The air outside the Athenaeum did not ask permission.
It struck Marikka's face like a hand without fingers: pressure, cold, particles. Not a sound—that type of information did not belong to her—but a full impact, which immediately told her one simple and offensive thing: the outside world was vast, messy, and had no interest whatsoever in being cataloged.
For a heartbeat, she remained on the threshold.
Behind her, the Last Minor Door still trembled, a poorly stitched wound in the stone. The vibration carried a viscous residue, an echo of the ancient ink and the presence they had crossed. Marikka felt it on her like a film on her fingers: not dirt, but physical memory. As if her skin had retained a phrase that refused to erase itself.
It was not freedom. It was escape.
Cedric stepped out behind her with wide eyes. His mouth formed words too large for the moment. Marikka read them without difficulty.
"It's... huge."
He pointed to the sky as if merely seeing it could justify everything.
Marikka held up two fingers: quiet.
Cedric nodded with excessive enthusiasm, as if the gesture could reduce the noise rushing toward him.
Aurelian emerged last. He did not take a step: he endured it.
His body trembled in a wrong rhythm, regular like a seal trying to close itself without remembering the shape anymore. The trace on his neck was shiny, alive. Marikka grabbed his forearm before he lost his balance.
Beneath the skin, she felt the incompatibility: not pure pain, but a gear mounted backward. A mechanism correct in a world that no longer existed.
Aurelian gave her a minimal nod: I'm standing.
He lied with dignity. Marikka granted him that.
She took a step forward.
Her sole touched the street of Arcanum, and the cobblestones responded with broken vibrations: wheels jolting, irregular footsteps, metal scraping. No single beat. A thousand rhythms that didn't harmonize.
Her fingers tingled.
Inside the Athenaeum, information was concentrated: books, shelves, corridors that breathed according to known rules. Outside was different. The vibrations weren't in the texts, but in the bodies, the walls, even in the movements that betrayed unspoken emotions.
Something small and precise hit her bones like drops on a tight slab.
Coins.
She couldn't see them yet, but her body recognized them with a certainty that bothered her. In her world, value was silent. Here, value made noise.
Cedric offered her the notebook. He always held it with an almost comical care, as if it were a relic. He wrote:
WHERE ARE WE?
Marikka looked up. The sky over Arcanum was a dirty sheet of clouds. The light was not filtered, not tamed. The air scratched.
They were in a narrow alley, stone and brick walls so close they seemed like a gorge. Marikka ran her fingers over the wall and felt subtle carvings: repeated notches, tallies. Not Order glyphs. Practical, human markings.
They measure the space here, she thought. And if they measure it, it's because they sell it.
She wrote in the notebook:
ARCANUM. BUT EVERYTHING HERE HAS A PRICE.
Cedric gave an uncertain smile, his version of I understand when he hadn't fully understood.
Marikka slid her hand under her tunic and touched the leather case tied to her side.
Serian.
Not a body, not a book: an anchored echo, a persistent draft. The slow, viscous vibration responded to her touch, present like a consequence she couldn't retract.
They moved.
Every step was a translation. Inside the Athenaeum, the world was made to be read. Outside, the world was made to be used—and "used" meant consumed, bargained, trapped in something no one called a system because, when it's everywhere, you mistake it for nature.
They left the alley, and the city opened into a wider street. Marikka felt the wood of the stalls vibrate with impatient hands, the glass responding in thin files, the stone retaining confident steps and hesitant steps. Emotions were everywhere, but diluted: anxiety, haste, hunger. Not concentrated like in books. Scattered, stuck to people like dust.
And beneath everything... a traction.
Not the order of the Athenaeum. Something different. Invisible threads pulling without forcing. As if every person were tied to something that called them by name, and that name had a precise value.
Aurelian stumbled.
Marikka supported him and guided him toward a corner, a dark wooden doorway reinforced by metallic strips nailed in regular sequences. She touched the metal: a dry, irritated response. Not magic. Function.
Cedric made to knock.
Marikka grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
Inside the Athenaeum, knocking meant asking for access. Here it could mean asking to be chosen.
Cedric looked down and wrote, smaller than usual:
WE NEED TO HIDE. OR FIND HELP.
Marikka stared at those words. Finding help meant entering a relationship. And every relationship, in a world made of systems, is a contract even when it pretends not to be one.
She looked up the street.
Amidst the chaos, she noticed something out of tune: a line of people moving with an unnatural order. It wasn't close. It was far enough away to seem like a detail.
toc.
The beat crossed the cobblestones and reached her bones.
toc.
Again.
It did not have the messy quality of human hands. It was a practical rhythm. Repeated.
Marikka did not approach. Not yet.
But she sensed, beneath the city noise, something cold and precise: a pattern that beat at regular intervals, like columns on a page. Not runes. Not glyphs.
A grid.
Aurelian looked at her, and in his eyes was the comprehension that arrives before explanations.
Cedric followed her gaze and stopped writing. His mouth formed a question she couldn't hear, but she read it anyway.
Who?
Marikka did not answer.
Because the answer, at that moment, was not a person.
It was a function.
And somewhere, in the streets of Arcanum, that function was already learning the rhythm of her breath.