The mansion hallway had become a geometric riddle. I had passed the same abstract painting three times in the last five minutes. My senses immediately identified a pattern of active redirection in what others would call a trace of madness.
Each time I turned the corner, the air vibrated with a subtle frequency, an invisible fold that returned me to the point of origin.
"A Door Crossing," I murmured, stopping in front of a wooden door that ignored my memory from the previous minutes. The past hallway lacked this entrance.
It was not a matter of luck. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the air pressure. Mana manifested as a tide capable of displacing reality. I identified the node where the flow was densest, an incongruity in the atmosphere of the hallway.
I turned the knob calmly.
The transition was instantaneous. The stale air of the hallway was replaced by the dry, comforting scent of ancient parchment and accumulated dust. I found myself in a circular library of impossible proportions, with bookshelves that were lost in the shadows of the ceiling.
In the center, sitting on a wooden ladder, a girl of refined appearance and blonde hair drills watched me with a mixture of surprise and indignation.
"Just... how did you enter here, in fact?" she asked, closing the book she held with a dry thud.
"Through the door," I replied with a simplicity that seemed to irritate her. "Although I must admit the path to get here was unnecessarily long."
The girl jumped off the ladder and landed with an elegance that belied her apparent age. Her dress, full of blue ruffles and bows, vibrated with the movement. Her eyes, with butterfly-shaped pupils, analyzed me with a frigid intensity.
"Betty has not allowed any human to enter this place, I suppose," she said, crossing her arms. "The Door Crossing should have kept you going in circles in the hallway until you got tired or fainted from the effort."
"I'm hard to tire out when there's a pattern to decipher," I gave her a small bow of the head. "My name is Natsuki Subaru. I've been living here under the care of Emilia-sama and the Margrave."
"Natsuki Subaru..." she repeated in a tone that suggested the name meant nothing to her. "I don't care who you are. I just want you to leave. This is the Forbidden Library, and you are a bothersome presence in my sanctuary, in fact."
"I came looking for knowledge, not trouble," I said, maintaining a respectful distance. "I've noticed something in the forest surrounding the mansion. A fluctuation in the flows of nature. A resonance that doesn't belong to this ecosystem."
Beatrice—or Betty, as she had called herself—narrowed her eyes. The initial disdain was replaced by a spark of intellectual curiosity.
"Resonance?" she murmured. "An ordinary human doesn't possess the sensitivity to detect fluctuations in atmospheric mana on a large scale."
"As I said, the Door Crossing didn't stop me. My senses pick up irregularities better than most," I took a step closer, observing the spines of nearby books. "I suspect something is interfering with the forest's barrier. Something that feeds on the environment."
Beatrice remained silent, watching me as if I were a particularly strange laboratory specimen.
"What you're looking for is information on external bonds and drainage rites, I suppose," she finally said, pointing with a vague gesture toward one of the higher sections. "But don't think Betty will help you for free. Humans always bring chaos with them."
"Chaos is already out there, in the forest," I replied calmly. "I'm only looking for the means to prevent it from reaching this door. If you allow me to study a bit, I promise not to disturb your silence more than necessary."
Beatrice let out a snort, ruffing her blonde drills with a gesture of impatience.
"Do what you want, in fact. But if you call me by that ridiculous name in your mind again, I'll turn you into a salt statue before you can take the next step, I suppose."
I was surprised by her perceptiveness, but I nodded. The first contact had been a tactical success. I had access to the purest source of information in the mansion. And as she returned to her book, I began to look for the threads that would lead me to identify the Irlam threat.
Time continued to tick away softly, but now, at least, I knew where to look for the answers.