Daress’ deepest sense of self became entwined with this desire to right a great wrong. Her and this being's selves merged. A connection was made. For the first time, she felt something like magic.

The boy from the Sedralogue was uneasy and tried to pull from her grip on his arm. It didn’t matter. Her soul had reached through to his. No. It wasn’t exactly her soul. Neither was it his that they were touching. The spirit pushed itself outwards and met its opposite force within him.

Through him, a trickle of a thousand ghosts, as if through a funnel. His body was touched already by the cold timeless death of them.

Through her, the inevitable. A prick of light, distant but moving ever closer. She could feel it surge, and its presence became clear as it passed between her and this boy. It was a force of forgetting; uncertainty; hunger. It was of rot and decay.

They were two forces of death at odds with each other. And rot was hungry for what had been denied for thousands of years. Now, finally, they would not be denied.

The boy screamed as their spirits met. A sound that echoed through the tower of the library. Outwardly, she only touched his arm. Inwardly, ahunt had begun. But her spirit creature couldn't claim all of the spirits at once - and this inevitable was starving.

Daress could feel the ghosts, briefly, passing through her. She was revolted, but entranced. The flashes of captured spirits shrieked, ripped, retaliated, succumb, grew silent. She knew them so deeply, and then she did not know them. It was not that she was forgetting those ghosts that her soul briefly met, but viscerally erasing them. It was nightmarish and alien. Her living soul quaked and her mind could not comprehend.

The ghosts were being eaten.

The horrifying understanding of what she had allowed into her was like an awakening. It embraced her and she held onto it, for to let go of it was to be destroyed. It was too late now. Too late.

The boy had fallen unconscious and she caught him as he fell. She bent down to her knees to lay him down gently. As if to be gentle now was an apology. Perhaps it was more like gratitude. She felt dizzy. Sick. Exhilarated. Satiated, but only barely. Like a starter at a banquet. Many more, she knew, where that came from. She shuddered. Whether more with excitement or horror she did not know.

But she looked down to his face. Her own, tense with these thoughts, relaxed at the sight. No longer did this boy look so ill and touched by death. This boy looked like he did when she first came into the library. Better, even. He was breathing steadily. His cheeks glowed warm and rosy, a little more with every breath.

He is free now.

Oh god, she thought to herself. Tears streaked down her veiled face as if they could wash away the shame in her. The cloth of her black veil clung to her cheeks. She covered her mouth to stop herself from sobbing, pushing the fabric against her lips. She wasn’t ready to sob yet. She swallowed it down and tried not to get sick. She had to do something. She would get help. What was she going to tell people? What had she done?

It was a curse.

The words from the spirit - this realization - brought her back to her feet. She clutched the table to rise. It shook. The candle on the table flickered at her, among all her research.

The pile seemed too large. There before her were all the books where she learned the stories of the old magic. The Sedralogue always said knowledge was power. She stared into the candle. She was lost in its brightness. Staring for a long moment, the voice in her soul almost seemed to eminate from the fire.

We stop this. We let it all go.

To let it all go. Yes. She wanted to escape from everything now. There was never anywhere to go. Here had nothing for her. She should have seen it long ago. All she came across were closed doors. Even the bookshelves were now like towering walls to her at that moment. But where would they go? Would society function without the ancestors? What if she, they, ruined everything? What if doing this killed them all?

It’s already dying. We burn the forest to let it grow.

Her tears flowed hot over her cheeks at the memories of the Sedralogue festivals. When she had started her last fire, she had been so young, so weak of will. But no one cared. All they knew was that she would not fit into their mould - a character they had crafted over and over again for a thousand years. So they threw her where they throw people they never wanted to see again. She had not been seen ever since.

The candle on the table flickered at her again from behind the short glass. She picked it up at the base. It was warm. Watching it made her feel calm. Revitalized.

Where would she go now? Would this truly be helping anyone? What could be gained from all this?

Freedom, Daress. Freedom.

She smiled, a small laugh escaping her lips. She took off the veil that rested on her head all this time. It had been made damp, but it was what she had. She stared at it in her hands. The world looked brighter without it. In a moment of sudden levity, tears still streaking her face, she held it out and carefully placed the driest section of the veil above the flame.

It caught, and the flash of orange and white light before her face danced. She smiled and casually placed the burning veil onto the books on the wooden desk. She knew that supports were stone and so were many shelves. The two of them had been the only ones in the library.

The flames curled around the paper. The acrid smell of burning ink and wood fire filled her lungs. No one could follow her trail of research.

She went to the unconscious boy and hoist him up as best as she could to take him out of the library. She was stronger than her waifish frame led people to believe with years of labour behind her. All the same, the boy was limp. She struggled with the weight but managed to get him out before the fire was raging.

She judged a safe distance from a fire she had hoped to start, and pulled him to that point patiently. He should be alright, she told herself. She looked back at the library for the last time. Her great love. But it wouldn’t all go. It only mattered that her books had gone. This way would look the most like a careless accident. She couldn't help but have a hint of regret in that moment. She wanted to go back, not to put it out, but at least to see the flames and say goodbye properly.

They will recreate it.

But it won’t be the same books, she thought.

The book is only a receptacle. A box.

Oh, but what a beautiful box it can be, she mused. There had been a lot of years of love here. Those boxes were some of the only things keeping her together through the years.

Move on.

She obeyed. The boy would be alright. He was still unconscious. She would alert people on her way out so that they might come and stop the fire, once enough had been destroyed. A new sense of purpose coursed through her. The hunger groaned within her once more. To be satisfied, she realized where she must head next. It would want the source.

The crypts. She went to turn towards the main body of the church from the library. The way to the crypts was from its entrance. But after a few steps, she stopped herself. Or perhaps, it stopped her.

She recalled that the spirits retaliated inside that boy’s soul. If they went now to the fount of any of the Families, that Family's ancestors would destroy them. They needed to gain strength first. To do that, it needed to eat.

Where, exactly, on a night like tonight, might there be many Family members gathered? People who might get lost in the crowd. End up a little confused. Disappoint their ancestors on their wild night - enough to be unable to use magic afterwards? They just needed to catch a few alone.

But how would an Orphan like her get to the ball? They wouldn’t just let her through. And they weren’t even meant to leave the grounds.

She remembered Arturri’s offer, to rely on Nadira. She could come with them. How would that work now after what she had done? Daress was never a great liar, and she didn’t think she could play along with them. Not after what she had just done. The thought even as it crossed her mind seemed juvenile. Things were different now.

Besides, she had been asking the wrong question. What she needed to ask wasn’t ‘how can I leave,’ it was ‘who can stop the two of us?’