Chapter 44: The Fragmented Canvas of the Past

As expected of a highly restricted sector, the entrance to the Imperial Archives was tucked away in a location that defied conventional logic. In fact, for anyone lacking the requisite authority, discovering its existence through ordinary search was a mathematical impossibility.

“Is this… the entrance?”

I asked, my voice laced with bewilderment as I clasped my hands tightly together over my lap. Wholly oblivious to the visual tremor shaking my eyes—or perhaps simply choosing to ignore it—Zeimer offered a casual response, as if wondering why I was even asking such an obvious question.

I was forced to doubt my own eyes. No matter how meticulously I scanned the immediate perimeter, I couldn’t discern anything remotely resembling a doorway.

“Yeah. This is the entrance. You don’t see a door?”

I blinked repeatedly, focusing all my energy on detecting some hidden seam or disguised frame along the smooth masonry, but my efforts yielded absolutely nothing. Giving up, I tilted my head back to look up at Zeimer, who was leaning over the handles of my chair. Having failed to find this place during all my years wandering the library, a sudden close-range inspection wasn’t going to miraculously yield results now. My gaze locked with his vibrant, glowing blue eyes in the empty air.

A tense silence stretched between us for a fleeting moment before Zeimer suddenly burst into a rich, melodic laugh. It was the sound of a man thoroughly enjoying my unvarnished reaction.

“Confusing, isn’t it?”

Only then did I fully realize he had been playfully baiting me, prompting me to shoot him a sharp glare. Because I was seated and he stood positioned directly behind my shoulders, twisting my neck to glare at him required an incredibly awkward, strained angle, but I didn’t care. Expressing my silent annoyance was vastly more important than physical comfort.

The structural entity standing directly before my eyes was, quite literally, an isolated wall. Positioned abruptly in the exact center of the library floor, this bizarre architectural feature extended seamlessly from the polished tiles to the vaulted ceiling. Because its thickness spanned merely a few layers of standard brickwork, I had spent years wondering about the underlying logic behind its placement. The masonry matched the surrounding walls perfectly, rendering it too uninspired to serve as a decorative installation, yet its narrow profile made it wholly inadequate to act as a load-bearing column. It resembled nothing more than an isolated fragment of text detached from the main structure—a perfectly ordinary wall, save for its incredibly awkward coordinates. The only minor anomaly was a heavy, ornate tapestry woven from rich crimson and gold threads draping down its face, but such decorations were entirely commonplace within the imperial palace.

Prior to unsealing the hidden threshold, Zeimer had systematically cleared the entire floor of personnel, leaving only the two of us inside the vast expanse of the library. Though he was a Library Director who historically avoided lifting a finger for actual administrative labor, moments like this served as a stark reminder of the immense, absolute authority tethered to his name. Unlike Felix, whose brutal schedule rarely permitted more than a ten-minute interaction per day, or Ilya, whose eyes were perpetually shadowed by dark circles, or even Claire, whose composed demeanor always masked a lethal, razor-sharp edge—Zeimer possessed an unhurried, leisurely aura that bordered on that of a complete layabout.

“No need to look so scandalized. Watch closely.”

Lifting a section of the draped fabric, Zeimer flattened his bare palm directly against the brickwork. Instantly, the solid masonry began to ripple and warp, the physical matter twisting fluidly to construct a doorway.

I drew in a sharp, sudden breath. The structure disguised as a wall was anything but.

Concurrently with the manifestation of the door frame, the immediate space buckled aggressively, and the internal dimensions within the narrow wall began to expand exponentially in a dense, calculated geometry. Peering closely at the phenomenon, I could see vast, sweeping corridors compressed into a remarkably tight physical footprint—a manifestation of the highest order of spatial manipulation magic. Furthermore, the entire matrix seemed anchored by an ancient, primordial sorcery that seamlessly masked the resultant flow of mana from the external world.

When the spatial distortion finally stabilized, the door that materialized before us was surprisingly mundane. It looked virtually identical to the generic utility closets scattered throughout the library corridors. Had this wall been flush against the main structural perimeter, the door would have blended into the background without a single shred of dissonance.

“Just like this, the moment an authorized individual presents their signature, the barrier will automatically configure a passage. Every single sector touched by the Dragon’s breath operates on this exact principles.”

Zeimer turned the handle and pushed. The moment the threshold parted, a sudden, icy gust of wind surged outward into our faces, exactly as he had forewarned.

“Cough.”

Laced within the sudden chill was an indefinable, foreign resonance that scraped against my senses, forcing a brief cough from my throat. Pausing mid-stride as he prepared to push the frame forward, Zeimer looked down at me with immediate concern.

“Are you alright?”

“Ah, the dust… cough… it’s just a bit… cough, cough.”

Zeimer waited patiently until my throat cleared before pressing for verification a second time. I offered a firm nod. The strange, crushing resonance that had pricked my awareness vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving me to wonder if it had merely been a trick of my frayed nerves.

“If you are prepared, let us step inside.”

A distinct note of tension shadowed Zeimer’s tone. He was a man who possessed a flawless, peerless mastery over both the arcane arts and physical combat; under ordinary circumstances, the concept of nervousness was entirely alien to him. Consequently, witnessing his sudden vigilance caused a corresponding knot of anxiety to tighten within my own chest. A faint sheen of sweat blanketed my palms against the armrests.

Yet, beneath the anxiety, a small surge of excitement rippled through me at the realization that I was finally breaching the Imperial Archives. Whenever Zeimer returned from a subterranean excursion down here, his clothes would invariably carry a heavy, stifling scent—a somewhat metallic, ancient aroma reminiscent of old parchment exposed to a heavy downpour.

Beyond the threshold of the impossibly narrow brick wall lay a vast, breathtaking expanse. Though Zeimer had appeared distinctly guarded prior to unsealing the gate, the moment his boots stepped onto the floor of the archive proper, his shoulders relaxed, his posture shifting back to its baseline composure.

Within the vault, cutting through the stagnant scent of decaying dust, the concentrated aroma of ancient parchment and treated leather hung incredibly thick in the air. Surrendering my weight entirely to the customized wheelchair, I let Zeimer guide the frame forward as my eyes eagerly combed the interior.

“Is it fascinating?”

“No,” I replied, offering a small shake of my head.

“Then what is it?”

“To be perfectly honest, it looks remarkably similar to the standard library upstairs…… I can’t discern anything particularly extraordinary about it. Except for the smell, of course.”

Barring the reality that the total absence of sunlight left the corridors significantly darker, and the ancient nature of the bindings cast a deeper, more weathered palette across the room, the structural layout was virtually identical to the public library outside. Even the categorical indexing and classification system followed a similar logic, though the total physical footprint of the archive was drastically smaller by comparison.

This was a sanctuary forbidden even to the elite imperial scribes. Yet, despite the heavy scent of age permeating the air, not a single speck of dust coated the immaculate dark wood of the shelves, indicating a flawless, magical maintenance system. The absolute privileges of continental clearance were not granted lightly; after all, despite my status as the consecrated Hero, I had been denied access to this chamber until today.

“Zeimer.”

“Mm?”

“Who handles the maintenance of this place?”

I directed the question toward him as he temporarily parked the wheelchair, reaching out to extract a weathered volume that appeared intimately tied to ancient lore. The book cradled within his fingers was exceptionally ancient; its corners had completely rotted away, and the pigments binding the cover art had faded into indistinguishable shadows. Furthermore, the characters inscribed across the spine belonged to a script I couldn’t even begin to parse—a remnant of an era preceding the standardization of the Imperial Language.

“Curious about that, are you?”

Diverting his eyes from the fragile text, Zeimer shifted his gaze down to meet mine.

“Yes. Given the intense scent of age, this sector clearly receives virtually no human foot traffic, and the text are incredibly ancient—yet the shelves are immaculately clean.”

I deliberately chose to withhold any mention of the strange, metallic aroma underlying the dust. A quiet instinct warned me that it was wiser to keep that observation to myself.

It was during my idle scanning of the dark room that my eyes caught a massive tapestry hanging along the far wall. It completely dominated the masonry dedicated to historical codices; however, because my seated posture anchored my line of sight significantly lower to the floor and the towering bookshelves obstructed the perimeter, I had entirely missed it upon our initial entry.

The intricate embroidery depicted a primordial scene: a colossal, ancient Dragon stood half-submerged within a violent ocean, its massive spine physically hoisting the entire continent upon its back, while the Goddess looked down upon the land from a rift in the storm clouds above. It was a classic historical allegory. I narrowed my eyes to parse the finer details, but the section of the embroidered landmass where the Empire was supposed to reside was completely obscured—swallowed by a dense, intentional cross-stitch of midnight-black thread that left absolutely nothing visible.

I stared at the black void, my thoughts spiraling inward. The longer I tracked the patterns, a powerful, suffocating sense of deja vu gripped my mind, insisting that I had witnessed this exact imagery somewhere before.

Zeimer’s voice broke through the fog of my thoughts, pulling me back to reality.

“I handle it personally.”

My eyes widened in genuine surprise. He cleans this place himself? While I was well aware that, beneath his delinquent exterior, he was a man who remained fiercely dedicated to his sworn obligations, the image of a Grand Mage wielding a dust cloth was entirely surreal.

Detecting the unvarnished disbelief written across my features, Zeimer flicked his fingers, lightly rapping his knuckles against my forehead.

“What’s with that look? Did you honestly think the title of Library Director was a hollow honorary position?”

Because his fingers possessed immense physical strength, the light reprimand stung far more than anticipated, causing me to reflexively bring both hands up to cradle my brow. The shock of the impact was one thing, but the localized pain was entirely real; since I wasn’t reinforcing my body with mana, the full force of the blow had registered against my raw nerves.

A sudden, overwhelming wave of sorrow flooded my chest, and a hot sting of tears pricked the corners of my eyes. This fragile, pathetic physical state wasn’t a condition I had chosen out of spite; it was a script explicitly mandated by the Goddess herself. Yet, trapped within a court of powerful figures who kept demanding I march out to confront the Dragon, I was forced to wage a lonely, invisible war of attrition entirely on my own. I was reduced to manufacturing a desperate facade of illness simply to delay the catastrophic timeline, unable to even utilize my own mana to insulate myself from a minor physical jest. The sheer, pathetic misery of my existence left me feeling intensely pitiful.

A sharp, ragged breath slipped past my nose. Though I forcibly willed the unshed tears to recede, the small, budding sense of betrayal and grievance didn’t vanish; instead, it quietly expanded within my chest. It seemed that living in absolute luxury over the past months had softened my emotional calluses, causing old vulnerabilities to resurface one by one. I genuinely couldn’t fathom why Zeimer—a man whose casual grip could crush iron—would strike my unprotected forehead so carelessly.

“That hurt, Zeimer.”

I slurred my words deliberately, flattening my tone to ensure no trace of moisture would betray the cracking of my voice. The resultant sentence emerged as nothing more than a low, muffled mumble.

Glancing up, I noted a fleeting, unreadable expression cross Zeimer’s features—a brief flash that might have been remorse—but no apology followed. Instead, a casual deflection parted his lips.

“Stop exaggerating. How could that possibly hurt? You came here to borrow a text, didn’t you? Let’s leave this restricted vault for another day, pick out a book from the main floor, and head back.”

Chastising me with a complex, lingering look, Zeimer stepped back behind the frame and gripped the handles. Though I stubbornly kept my hands clamped over my forehead as an explicit silent protest, he chose to completely ignore the display, letting out a soft, amused huff as he turned the wheelchair back toward the exit. As we rolled away into the shadows, I twisted my neck around, keeping my eyes anchored to the massive tapestry until the towering bookshelves finally cut it from my view.

For some inexplicable reason, I simply couldn’t tear my eyes away from that blacked-out continent.

The mystery deepens! That blacked-out portion of the tapestry where the Empire should be certainly hints at a darker truth hidden within the history of the continent.

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