Chapter 6: The Library of Ash

Dorian’s hand was still wrapped around the hilt of his ice-etched blade when the first flurry of soot brushed against his cheek. It wasn’t snow, and it wasn’t the harmless dust of a neglected shelf; it was the grey, greasy residue of a fire that had been burning for three centuries.

Mira stepped past him, her boots crunching on fallen plaster. The air in the Library of Ash didn’t just smell like smoke; it felt like a physical weight against the lungs, thick with the phantom heat of the Great Conflagration. To their left, a row of marble pillars stood like charred ribs, supporting a ceiling that had long since vanished into the subterranean gloom of the academy’s lowest cellar.

"Don't touch the paper," Mira whispered, her voice tight. She didn't look back at him. She didn't have to. Dorian could see the way her fingers twitched at her sides, itching to conjure a flame just to see five feet in front of them. "The moment oxygen hits the preserved carbon, the entire wing could disintegrate. We need the Accord’s original seal, not a pile of confetti."

Dorian sheathed his sword with a sharp *clack* that echoed too long in the hollow space. "I am well aware of the volatility of ancient reagents, Mira. I am also aware that your internal temperature is currently rising fast enough to trigger a thermal bloom. Calm down before you melt the floor."

Mira spun on her heel, her eyes flashing an amber so bright it cut through the haze. "Calm? We are standing in the middle of the only records that can prove our schools were once a single entity, and you're worried about my temperature? Your breath is literally frosting the air, Dorian. You're making the parchment brittle."

He stepped closer, closing the gap until the scent of cedar and ozone from his robes mingled with the sharp, spicy tang of her constant, simmering heat. "Then perhaps we should move with a common rhythm. Or is the concept of a duet still too complex for the Chancellor of Solas?"

She let out a sharp, jagged breath that came out as a puff of steam. "Fine. Lead the way, Ice King. Just try not to freeze my heart while you’re at it."

"A redundant concern," Dorian murmured, turning toward the central dais. "Since you’ve spent the last decade insisting I don't possess one."

They moved into the heart of the ruin. The silence here was different from the quiet of their respective offices upstairs. It was a predatory silence, the kind that preceded a cave-in or a curse. To Dorian’s right, a stack of scrolls sat on a desk, perfectly preserved in form but turned entirely to charcoal. One touch would reduce them to a memory.

Near the center of the hall, the floor dropped away into a shallow basin. There, resting on a pedestal of basalt, was the Starfall Casket. It was suppose to contain the original physical contract of the Accord, the bridge between the frost and the flame.

"There's a ward," Mira said, her hand hovering inches from the invisible barrier. A faint orange shimmer rippled through the air, reflecting in the sweat beading at her temple. "It’s a dual-anchor lock. Solas and Aethelgard together, or it triggers a vacuum collapse."

Dorian stepped up beside her. He could feel the ward—a jagged, biting pressure that sought to repel his specific signature. "On my mark. We bleed the energy into the center. Do not over-surge, Mira. If you bank high, you’ll shatter the glass."

"And if you drop low, you’ll snap the seal," she countered, though she took his hand.

It was the first time they had touched without the mediation of gloves or magical shielding. Her skin was a fever against his, a shocking, vibrant heat that sent a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to his spine. Dorian’s own skin was chilled, his blood calibrated for the high altitudes and frozen peaks of Aethelgard. For a moment, the temperature differential created a visible mist between their palms.

"Now," Dorian commanded.

The magic didn't flow; it tore out of them. Mira leaned into him, her shoulder pressing against his chest as she poured a steady, liquid heat into the ward. Dorian balanced her, threading veins of crystalline frost through the orange shimmer, cooling the volatility of her fire until the barrier began to hum a low, resonant note.

He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark against her flushed skin. She looked less like a rival in this light and more like the missing piece of a centuries-old puzzle. The tension in her jaw was a mirror of his own. They were two forces of nature trying to masquerade as bureaucrats, and the mask was slipping.

With a final, shattering chime, the ward dissolved. The lid of the casket hissed open, releasing a cloud of white vapor.

Inside lay a scroll, but it wasn't the Accord. It was a single sheet of vellum, and beneath it, a small, obsidian mirror.

Mira reached in, her fingers trembling as she lifted the vellum. "This isn't the contract. It’s a note."

Dorian leaned over her shoulder, his chin nearly brushing her hair. "Read it."

"'To those who seek to mend what was broken,'" Mira read, her voice barely a whisper. "'The union is not found in the ink of the past, but in the blood of the present. One cannot exist without the shadow of the other.'"

As she spoke the words, the obsidian mirror began to glow. A reflection appeared in its depths—not of the library, and not of the two of them as they stood now. It showed the academy as it once was: a sprawling, impossible palace of glass and fire, where the seasons blended into a perpetual, golden autumn.

But the image shifted. It showed Mira and Dorian, standing exactly as they were, but they were bathed in a terrifying, blinding light. In the reflection, their hands weren't just touching; their magics were swirling together into a violet corona that began to crack the foundations of the room around them.

"It’s a projection," Dorian said, his voice dropping an octave. "It's showing us what happens if we actually succeed. Mira, look at the walls."

The spectral violet light from the mirror was bleeding into the physical world. The charred pillars of the library began to vibrate. The soot on the floor rose in a swirling cyclone.

"We're drawing too much power," Mira grasped his arm, her nails digging into the thick wool of his sleeve. "The resonance—Dorian, we have to break the connection!"

"If we break it now, the backlash will level the east wing!" Dorian shouted over the rising roar of the wind. "We have to ground it. Into the mirror! Give it everything!"

They gripped each other, a desperate anchor in a storm of their own making. Dorian felt the ice in his veins turn to steam. He felt Mira’s fire go white-hot, her power surging through him like a physical blow. For a second, there was no Chancellor of Solas and no Chancellor of Aethelgard. There was only the roar of the void and the terrifying, beautiful friction of two souls grinding against each other.

With a final, guttural cry, Mira slammed her free hand onto the mirror's surface.

The world went white.

When Dorian’s vision cleared, he was on his knees. The library was silent again, the soot settled, the mirror shattered into a thousand harmless pieces of glass. Mira was slumped against him, her head resting on his shoulder, her breathing ragged and shallow.

He didn't move. He couldn't. The smell of her hair—burnt sugar and rain—filled his senses. His heart was hammering against his ribs in a rhythm he didn't recognize.

Mira shifted, pushing herself up with a groan. She looked at the empty casket, then at her own hands, which were still glowing with a faint, dying purple light.

"We didn't find the Accord," she said, her voice sounding hollow in the vast room.

"No," Dorian replied, reaching out to brush a smudge of ash from her forehead. His hand stayed there a second too long, his thumb tracing the curve of her brow. "We found something much more dangerous."

Mira looked up at him, her amber eyes wide and searching. The rivalry was there, but beneath it was a new, raw vulnerability that made Dorian’s throat go dry. 

"The mirror," she whispered. "It didn't show us a catastrophe, Dorian. It showed us a transformation."

Before he could respond, a low, tectonic rumble shook the floor beneath them. A crack appeared in the basalt pedestal, spreading rapidly toward the exit. The library, held together by the very magic they had just disturbed, was finally giving up its ghost.

Dorian stood, pulling Mira to her feet in one fluid motion. "We discuss the implications later. Right now, we run."

They burst through the heavy oak doors just as the first of the marble pillars groaned and collapsed behind them. They didn't stop until they reached the spiraling stone stairs that led back to the world of light and logic.

As they stood in the corridor above, gasping for air and covered in the dust of three centuries, a messenger in the gold and blue livery of the High Council came sprinting toward them.

"Chancellors!" the boy cried, skidding to a halt. "You must come to the Great Hall immediately. The Council has arrived early."

Mira wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of soot across her cheek. "Tell them we’re busy, Leo."

"You don't understand," the boy said, his face pale. "They didn't come to oversee the merger. They came with an order of dissolution."

Dorian felt the cold settle back into his bones, but this time, it wasn't his magic. It was the realization that the war they had been fighting against each other was nothing compared to the one that had just arrived at their gates.

He looked at Mira. She was already looking at him, her jaw set in that stubborn, beautiful line he had come to loathe and crave in equal measure.

"It seems," Dorian said softly, "that we have exactly one hour to decide if we are going to burn together or freeze alone."