint. It showed interlocking circles and highly complex geometric lines connecting to a massive, centralized power core that Lance recognized immediately: The Aetherium itself. The entire school was a machine, designed around a hidden, central point.
More importantly, every line and circle in the schematic was labeled, not with English, but with the high, crystalline, musical language Lance had heard in his first Flicker. The visual diagram was the key to understanding the forbidden sound.
"I see it," Lance breathed, his voice tight with discovery. "The blueprint. The whole Aetherium is a stabilizing mechanism."
"Thirty seconds up!" Kian shouted. "I'm cutting the drain!"
Opal immediately released her pressure, and the pipe and Kian's stabilizer sputtered back to silence. The nullification field vanished, and the textbook cover instantly returned to its mundane, plasticized finish. The schematic vanished, but the memory was burned into Lance's mind.
"Did you get the language?" Opal asked, breathless.
"I got the blueprint," Lance corrected, rubbing his temples. "The language is the label. Every sound in the forbidden script relates to a specific part of the Aetherium's structure. If we can memorize the sound sequence, we can unlock the location of the True Core."
Kian was already packing up his stabilizer. "Excellent. Now we know what to look for in the Debris Vault—not artifacts, but more textbooks, or anything Mundane with that specific plastic coating. Those are your keys, Silverwoods. Your precision makes the Mundane dangerous."
Lance looked at the textbook, now just a heavy, dull block of paper. He had used his unique stabilizing gift to reveal the first piece of the ancient puzzle: the Aetherium was not a traditional magic school; it was a gigantic, perfectly engineered stabilizer, built to contain something vast and ancient.