Daress’ most deep sense of self became entwined with this desire to right a great wrong. Their selves merged. A connection was made. For the first time, she felt something like magic. The boy from the Sedralogue was uneasy and tried to pull from her grip on his arm. It didn’t matter. Her soul had reached through to his. No. It wasn’t exactly her soul. The spirit pushed itself outwards and met its opposite force within him. His, a trickle of a thousand ghosts, feeding into him as if through a funnel. His body was touched already by the cold timeless death of them. Hers, the inevitable. A prick of light, distant but moving ever closer. She could feel it surge, and its presence became clear as it passed between her and this boy. It was a force of forgetting; uncertainty; hunger. It was rot and it was decay. They were two forces of death at odds with each other. And rot was hungry for what had been denied for thousands of years. Now, finally, they would not be denied. The boy screamed as their spirits met. A sound that echoed through the tower of the library. Outwardly, she only touched his arm. Inwardly, the hunt had begun. But the boy could not grant them access to all of the spirits at once. And the inevitable was starving. Daress could feel the ghosts, briefly, passing through her. She was revolted, but entranced. The flashes of captured spirits shrieked, ripped, retaliated, succumb, grew silent. She knew them, and then she did not know them. It was not that she was forgetting those ghosts that her soul briefly met, but viscerally erasing them. It was nightmarish and alien. Her living soul quaked and her mind could not comprehend. The ghosts were being eaten. The horrifying understanding of what she had allowed into her was brief, for it did not leave. It embraced her and she held onto it, for to let go of it was to fall. It was too late now. Too late. The boy had fallen unconscious, and she caught him as he fell, going to her knees as she did so to lay him down. She felt dizzy. Sick. Exhilarated. Satiated, but only barely. Like an appetizer. Many more, she knew, where that came from. She shuddered. Whether more with excitement or horror she did not know. But then she saw his face. No longer did this boy look so ill and touched by death. This boy looked like he did when she first came into the library. He was breathing steadily. His cheeks glowed warm and rosy again, a little more with every breath. He is free now. Oh god, she thought to herself. Tears streaked down her veiled face at her shame. The cloth clung to her cheeks. She covered her mouth to stop herself from sobbing. She wasn’t ready to sob yet. She swallowed it down and tried not to get sick. She had to do something. She would get help. What was she going to tell people? What had she done? It was a curse. The realization brought her back to her feet. She clutched the table to rise. It shook. The candle on the table flickered at her, among all her research. All the books that she learned the stories of the old magic from. The Sedralogue always said knowledge was power. She stared into the candle. We stop this. We let it all go. She wanted to escape from everything. There was never anywhere to go. All she came across was closed doors. Even the bookshelves were now like towering walls to her at that moment. Go where? Would society function without the ancestors? What if they ruined everything? What if doing this killed them all? It’s already dying. We burn the forest to let it grow. Her tears flowed hot from her cheeks at the memories of the Sedralogue festivals. When she had started her last fire, she had been so young, so weak of will. But they didn’t care. All they knew was that she would not fit into their mould. So they threw her where they throw people they never wanted to see again and she had not been seen ever since. The candle on the table flickered at her again from behind the glass. She picked it up at the base. It was warm. Watching it made her feel calm. Revitalized. Where would she go now? Would this truly be helping anyone? What could be gained from all this? Freedom, Daress. Freedom. She smiled, a small laugh escaping her lips despite herself. She took off the veil that rested on her head all this time. She stared at it in her hands. In a moment of sudden levity, tears still streaking her face, she held it out and carefully placed the veil above the flame. It caught, and the flash of orange light before her face danced. She smiled and casually placed the burning veil onto the books on the wooden desk. She knew that supports were stone, and so were many shelves. The two of them had been the only ones in the library. The flames curled around the paper. The acrid smell of burning ink and wood fire filled her lungs. No one could follow the trail of her research now. She went to the unconscious boy and hoist him up as best as she could to take him out of the library. She was stronger than her waifish frame led people to believe, with her years of labour behind her. All the same, the boy was limp. She struggled with the weight but managed to get him out. Once she had set him down somewhere far enough away that she thought he’d be alright, she looked back at the library. Her great love. But it wouldn’t all go. It only mattered that her books had gone. This way would look the most like a careless accident. She wanted to go back, to see the flames and say goodbye. They will recreate it. But it won’t be the same books. The book is only a receptacle. A box. Oh, but what a beautiful box it can be, she mused. There had been a lot of years of love here. Those boxes were some of the only things keeping her together through the years. Move on. She obeyed. The boy would be alright. He was still unconscious. She would alert people on her way out so that they might come and stop the fire, once enough had been destroyed. A new sense of purpose coursed through her. The hunger groaned within her once more. To be satisfied, she realized where she must head next. It would want the source. The crypts. She went to turn towards the main body of the church from the library. The way to the crypts was from its entrance. But after a few steps, she stopped herself. Or perhaps, it stopped her. She recalled that the spirits retaliated inside that boy’s soul. If they went now to the fount of any of the Families, the ancestors would destroy them. They needed to gain strength first. To do that, it needed to eat. Where, exactly, on a night like tonight, might there be many Family members gathered? People who might get lost in the crowd. End up a little confused. Disappoint their ancestors on their wild night - enough to be unable to use magic afterwards? They just needed to catch a few alone. But how would an Orphan like her get to the ball? They wouldn’t just let her through. And they weren’t even meant to leave the grounds. She remembered Arturri’s offer, to rely on Nadira. She could come with them. How would that work now after what she had done? Daress was never a great liar, and she didn’t think she could play along with them. Not after what she had done. The thought even as it crossed her mind seemed juvenile. Things were different now. Besides, she had been asking the wrong question. What she needed to ask wasn’t ‘how can I leave,’ it was ‘who can stop us?’