Under the bandage, the back of his hand was growing warm. The backlash from last night's reversal—that shock when the curse density had been driven straight back into the word-soul core—its traces still lingered beneath his skin. Alva sat up, gently grasping his right wrist with his left hand. The sensation of bandages. The ones Liese had wrapped for him. The magic lamp in the abandoned workshop—an auxiliary tool that emitted light without incantation—still burned pale blue. Cold air slipped through the gaps, carrying the scent of pre-dawn. Outside was still dark. At the work table, Liese was on the verge of sleep. No—not asleep. Trying to sleep but unable to, was more accurate. The quill pen stopped, then moved again. Stopped, then moved. A single strand of silver hair hung before her nose, and she didn't brush it away. Her delicate fingers, marked with an indigo sigil ring, tapped rhythmically against the edge of the paper. (She's been here the whole time.) After confirming that, Alva spoke slowly. "Liese." The silver hair snapped upward. Mismatched water-blue eyes immediately fixed on Alva. The star-shaped birthmark on her left cheek was clearly visible in the blue light of the magic lamp. "...You're awake." The venomous tone was subdued. Her voice was faintly hoarse—the hoarseness of an all-nighter. "There's something I need to confirm," Alva said. Last night—just before regaining consciousness, as his vision darkened at the edges, a passage from his father's old book had surfaced. A worn tome with scorched page edges, its binding half-peeled from being read too much in childhood. One line from within it. "A mirror doesn't shatter because the image is too strong. It shatters because there is only one way to reflect." Alva spoke those words aloud. Liese's eyes narrowed. "...That's not an Old Laaren proverb." "It was in a book in my father's library. In a collection of research papers written by scholars from the Royal Language Institute, in the margins somewhere." "What are you trying to use it for?" Alva thought for a moment, organizing his thoughts as he spoke. "Last night's failure happened because I tried to take it all in at once, and it backflowed. But—if the way of reflecting wasn't limited to a single pass..." Liese sat up. The drowsiness had vanished from her face. "If I listen to the layered structure from the outside, one layer at a time—and reverse each layer one at a time..." Silence fell. Liese looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then pulled one of the scattered notebooks toward her on the work table. The sound of pages turning was rapid. Her finger stopped. "The layered structure of alchemical incantation increases in catalyst density toward the inside. The outer layers are thin—reactions are slow. Which means even if you peel away the outermost layer, the inside won't notice immediately." "So there's an escape route," Alva said. "Right. Instead of charging through in one breath, you create gaps as you descend. That way the burden on the word-soul core can be distributed in stages." The two of them's knowledge pointed to exactly the same place for the first time. Alva felt that sensation. They were complementing each other—she possessed what he lacked. The reverse was equally true. It was the feeling of that knowledge clicking perfectly into place within words. Then. Flap flap flap! Something moved on the ceiling beam. Both of them looked up simultaneously. That chicken was on the beam. The orange-beaked individual that had apparently been squatting in the abandoned workshop since last night was fluttering its wings at the very edge of the beam. Precarious balance—about to fall but not falling. Its small eyes looked down at them alternately. Liese stared up at the chicken, frozen for about three seconds. "...Why is it here?" The chicken let out a single "Kwok" and settled firmly onto the beam. It showed no sign of falling. The two of them exchanged glances. Being looked down upon by a chicken immediately after a serious intellectual breakthrough—it was a situation that defied description. A peculiar sense of deflation gently loosened the air in the room. Liese exhaled sharply through her nose—the sound of suppressed laughter. Alva's mouth corners twitched slightly as well. "Let's go," Alva said. Calmly, but without hesitation. --- Before Liese left the abandoned workshop, she tore out a page from her notebook, folded it, and handed it to Alva. "Coordinate map." The page he received was covered with a detailed diagram of numbers and symbols. The underground structure of Greyghost—the route from the entrance of the abandoned mine to the first layer of the Library of Silence, and the positions of the curse cores embedded in the walls. "When did you draw this?" "Several months ago. When I could still access my father's study, I reconstructed it from the edges of the blueprints and coordinates I overheard. I never showed anyone." Her voice was matter-of-fact, but that phrase—"I never showed anyone"—caught something in Alva. His sense of the mirror of words was stirring. The reason she hadn't shown this to anyone wasn't because there was no one she could trust, but because showing it would mean a decisive break with her father. Liese spoke while looking outward. "I understand my father's goal. A world where lies are impossible—where words reflect truth and no one can deceive. I thought that ideal wasn't wrong. Until he was exiled twelve years ago, my father was moving toward that." There was a pause. "But what he's doing now—by treating villagers as variables, he's rotting the ideal itself. In a world created by someone who won't choose means for the sake of ends, words can't possibly reflect truth." Her words were unwavering. Not emotional—they had the shape of a conclusion honed over a long time. Alva could see the structure. Liese wasn't denying her father. She was choosing to oppose him in order to correctly protect the ideal he had betrayed. That reversal of structure. "I need to acknowledge something too," Alva said. Liese turned to face him. "Since I failed the exam—I've been avoiding stepping into situations where my skill might actually be useful, because I was turning away from the fear that it might truly be worthless. If I don't approach dangerous places, I can't fail. I've been doing that the whole time." Liese said nothing. But her silence wasn't denial or pity. She was simply listening. Something quiet was born between them. Not words, but resonance. When Alva reached for his coat, he noticed something. There was an extra coat. Liese's, somehow layered on top of his own. (When did she...?) Liese seemed to sense his realization and reached out. "I'll take it back." "The underground is cold. We both need one." A practical reason. Nothing more, nothing less in the way he said it. Liese paused for a beat, then pulled her coat back toward herself. She turned her back to Alva and pushed open the workshop door first. Alva watched that back for just one beat. Her silver hair's outline was dissolving into the thin light before dawn. The way her coat draped across her shoulders—somehow caught his eye. Before he could put the emotional meaning into words, Alva moved his own feet. --- The entrance to the abandoned mine was three hundred meters northeast of the village. Beyond the beam of a half-collapsed shaft, a hidden passage wide enough for one person continued downward. Liese descended first. Alva followed. The stones underfoot were wet, and grayghost—the silver-gray ore produced only in the Greyghost region, used as a catalyst for alchemical incantation—its fine particles absorbed the moisture, and the walls glowed faintly. As they descended, Alva's <<Mirror of Words>> reacted faintly. Characters were carved into the stone walls. Ancient—different from the Old Laaren language currently in use, a form far older. He couldn't understand the meaning. But it wasn't a pattern carved without sound or meaning. There was a definite sense that it possessed structure. His mirror of words was trying to recognize it as a language with structure—but couldn't quite reach it yet. (Is this... a fragment of the original language?) The Library of Silence—the ancient ruins sleeping beneath Greyghost, the remains of the indigenous magical civilization before the language unification decree—its walls. Alva reached out his hand, then stopped. An instinctive judgment: don't touch yet. --- The first layer was vast. The ceiling was high, and magic lamps set at regular intervals on the walls emitted weak light—these must have been installed by Helmut and the others. The color was different from something natural. There it was, on the far wall. A mass of grayghost—about the size of a human head, half-embedded in the wall. Its surface glowed pale blue, and from it Alva could sense something spreading in concentric circles, invisible to the eye. "The core," Liese said quietly. "It has a layered structure. Counting from the outside—at least five layers. Each layer reinforces the others. My father's design." "Why doesn't your father come here directly?" "My father lets the trap itself do the work. He prefers structures that function without his presence. The incantation protecting the core is set to activate automatically—against anyone who approaches." Before she finished speaking, Alva took a step forward. The wall reacted instantly. A wave of alchemical incantation was released from the outermost ring of concentric circles. Not the sound of incantation, but the pressure of meaning itself being rewritten—part of the structure maintaining the curse of grayscale disease switched into intruder-elimination mode. Alva didn't move. (Listen. Just one layer. Not everything—only the outermost layer, carefully, slowly.) He constricted his <<Mirror of Words>>. Didn't expand it. Last night's failure was trying to swallow everything at once—today would be different. The outline of the outermost layer of alchemical incantation slowly surfaced. A single concept rewrite—the structure of the command "dull the senses of anything that makes contact." [[Outermost layer incantation, listening complete]] [[Beginning reversal—single-layer processing mode]] The word-soul core moved. Mobilizing only part of its power, reversing only that one layer. No backlash—because it wasn't trying to reflect the image all at once. The outermost layer of alchemical incantation quietly vanished. "...It worked," Alva said. "I can see the next layer. The composition is different—the second layer is a rewrite of spatial recognition. It makes intruders lose their sense of direction. The weakness is that the incantation's origin point is in the floor, not the core." Liese read it quickly and conveyed it verbally. Alva grasped the outline of the second layer while listening. [[Second layer incantation, listening complete—reversal]] The second layer disappeared. It was work. But not rough work—closer to the sensation of peeling away one layer at a time carefully. No backlash. There was consumption of the word-soul core, but not the sensation of collapse like last night. Third layer. Fourth layer. "Entering the fourth layer—the density is increasing!" Liese's voice sharpened. Alva felt it too in that instant. The fourth layer's density was orders of magnitude different from the previous three. Being closer to the core, the grayghost catalyst density was higher. Liese pulled a small vial of grayghost from her coat pocket—an auxiliary catalyst for reading the structure of alchemical incantation. The grayghost in the vial began to vibrate metallically, resonating with the fourth layer's incantation. "The characteristic is—memory alteration. Makes intruders forget how they came here. The catalyst's resonance frequency is—" Pop. The vial shattered. Grayghost powder exploded outward. A silver-white mist enveloped both of