Chapter 105: A Narcissistic Psychopath
The carriage rocked with a rhythmic, bone-jarring sway as it ate up the miles back toward the capital. Inside, Odesse pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, her breath fogging the pane. Her makeup felt heavy—cracking slightly around her eyes where the black veins had strained the skin hours before.
Her mind was a chaotic loop. What if I’m wrong? She looked down at her stiff, pale fingers, curling them into a fist to force the blood back into the numbed tips. Azure bragged about the historical library. She wouldn’t have mentioned it if the answers there were easily found. I’m chasing a ghost based on a taunt. The thought of Valex finding an empty bedchamber sent a sharp stab of anxiety through her chest. She hadn’t left a note. If she failed today, she wasn’t just gambling with her own failing health—she was leaving him completely blind to whatever Azure chose to do next.
The carriage slowed, the iron-rimmed wheels grinding to a heavy halt on the cobblestones. The driver rapped twice on the wood. "We have arrived, Your Highness."
Odesse took a slow, deliberate breath, smoothing down the front of her gown. She checked the heavy sleeves, ensuring they completely masked the dark, bruising mark on her wrist. When the door opened, the bright afternoon sun hit her eyes, making her squint.
Before her stood the grand, imposing facade of the royal library. It looked more like a fortress than a house of knowledge, built from dark, weathered stone that seemed to absorb the light. Sitting on a stone bench just beside the heavy iron gates was an old man. His clothes were simple, faded linen, and his eyes were clouded with age, staring blankly ahead.
Odesse walked forward, her footsteps echoing in the quiet courtyard. She stopped a few paces from him, her heart thumping against her ribs.
"I would like to enter the royal library," Odesse said, her voice steady, though her throat felt parched.
The old man didn’t move at first. He slowly turned his head toward the sound of her voice, his milky eyes scanning her general direction. He didn’t bow. He simply held out a wrinkled, calloused hand, waiting.
Odesse reached into her cloak, pulling out the folded permission paper. Her hand shook slightly as she placed it in his palm. The old man ran his thumb over the official wax seal, feeling the ridges with an agonizing slowness. Satisfied, he lowered his hand and made a brief, casual gesture in the air.
With a heavy, groaning screech, the massive iron gates swung backward, parting just enough for her to pass.
"Thank you," Odesse murmured, but the man had already turned his head back to the empty courtyard, slipping back into his silent vigil.
She walked through the threshold, the heavy gates thudding shut behind her. The air changed instantly. The warmth of the sun vanished, replaced by a damp, biting chill. Odesse approached the heavy wooden double doors of the main building and pushed them open.
The interior was cavernous and suffocatingly dark. The moment she stepped inside, a thick cloud of disturbed dust swirled up from the floorboards. It hit her lungs instantly. Odesse covered her mouth, bending forward as a harsh, ragged cough tore through her chest.
"Odesse, get it together," she whispered to herself, wiping her watering eyes with the back of her hand. The cough rattled her ribs, a jarring reminder of how fragile her human lungs were under the weight of the curse.
Once her breathing evened out, she looked around the shadows. Endless rows of towering bookshelves stretched up into the gloom, packed with thousands of decaying ledgers, historical scrolls, and ancient texts. There was no directory. No grand magical light guiding her way. It was just an overwhelming, dusty labyrinth.
Panic flared in her stomach. Where do I even begin? She forced her feet to move, walking down the first aisle. Her fingers brushed against the spines of the books, leaving clean streaks in the thick grey dust. She wasn’t a master scholar; she didn’t know the classification names of ancient regional spells. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to think like Azure.
"If I were a arrogant, spiteful girl looking for an absolute weapon years ago, I wouldn’t be looking at state history or agricultural records. I would look for the things they hid."
Odesse opened her eyes and bypassed the neatly cataloged shelves of the main floor. She looked toward the back of the room, where a narrow, spiral stone staircase led downward into a basement archive. The air coming from below smelled even older—metallic and sharp, like dried ink and old iron.
She descended the stairs slowly, holding her breath to avoid another coughing fit. The basement was small, lined with locked iron grates protecting the most sensitive regional archives. Odesse walked past them, her eyes darting over the locks. One specific cage caught her attention. The iron padlock on it was completely clean. No dust.
She stepped closer, peering through the bars. Someone had broken this lock long ago and merely hung it back in place to give the illusion of security.
Odesse grabbed the lock. It slid open easily in her hand, the metal clicking loudly in the dead silence. Her heart raced as she pushed the heavy grate open. Inside was a single wooden desk. On top of it sat a massive, leather-bound register titled The Compendium of Restricted Tethers.
She pulled the chair out, the legs scraping loudly against the stone floor, and sat down. Her hands trembled as she opened the heavy cover. The pages were yellowed and brittle, covered in complex, looping script. Odesse flipped through the pages, her eyes straining in the dim light, until she found a section where the corner of a page had been folded down—a careless, rushed mark left by a previous reader.
Her eyes scanned the title of the Chapter: The Cruor Link and the Law of True Belief.
As she read the translated text, her breath caught.
"...The link is absolute, drawing life from the targets designated by the caster’s intent. However, the curse possesses no independent eyes; it relies entirely upon the caster’s absolute belief of ownership. Should the target redirect the tether through a higher authority, the curse undergoes a Mirror Shift. The caster remains blind, their senses deceived by their own arrogance, completely unaware that the magic has turned inward to drain the new host..."
Odesse let out a shallow, shaky breath. A tight, nervous smile crept onto her lips. "She doesn’t know. Azure genuinely believed the Hisponians were dying because her magic couldn’t see the swap." The illusion was working flawlessly because Azure’s own vanity was feeding it.
She lets out a low sigh as she say "Then that means the Moon Spirit did not have to make an illusion, the spell already generates one"
But as her eyes traced further down the page, her smile vanished. A cold sweat broke out across her neck.
"...Yet, no mortal frame can generate such systemic malice without a physical vessel. The life force drawn by the Cruor Link must be stored within an earthly anchor—a physical object placed within the vicinity of the targets. If the anchor is intact, the spell endures. But beware: should the caster realize they have been deceived before the anchor is destroyed, the curse will implode, taking both the caster and the host into absolute destruction.
The caster is the only one who can lift the spell ."
Odesse stared at the words, her mind spinning. The High Chief’s warning echoed in her ears—"Azure would gladly kill herself if it meant destroying her enemy."
She touches her forehead "Is Azure aware of this... or is she just a complete narcissistic psychopath!"
Odesse dropped her hands onto the page, her mind racing. "The Hispo Pack. Azure hadn’t hidden the anchor in the Moonlight Palace. She had left it in the Hispo territory, the original home of the people she was torturing, using their own land to feed the spell."
"A physical object..." Odesse whispered to herself, her eyes darting across the text as she looked for a description. Her forehead creased in deep thought. "What did she leave there? A blade? A relic?"
She turned the page, her heart sinking as she realized the specific ritual sketch had been violently torn out of the book. Azure had taken the visual description with her. Odesse banged her fist softly against the desk, a frustrated sigh escaping her lips.
"Think, Odesse, think," she murmured, pressing her temples. "She left it there before she ever came to our palace. It has to be something ancient, something that wouldn’t look out of place in the Hispo Region."
She didn’t have the exact shape of the object, but she had something better: a location. The Hispo Pack grounds. The puzzle pieces of her tic-tac-toe game were finally shifting. Azure was celebrating a victory that was draining Odesse instead of the Hisponians, and the key to destroying it completely was sitting undefended in the very lands Azure claimed to have conquered.
Odesse closed the heavy book with a soft thud, a cold smile returning to her face despite the ache in her bones. "I found something today... but i cannot get confident because it still states that she is the only one who can lift the spell."
She closed her eyes as she says softly "I cannot let her find out i have redirected the spell to myself until i figure out how she can lift the spell"
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