Chapter 490: Before The Codex

Bruce woke and lay still for a long time.

The room was in its pre-dawn quiet. His soul-body had finished the late-E consolidation overnight. The interior chamber inside him, that architectural space he could now navigate on both its levels, was fully stabilized. He could feel his reserves at full capacity for the first time since arriving in the realm. He had room for many words now, many seals, many shapes of ink.

He did not get up immediately but thought about what the day was going to be.

The Library of Small Voices was not a hunting portal. It was an archive. He would not be advancing his rank there. He would not be earning soul points there. He would be reading. Reading what other souls had written about their conversations with the Codex, if the old soul was correct. Reading the records of the previous cases at the orb, if those records existed.

He would be, in the language of his old life, doing ’the study before the surgery.’

He had never been the kind of surgeon who walked into a difficult operation without preparation. He had studied every case that resembled the one in front of him, read every paper, consulted every colleague, before he ever picked up a scalpel.

That approach had saved patients. It was the same approach he needed here. If he was ultimately going to speak with the Soul Realm’s Codex, as he had promised the Physical Realm’s Akashic Codex he would try, then he needed to know as much as he could about what those conversations had looked like for the souls who had already had them.

He got up. Kael and Theron were both still asleep. Kael snoring lightly, Theron curled tight. Bruce washed quietly, dressed, and came back to sit at the small table.

He opened the soul-script manual to the section on target-seals.

He had not read this section yet. He had planned to yesterday and had not gotten to it because of the meeting with Elenora. Today, before the Library, he wanted to at least understand the basic structure of what target-seals could do, so that if the Library had any texts about seal-work at higher ranks he could understand the vocabulary.

He read for perhaps an hour.

Target-seals were, as he had suspected, seals inscribed directly onto another soul rather than committed to the air. His class made it easier for him to do this than normal...

The manual described three categories: bindings, which restrained or altered the target’s behavior; enhancements, which could be given as a gift or applied to oneself; and marks, which were persistent identifiers or trackers.

Elenora’s sponsorship seal on his hand was, he now understood formally, a mark. It identified him as under her sponsorship without altering or restricting him. Marks were the least invasive category of target-seal.

Bindings were the most invasive. The manual was careful in its discussion of bindings. It noted that inscribing a binding on another soul without consent was legally restricted in most soul realm cities, including Xiltra, and that unauthorized bindings could result in severe penalties.

Bindings could restrain motion, alter memory, compel behavior, or link souls to each other in various ways.

Enhancements were the most useful. A soul with the ability to inscribe target-seals could give another soul temporary or permanent boosts to specific capabilities, strength, speed, perception, resilience. These were commonly used within families, close alliances, and Guild parties who trusted each other enough to accept them.

Bruce thought about this.

He could, in principle, place enhancement seals on Kael and Theron. If they consented. If he learned the technique properly. If his reserves at his rank supported the work. That was a significant potential capability. He filed it, not to act on immediately, but to plan for.

He closed the manual and set it aside. Kael was waking up.

Breakfast was quick. Bruce did not want to spend more time than necessary before the Library.

The stew stall, the walk to the main square, the acknowledging nod of the food-stall woman, the small handful of watchers on the streets, all of it was familiar now, a settled morning routine. The seal on Bruce’s hand drew occasional glances but nothing more. The city had absorbed the fact of his sponsorship. Watchers were tracking him now for different reasons than a week ago.

The three of them walked to the central outer district, where the Library of Small Voices was located.

The central outer district was the smallest of Xiltra’s outer districts by area but the most densely built. It housed most of the city’s specialized services, archives, craft-halls, medical clinics, and academic institutions.

The streets here were narrower and quieter than the Guild district’s, and the souls who moved through them were mostly older, mostly higher-ranked, and mostly focused on their own errands.

Bruce noticed that his party drew fewer glances here than in any other district they had walked. The souls of the central outer district were used to Nonagon-sponsored parties passing through. It was not remarkable.

The Library was in a low broad building of pale grey soul-stone, three stories, with a wide entrance flanked by two carved standing pillars.

The building did not have banners or signs. If Bruce had not been directed here by the map, he would have thought it was a small government office. The only marker was a single small stylized character etched into the stone above the entrance, a character Bruce did not immediately recognize but which he assumed corresponded to library in the realm’s readable script.

The portal to the Library itself was inside the building.

Bruce noted this as they approached the entrance. Unlike the hunting portals, which stood in open squares, the Library’s portal was housed within a structure, probably because access needed to be controlled more carefully, and the building’s walls served as the first layer of that control.

A soul at the entrance, an older awakened, B-rank by their glow, in the same green-sashed garb as the Guild clerks, nodded as they approached.

"Sponsored?" the soul asked.

"Yes."

"Show me the seal."

Bruce held out his hand. The soul examined the seal on his skin with the practiced attention of someone who had verified many seals. They ran a finger along the edge of the mark, not quite touching, feeling the presence of Elenora’s signature within it. They nodded.

"Vessa seal. Two-month term. Valid."

"Yes."

"Party of three?"

"Yes."

"The sponsor’s seal covers the party as long as you remain together inside the Library. If any of you wish to enter alone, you will need to be added to the sponsorship record. Do you wish to have your companions added?"