The iron-reinforced doors of the Great Library didn't so much open as they did scream in agony. Inside, the air tasted of ancient dust and failed ambitions.
Aris stepped in, coughing as a cloud of soot hit his face. He stayed close to the entrance, his fingers twitching. Every time a floorboard creaked, he jumped.
"Wow. Great maintenance," Aris wheezed, clutching his chest. "Do you have a maid, or does the 'Throne of Cinders' just come with a complimentary layer of asthma?"
The woman paused, her silhouette drifting through the gloom. She didn't turn around. "Nature is the only maid this kingdom has employed for the last three centuries. If the dust offends you, feel free to stop breathing."
"Touchy," Aris muttered, stepping around a pile of petrified scrolls. "By the way, I can't keep calling you 'The Mysterious Lady.' It's a bit of a mouthful. Do you have a name? Or should I just go with 'Hey, You'?"
"My name is irrelevant to your survival," she said coldly.
"Right. Very dramatic. 10/10 for the monologue," Aris said, his voice cracking slightly. "But I'm a student. If I don't have a label for things, my brain gets itchy. How about 'Sarah'?"
She turned slowly, her expression flat, her silver eyes like cold coins. "I do not look like a 'Sarah'."
"Fine. 'Xylophone'? 'Mistress of Dust'? 'Lady Who Refuses to Use a Broom'?"
"If you truly cannot function without a label," she sighed, her shoulders dropping just an inch, "call me Eve. It is simple enough for a Great Demon King to remember, is it not?"
"Eve. Got it." Aris looked around the cavernous, empty room, ignoring the sting of her sarcasm. "So, Eve... where are the 'How to be a Demon King' manuals? Or the 'Don't Get Murdered by Heroes' guide?"
"Look for yourself," she said, leaning against a distant pillar and crossing her arms. She made no move to help, acting the part of a loyal subject who simply didn't care enough to work. "Most of this is garbage. The winners of the last war didn't leave much behind for Your Highness to work with."
Aris sank onto a stool that groaned ominously. He pulled a massive, moth-eaten map across the table. It was titled The Three Gasps of Aethelgard.
"Aethelgard?" Aris whispered, tracing a jagged coastline. "Is that the name of this place?"
Eve remained silent, watching him from the shadows.
"Okay, silent treatment. Great," Aris muttered. He squinted at the map. "Wait... why is half of this map just... blank? There are cities marked here, but the lines just stop. It looks like someone spilled black ink over half the world."
He looked up at her, waiting. She stared back, her face unreadable.
"Eve? Is this a printing error?"
"It is not an error," she said curtly. "It is the Null-Zone."
"And that means... what? A desert? A giant ocean?"
"It means it is no longer there," Eve replied, her voice dropping to a weary rasp. "The Heavens 'reclaimed' it. Every time a war is lost, the world shrinks. You are standing on the last 'Gasp' of a dying continent, Your Highness. Does that answer your question?"
Aris felt a cold sweat prickle his neck. He looked back at the map. The blackness wasn't an ocean; it was a void. "So we're on a sinking ship, and the lifeboats are on fire. Perfect."
Aris's fear began to sharpen into a frantic, desperate energy. He started pulling books at random, trying to understand the people who were coming for his head. He opened a ledger from the Veridian Empire.
"Wait a second," Aris said, flipping through pages of trade records. He frowned, comparing a Veridian book to a local Cinder record. "This doesn't make sense."
Eve didn't move, but her eyes narrowed slightly. "What doesn't make sense?"
"The Veridians," Aris said, pointing at a line. "Their holy texts say they destroyed this kingdom to 'purify the darkness.' But their trade logs from after the war show they were still importing 'Void-Silk' from the ruins of this city. Why would they buy 'corrupted' silk if they're so holy?"
"Perhaps they like the way it feels," Eve said dismissively, though there was a flicker of something in her gaze—surprise at his attention to detail.
"No," Aris countered, his academic brain taking over. "This log is signed by a High Priest. They weren't just buying it; they were hoarding it. They didn't destroy this place because of 'evil.' They destroyed it to get a monopoly on the resources."
He looked at Eve, his heart hammering against his ribs. "They aren't crusaders. They're just extremely well-armed looters, aren't they?"
Eve didn't confirm it. She didn't deny it. She simply watched him, her sharp tongue held in check for once. For the first time, she saw something in the "clumsy student" that wasn't just fear—she saw a mind that knew how to look behind the curtain.
"You ask too many questions for a Great Demon King," she finally said, her voice softer than before.
"I'm a student," Aris whispered, looking back at the map of the shrinking world. "If I don't ask questions, I don't pass the test. And it sounds like the 'test' this time involves a public execution."
The silence of the library was broken only by the frantic shuffling of paper. Aris had three ledgers open at once, his fingers stained black with ancient ink. He looked less like a King and more like an accountant trying to find a missing decimal point during an audit.
"You've been staring at those grain receipts for two hours, Your Majesty," Eve remarked, her voice drifting from the upper balcony where she was dusting a shelf that contained nothing but cobwebs. "Is the exciting world of medieval logistics more interesting than the fact that a Holy Crusade is currently marching toward your throat?"
"It's not grain, Eve," Aris said, not looking up. "It's the weight."
Eve paused, a tattered cloth mid-air. "The weight?"
"Look," Aris pointed at a page, his voice rising with that specific, manic energy of a student who just found a flaw in a textbook. "Fifty years ago, the Veridian High Priest 'purchased' five hundred crates of 'Void-Silk' from this very palace. But the transport logs say the wagons were so heavy they broke the axles of three carts on the way out."
He looked up at her, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Silk isn't heavy, Eve. You could fill a wagon with silk and it wouldn't break a wooden axle. They weren't just taking fabric. They were using the silk to wrap something else."