The name "Theron" was a weapon, but a locked one. Zero now had the 'what', but he needed the 'where'. The uncensored Journal of Theron was not a book that would be sitting on a dusty, forgotten shelf. It would be hidden, protected, buried under layers of security, both magical and mundane. To find it, he needed to stop hunting the ghost of the author and start hunting the ghost of the censor.
He did not leave the Grand Library. He simply shifted the focus of his intellectual assault. His target was no longer the public collection; it was the library's own internal nervous system, its vast, sprawling, and deeply uninteresting administrative records.
For the next two days, Zero became an expert in the tedious, bureaucratic lifeblood of the institution. He pulled the acquisition logs, massive, leather-bound ledgers dating back two centuries, their pages filled with the elegant, looping script of a hundred different librarians. He requested the staff rosters, the records of employment, of promotions, of retirements, of deaths. He cross-referenced them with the architectural blueprints of the library itself, learning the history of its expansions, its renovations, the shifting locations of its various sections over the decades.
He was not a student anymore. He was a forensic auditor, and he was conducting an audit of history itself.
The work was a new kind of grueling. It was a descent into a mountain of pure, contextless data. There were no thrilling discoveries, no flashes of insight. There was only the slow, methodical, and mind-numbing process of comparison. He would take one of the books he had identified as being censored—for example, 'A History of the Prime System, Vol. 1,' which he knew had been altered sometime in the last fifty years—and he would find its original acquisition date in the logs. Then, he would cross-reference that date with the staff rosters. Who was the Head Librarian at the time? Who were the senior archivists? Who had the authority, the access, and the opportunity to perform such a delicate, literary surgery?
He created a new chart, a web of names and dates. A pattern began to emerge, but it was frustratingly broad. Over the seventy-year period in which most of the censorship had occurred, there had been three different Head Librarians, a dozen different senior archivists. The conspiracy was too wide, the list of potential suspects too long. He needed a finer, more precise tool.
He shifted his approach. Instead of focusing on the books, he began to focus on the library's security protocols. He pulled the records for the Restricted Section, for the deep archives where the most dangerous and heretical texts were supposedly stored. He studied the history of its warding schemes, the records of who had been granted access, and, most importantly, the records of any security breaches or incidents.
It was in a dusty, forgotten ledger from thirty-two years ago, in the back of a records room that hadn't been entered in a decade, that he found his first real clue.
It was a single, brief, and heavily redacted entry. 'Incident 7B. Unauthorized access to Deep Archive C. Text #801-A ('The Argent Codex') reported missing. Attending Custodian: E. V. Security wards found disabled from within. Investigation closed. No suspect identified.'
The Argent Codex. Zero's mind, a vast repository of his first life's obsessive reading, instantly supplied the context. It was a notoriously dangerous grimoire, a book on soul-magic that was said to drive its readers mad. But it was also one of the few texts that was rumored to contain a passing reference to Theron's work.
An unauthorized access. A text related to Theron going "missing." And a custodian, identified only by the initials 'E. V.'
He cross-referenced the date of the incident with the staff rosters. He scanned the names of the senior librarians, the archivists. No one with the initials 'E. V.' But the title was specific: Custodian. Not a librarian. A different role entirely.
He pulled the general staff rosters. He went down the list of janitors, of maintenance workers, of book-binders. And then he saw it. A single name, listed under the title "Head Custodian of the Archives."
Elspeth Vane.
The name hit him with the force of a physical blow. Elspeth. The kindly, soft-spoken, old woman from his first life. The Head Librarian who had always had a gentle smile for the quiet, bookish F-Rank Porter. The woman who would set aside new acquisitions she thought he would find interesting. The woman who had encouraged his "pointless obsession" with maps and history. The woman who had been left to die during the Orc raid because rescuing a librarian was deemed "inefficient."
The [Callous] skill, for the first time, struggled. A wave of a cold, phantom emotion, the ghost of Ashe's grief and profound, nostalgic affection, washed over him. He remembered the smell of her lavender-scented reading room, the gentle, crinkling lines around her eyes when she smiled.
He ruthlessly suppressed it. The emotion was inefficient. Elspeth the kindly librarian was a memory, a ghost. Elspeth Vane, the Custodian of the Archives, the woman who had staged the theft of a heretical text thirty years ago, she was a data point. She was the key.
He now had his suspect. Elspeth had not just been a librarian. She had been the architect of the conspiracy, the guardian of the secret. She had spent her entire life not just curating a library, but curating history itself, carefully pruning the branches of knowledge to hide the one, great, foundational heresy of Theron.
But she was dead. A dead end.
Or was she? A woman who would dedicate her life to such a monumental, secret task would not let that task die with her. She would have left a key. A clue. A path for the next person who was worthy, or desperate, enough to find it.
Zero's focus shifted again, becoming a laser. He was no longer interested in the library's records. He was now interested in Elspeth herself. Under a rarely used administrative protocol, the personal effects of deceased long-term staff were held in the deep archives for fifty years before being disposed of. Elspeth had died less than seven years ago in his original timeline. Her belongings would still be here.
He spent the rest of the day navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth required to request a deceased staff member's personal effects. He forged a professor's signature on a research request form, citing a "historical study on the daily lives of academy staff in the late Imperial period." It was a dull, academic, and utterly plausible lie.
Late that evening, a young, bored-looking archive assistant wheeled out a single, small, dusty wooden crate. It was labeled: Vane, Elspeth. Deceased. Hold for Archival Disposal.
Zero took the crate and retreated to a secluded, private study carrel in the upper stacks, a place where he knew he would not be disturbed. He pried open the lid.
The contents were a pathetic, almost heartbreaking collection of a life lived in quiet service. A pressed flower. A collection of reading glasses, each with a different prescription. A silver locket with a faded pict-image of a young, smiling couple. And a half-dozen small, leather-bound personal journals.
He had it. He had found the ghost's last will and testament. He opened the first journal. The pages were filled with a neat, elegant, and almost painfully mundane script.
'October 3rd. Received a new shipment of texts from the Western Reach. The binding on the historical atlas is atrocious. Must send it to the repair shop. Mildew reported in the lower stacks again. I must speak with the groundskeeper.'
Zero's face was a mask of cold, focused intensity. He knew he was on the verge of the breakthrough. The journals were a dead end. Which meant they were the path. They were a cipher. And he was the only person in the world with the key to unlock it. The hunt for the custodian was over. The hunt for her secret had just begun.