Chapter 16: Institutional Net
The air in the Evaluation Spire came with a lot of moods, but one of them wasn’t anxiety. Everyone who handled evaluation and grading were always in perfect control of the situation, and so was the same for her case.
Only rarely do they had the need for anxiety, and that was usually for minor issues like incorrect reading, an intact soul having issues to express themselves or a negative resonance breaking the stone of the Soulwell.
They’ve not had two of the situations lately, but the last one was the trouble that disturbed Sel Voras.
Coupled with the news of the break-in on the night of the Midwinter festival by a shadow, Voras knew something was not right. They’ve always watched Negative resonance walk out of trial with tears and the weight of misery, but on the day of Jorren Thale’s trial, his unusual confidence as he walked out of that room made her curious.
Now, curious was not the only word that described how she felt. Curious was just one out of the words. Now, she was anxious, and the weight of her anxiety seemed to dominate the entire space of the Evaulation Spire.
She walked fast as she approached her chamber, surrounded by chamber guards, whose presence she rarely needed in the matters of protecting herself, but because it eas standard procedure, she didn’t try to resist. When she got to the Deep Repository and headed for her deskchair, the guards, as standard procedure lined the perimeter of the office before her desk, the rest staying before the door.
As Sel Voras slumped into her desk chair, she didn’t give herself time to get a break. She went to work. In the deep repository, it was standard procedure to call for a file in the archives or in the storage. But there are some files that are not called up that way.
They are considered forbidden and are quarantined, and for such files, they are channeled. It’s way to confuse the system that the matter being dealt with was a grave one and needed to be attended to with utmost urgency.
It was also a way to ensure the security of such files. The files will only respond to the channelled essence of the current Grand Evaulator. This is to ensure that files as dangerous as quarantine files don’t get into the wrong hands and bring more issues for the system.
Voras channelled her essence to the archives and waited. Apart from the buzz of the light around her, a slow hum took over the space of the deep repository, and suddenly the golden lights turned blue. In the moments after, a holographic approached her, stopping just before her face.
She leaned forward, studying the structure of the line on the Soulstone that she documented. For a moment, she couldn’t fathom why the stone cracked the way it did, or why the line ran in that direction.
It did it without light, without energy, without essence, and it didn’t make sense. She channelled her essence towards the archives and with her soul search, she pulled up a file from a trail of a Thale decades ago.
Another holographic ball approached her, before morphing to reveal a file. Sel Voras eyes scanned the document, stopping at the name and the grade.
“Lamba Thale, Grade zero, Negative Resonance, Fractured soul.”
Voras scrolled through the holographic document for an image of what happened to the soulstone. When Voras pulled it up, she paused, her eyes widened slightly. It cracked.
It was the first time a Thale cracked the stone, and back then, there wasn’t so much information about the repercussion of letting a fractured soul live in the midst of those who had their souls intact.
Voras leaned back in her chair, worried that the eyes she kept to watch Jorren may not be enough. She was also worried because she didn’t want to go overkill and get Jorren alert enouht to watch his back.
“Cursed souls are meant to remain cursed,” she mumbled to herself. “Not to cause issues for blessed souls.”
Her eyes fell on both crack images staring at her. Then she noticed it for the first time. The cracks on both images seemed to have something in common. It felt as if the crack was filled with darkness, like it was a void that was not supposed to exist, but it was there.
They were hollow.
And the ancient scriptures had recorded that hollowed souls were structured differently.
Sel Voras knew about those scriptures. The vast majority of the people in the city of VAshen knew it as the codex. She knew it as the dark scriptures. It was a book the system failed to find during the purge. It was rumoured that the few people that had it escaped with it during the purge, and no copy of it was found.
If hollow souls were structured differently and they found out about themselves from the codex, they could become potentially dangerous to the system. They would become the corruption that the system had fought so hard to wipe out, yet they were still there, like a stubborn stain.
Voras came to two conclusions. It’s either the shadow that walked into the overspill and absorbed essence was the Thale boy, or someone far more dangerous within them that they didn’t know about. It was easy to believe that it was someone else. The Thale boy who walked out of the Evaluation Spire branded as broken would be too busy looking for a way to get his life together.
And that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be watched, she thought. Then it hit her. She should find a way to expand her search across the city of vashen and have eyes everywhere. She has learnt over the years that the enemy, the shadow, is usually the most unlikely of persons.
But then she’ll have a smart kid keep an eye on the Thale boy. She won’t enforce that immediately, but she would make plans for it. There was a strict need to watch the boy who cracked the stone, and she knew exactly who to involve.
The golden boy.