Recess time came, and Ruvian decided to use it to go to the library. The corridors weren’t crowded yet, and those who passed by him barely noticed his presence.
The library sat near the east wing of Velthia Academy, a monolithic structure of polished white stone and tall glass panes. From a distance, it seemed to radiate invitation. Anyone could walk in. Anyone could use it. That was the promise printed on the Academy’s brochures, at least. Open to all scholars, regardless of year or class. It sounded fair. It was supposed to be fair. Knowledge should be. Right?
‘But like everything else in Velthia, well, I would say fairness only lived in the wording, not the experience.’
Ruvian stepped through the arching entrance, brushing past a pair of second-year uniforms and ignoring their side glances. Inside, the first thing that hit him was the silence. The lowest-ranked scholars still had access to the entire facility. They could walk in, browse the shelves, and sit where space permitted. But that was where the equality ended.
The central atrium, a vast open floor layered with mezzanines and spiraling staircases, was lined with study pods, soundproofed glass chambers and enchantments that automatically adjusted lighting and temperature to the comfort of the occupant.
And those were always reserved.
A marble plaque near the entrance made it clear.
[Priority Seating: Rank A Scholars and Faculty.]
Ruvian’s feet carried him toward the west wing, where long communal tables stretched beneath older, flickering chandeliers.
‘Crazy, even the chairs here didn’t match.’ Ruvian wanted to laugh but he was in no mood for that.
“I guess this is where the ‘open to all’ policy deposits people like me. What do I expect, this academy’s rule is a piece of shit.” He muttered dejectedly.
Even borrowing privileges followed a similar pattern as well. High-ranking scholars could check out grimoires, restricted materials, even personalized copies of certain tomes. But what about the low-rank? For Class E students, the list of available books was thinner than a pamphlet! So yes, the library welcomed all. But it never treated them equally.
Still, Ruvian came. His boots clicked against the marble floor as he moved. If he let that fact weigh too heavily, he’d never move forward at all.
As he reached the inner shelves, his eyes drifted upward, tracing the curve of the vaulted ceiling. Towering bookshelves stretched so high that they needed a flying ladder to reach the uppermost volumes.
For a moment, his mind pulled up a memory—photographs from an old world, ones he had seen in passing while scouring research. The Trinity College Library in Dublin. Or the Bodleian in Oxford. And maybe, perhaps the long echoing halls of the Library of Congress.
‘This place seems like it dwarfs them all...’
His fingers brushed against the spines of books older than empires. His eyes scanned the faded lettering, letting instinct pull his attention. One by one, the names passed him by—treatises on ward theory, glossaries of planar distortion—until he finally saw it.
{Deelovar Inscriptions: Decoding the Runes of Lost Civilizations}
He pulled it free. The leather was worn but solid. He knew about this book. Among the three great texts that defined the field of Runic Studies, this was the one people avoided.
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“Yeah, according to the author, I remember that this book didn't teach as much, more like tested the reader.”
Where the other two books offered steps—gentle ones, structured and progressive, while this one offered a wall. Its chapters were riddles and theories folded inside contradictions.
‘This is definitely not a book that would help you pass exams… Oh right, I almost forgot that this was also the text Calyra’s master had once studied, years before her name settled into the annals of the Academy.’
Ruvian contemplated as he stared at the book in his hand. His gaze slid back to the shelf. After a few minutes of searching, he found another familiar one.
{Runic Fundamentals: An Introduction to Ancient Script} The rıghtful source is 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭·𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦·𝘯𝘦𝘵
This one he pulled out more carefully. Its cover was soft, and the edges were smooth. It was everything the first book was not. Clear. Structured and meant to teach. Its pages were filled with clean translations, grammar guides, symbol categorization, and annotated examples.
This was the safer book, the standard path!
Ruvian took them both.
Then, steadily with no expectation of comfort, Ruvian found his seating place. The light here was barely reaching the page, leaving the corners of the parchment soaked in gray.
He placed both books on the table, the heavier one first, letting its weight settle like a decision made.
{Deelovar Inscriptions: Decoding the Runes of Lost Civilizations.}
The first page stared back at him, its structure unfamiliar. He narrowed his eyes, reading and rereading the same opening line until the shapes started to blur.
His quill hovered just above the page of his enchanted notebook, Write That Down. Then, with a breath pulled slowly through his teeth, he let a thin mana curl from his fingertips.
It ran down through the wooden shaft, until the tip of the quill glowed faintly with stored intent. For a while, he hasn't started writing yet, just patiently reading.
His gaze flickered back and forth between the two books—the complex and the simple, the one meant to guide and the one meant to challenge. He didn’t read them passively. He picked apart their sentences, looked not for answers but for differences.
“Find what is known first,” he murmured, eyes scanning a cluster of overlapping symbols.
‘That one is fire. The next one means stone. But here, in this sentence, they weren’t isolated…’
The structure of the text didn’t function like a normal language. Symbols shifted depending on placement, tone, proximity. Therefore, context changed everything. Ruvian approached learning the Runic Language like a puzzle.
When he found a Rune in the difficult text that meant nothing to him, he hunted for its fragments in Runic Fundamentals.
Sometimes he got lucky. Sometimes the beginner’s guide offered a clean translation, a simple explanation with arrows and charts. But more often, it failed him.
If he couldn’t understand them yet, then he would memorize them. If not their meanings, then at least their shapes. When recognition comes first, mastery would follow.
Still, he was far from finished. He had found the starting line, and it wasn’t where others said it would be. Now, he just had to tear the rest of the book apart, one layer at a time.
Learning how to read the Runic Languages was supposed to be crucial. At least, that’s what every dusty tome and pretentious scholar loved to parrot… because apparently, this whole world was shaped by them.
‘Before the Old Gods shaped the world, they shaped the Runes first.’
Yes, that was the line the author had underlined, Ruvian had noted that it was for foreshadowing of a certain context. Maybe it was. Maybe it was just another flourish of myth to make the ignorant bow their heads. Who could tell anymore?
But Ruvian didn’t study it just because of some half-baked prophecy disguised as world-lore. Actually, there were other reasons.
Because like it or not, magic itself bent around these markings. The so-called Nomav Civilization was also obsessed over them. They even dared to call it the first language—the language of the Gods.
Even the chants of mages, the very incantations they held on to, were still shackled to these symbols.
In this world, practitioners split themselves into categories to sound grander than they were:
Mages who cast by speaking incantations are called Mantramancers.
Those who shape magic through reason, theory, and careful thought are known as Ideomancers.
And those who need neither words nor theory, relying only on instinct and practice, are called Silentmancers.
“It’s better to learn them all. Mastery of each will be a great help for what’s to come. Especially for the future calamity arcs which by mastering this language… will definitely have a huge role to play.”
Although the arc was still so far ahead, Ruvian knew it better to be prepared rather than sorry.