Chapter 182 The Missing Pages

Chapter 182 The Missing Pages
Ilaria's POV
The restricted wing of the Imperial Archives was as cold and quiet as a forgotten tomb past midnight.
I crept carefully down the narrow stone spiral staircase, holding my breath with every single step while keeping one hand pressed against the chilly, damp masonry. Right behind me, Dorian moved with surprising lightness for someone wearing a heavy metal leg brace, his dark scouting cloak wrapped tightly around his frame to keep his belt buckles from clinking against the stone wall.
"Are you completely sure about this, Ilaria?" Dorian whispered in a faint, anxious breath, leaning in so close his shoulder brushed against mine. "If the high archaists catch us down here after hours, they won't just give us detention at the academy. They will have us thrown out before sunrise."
"Someone tried to crush you under ten tons of solid granite this morning, Dorian," I murmured back, turning my head slightly to glare at him through the dark shadows of the stairwell. "I am not going to sit around in my dorm room drinking tea while whoever sabotaged that ceiling beam plans their next move."
"Fair point," Dorian whispered back with a quick, nervous nod. "Lead the way, then. Just try not to trip any silent alarm wards."
"That's why I brought you along," I said, giving his arm a small nudge. "You're the one who knows how to bypass acoustic wards without making a sound."
We reached the bottom of the stairs, stopping right in front of the heavy brass gates that sealed off the vault of pre-war registries. The polished metal doors were covered in delicate, glowing blue runes designed to trigger a deafening alarm chime if anyone so much as touched the handle without the proper spell-key.
"Alright," I whispered, stepping aside to give him space. "Show me what you've got."
Dorian pulled a pair of thin silver tuning forks from his leather belt pouch. He struck them softly against the heel of his boot, producing a faint, pure humming sound that vibrated through the air. He carefully pressed the vibrating silver tines directly against the brass keyhole, matching the exact pitch of the defensive runes until the blue glow flickered violently and died out.
"Not bad," I murmured as the heavy gate unlocked with a soft, satisfying click.
"Years of practice dodging my dad's house guards," Dorian replied with a quiet smirk, pushing the heavy gate open an inch at a time. "After you, milady."
We slipped into the vast, dusty vault. Row upon row of massive ironwood bookshelves stretched up into the gloom, holding thousands of ancient census records, pre-war land deeds, and old provincial registries. The air smelled thick of dry paper, old leather, and age-old dust. We navigated deep into the back aisles, searching for the specific records covering the final years before the Unification war.
"Here it is," I said, stopping in front of a shelf packed with dark leather books. I pulled down a heavy, dust-covered volume labeled Royal Administrative Ledger: Year 342.
I carried the heavy book over to a small reading desk in the corner and flipped open the thick leather cover. But as I turned the first few parchment pages, my jaw dropped. The paper inside hadn't just turned yellow with age; dozens of consecutive pages covering a three-year span had been completely cut out right at the leather binding.
"Wait a second," I muttered, flipping frantically through the rest of the book. "Look at this, Dorian."
"What is it?" Dorian asked, leaning over my shoulder with a small crystal light-orb.
"The pages are gone," I said, reaching up to grab another volume from the same shelf and opening it flat. "Look at this one, too. The whole section from thirty years ago has been ripped out."
"Let me see that," Dorian said, pulling out a small magnifying glass and leaning down close to the open spine. He ran his index finger carefully along the sharp, smooth edge of the remaining paper. "These weren't torn out by hand, Ilaria. Look at the edge. It's perfectly smooth."
"Did someone use a small razor?" I asked.
"No," Dorian whispered, his casual tone instantly turning dead serious. He hovered his open hand an inch above the cut paper, closing his eyes for a second to focus his sense. A faint, violet shimmer flickered along the spine under his palm. "This was sliced using a localized thermal spell-blade. You can still feel the faint magic heat residue on the leather."
"Can you tell who cast it?" I asked, watching his expression carefully.
"It's an ultra-refined ward-sealing style," Dorian said, looking up at me with wide, unsettled eyes. "The only people in the entire realm trained to use this specific magic signature are the chief archaists of the royal court. Someone working right inside Kestrel's government cut these pages out, Ilaria. They are actively erasing our history."
I stood there staring at the empty spine, a cold knot forming in my stomach. "Think about the timing, Dorian. Thirty years ago. That was right before the final push of the Unification war. That was when the old royal families surrendered their provincial archives to the capital."
"Why burn records from a war that ended decades ago?" Dorian asked, pulling another ledger off the shelf and opening it. "Look at this one—Year 341. Missing the middle section. Year 343—missing the first fifty pages. It's not just one book. It's systematic."
"They aren't trying to hide who won the war," I said slowly, connecting the pieces in my head. "Everyone knows how the war ended. They are hiding what was here before the war. The infrastructure. The ancient sites."
Dorian ran his thumb over the cut edge again, his brow furrowed in concentration. "My father used to tell me stories about the archaists when I was a kid. He said the court archaists don't answer to the army or the city guards. They answer directly to the High Council. If someone gave the order to clean out these vaults, it came from the very top."
"Which means whoever sabotaged your trial wasn't just some rogue student or a jealous noble," I whispered, looking around at the endless rows of shadowy bookshelves surrounding us. "It's someone who has been sitting in the palace for thirty years, quietly controlling what people are allowed to remember."
"We need to get out of here," Dorian said, his voice tense as he tucked his tuning forks back into his belt. "If an archaist senses us poking around these specific ledgers, we won't even make it back to the staircase."
"Not yet," I said, pulling out a small sheet of parchment and a charcoal stick from my pocket. I pressed the paper flat against the raw, cut edges of the ledger spine, carefully rubbing the charcoal across it to take a wax-style impression of the spell-blade marks and the residual binding pattern. "I'm sending this to Wren at the Ranges. If anyone can reconstruct what used to be attached to these bindings, she can."
"Hurry up," Dorian urged, nervously watching the dark aisle behind us as the dim light-orb flickered in his palm. "The guard shift changes in ten minutes."
"Done," I said, folding the charcoal-stained parchment and hiding it inside my cloak. I closed the ruined ledger and slid it carefully back onto the shelf. "Let's go."