Lazarus was shocked, Abel, still recovering from the draining effect of Jacob's rune was equally shocked, while Arthur, who did not yet understand the significance of what had taken place, remained indifferent, his expression calm and unbothered. Lazarus, however, kept his eyes fixed on Jacob, studying him in silence for several long seconds before he finally spoke in a measured tone, "Is this the result of your aspect?"

"Probably," Jacob replied with deliberate uncertainty. He knew he could not appear too sure of himself, not after claiming earlier that the rune had been created by accident. To act as though he suddenly understood everything now would be suspicious, and suspicion was the last thing he needed.

'Stop worrying so much,' Yggdrasil's voice murmured in his mind, the tone almost lazy. 'Because of this, Lazarus already places you on the same level of talent as Arthur and Abel. From his perspective, you are now a genius, and the kingdom will surely invest in you just as it will in them.'

'But I wouldn't know any of this without you,' Jacob thought back, his expression tightening faintly with something close to sadness. Without the guidance of this ancient presence, he would never have been able to stand beside those two, never even been considered their equal.

'Exactly,' Yggdrasil said, sounding pleased. 'Which is why you should respect me more. And stop constantly asking for my help, I am a busy man… or a busy tree… or something else entirely. It doesn't matter.'

Jacob almost sighed but held himself still, ready to retort inwardly, when Lazarus's voice drew him back to the present. "I have seen how far each of you has come, and I am thoroughly impressed. This allows me to accelerate much of what I intended to teach." He gave a small smile, then turned his attention directly to Jacob.

"But first," Lazarus continued, "why have you not increased your mana capacity? Why waste so much time?"

Jacob straightened his posture, answering with calm confidence, "I believed that any technique I could find on my own would be inferior to what the Grand Scholar might choose to teach me."

Lazarus regarded him for a moment, then nodded slowly, clearly satisfied with the reasoning. "That is true," he admitted. "In fact, I should be more surprised that Arthur did not wait, though Abel, of course, has access to the methods of his family."

He fell quiet for a brief moment, then raised his hand. At once, a rune appeared in the air before him, its shape twisting and reforming continuously, a complex interlocking web of countless smaller runes woven together in a pattern so intricate that Jacob's head began to ache merely from trying to follow its structure.

Then, with a faint shimmer, the rune activated. The air tore apart, space itself opening to reveal a dark void beyond. A hole had been ripped into another place, and Jacob stared at it with quiet intensity. This was a rune that only the highest-ranked mages could even dream of wielding. He had never seen it before, not in books, not in records, not in practice.

Lazarus reached into the dark tear in space and let his hand search through it for a while, his expression calm and unhurried, before finally withdrawing with a small book clasped in his fingers.

"This is a technique I devised in my later years," he said, his tone almost casual, "in truth, I drew a large bit of inspiration from a rather good book I once read. You should make use of it." With that he tossed the book lightly toward Jacob, and it landed with unerring precision in his hands.

"Begin with the technique written there. Your mana capacity is still far too insufficient for the next stage of my teaching. Abel, Arthur, come with me. Jacob will join us once he has advanced enough, likely in a few weeks' time." As soon as he finished speaking, the three of them vanished together, leaving Jacob standing alone in the hall.

'That grand scholar is not merely adept with time-based runes but with space-based ones as well,' Yggdrasil remarked with a note of interest. Quite the rarity, quite the oddity.

Jacob had no reply to that, nor did he feel the need to search for one, so instead he simply gave a small nod to himself, lowered his body to the stone floor, and, with hands that trembled slightly from anticipation, opened the cover of the book with care, his eyes already gleaming with curiosity.

The very first page presented him with the drawing of a rune, though to call it a rune felt almost dishonest. It was beyond complex, so far beyond that the word itself lost meaning. What lay before him seemed less like a symbol and more like an endless mesh of curves, lines, and intersecting shapes, woven so tightly and intricately that the pattern no longer resembled a rune at all, but rather the work of something far beyond the scope of ordinary design.

Inside his mind Yggdrasil let out a long, deliberate breath, and his voice came lower, tinged with rare surprise. 'This… this was not created by Lazarus. I can admit that he altered it, yes, but his alterations were only to lessen the strain and reduce the complexity, though at the cost of much of its effectiveness.'

Jacob closed his eyes and listened carefully, suspicion already forming in his mind, though he still asked the question aloud in thought, 'then who created it?'

There was a silence, not the hesitant pause of someone forming an answer, but the heavier kind that belonged to someone unwilling to speak, a silence that made Jacob's earlier guess feel suddenly less certain.

'I know what you are thinking,' Yggdrasil finally said, his tone firm. 'But no, this was not made by Akashic.'

Stolen story; please report.

Jacob drew in a sharp breath at the name, forcing himself to steady it again, and leaned inward in concentration, waiting for more.

'What I am about to say,' Yggdrasil continued, his words measured and grave, 'may only be spoken of vaguely, mentioned lightly, hinted at in passing. You must never repeat it, never dwell upon it, never let it dominate your thoughts. The moment I tell you, you will think of it only briefly and then cast it to the farthest corners of your mind. Do not allow yourself to be consumed by mystery or grandeur.'

The warnings only heightened Jacob's anticipation, and he found himself almost irritated by the slow pacing of it, his heart beating faster in expectation of some forbidden name, some secret older than time.

But then Yggdrasil's voice cut off abruptly. 'Wait a moment.'

And without warning Jacob's vision darkened, his body collapsing where he sat, and the next instant he opened his eyes to find himself once again standing in the vast inner world of his own mind.

Yggdrasil was already moving swiftly across its endless expanse, sketching runes with such rapid speed that Jacob could only see streaks of light and the faintest afterimages of shapes, as though the great tree was weaving something too fast for human eyes to follow.

'What are you doing?' Jacob asked, his voice uncertain.

'Protection,' Yggdrasil replied without hesitation. 'Protecting your mind, sealing this information away, and a great deal of other things besides.'

Jacob felt himself growing steadily more bewildered. Was this truly such a secret that it demanded so much caution? 'If it's really this dangerous, why are you even telling me at all?'

At those words Yggdrasil stopped, and for the first time Jacob could clearly distinguish his true form rather than the flickering afterimages scattered across his mind. He turned and regarded Jacob with an expression far colder than usual, his face grave, his eyes sharp and steady.

'Because from the moment I set my eyes on you, it was inevitable that you would learn of this sooner or later. You wield true runes, you were born in this kingdom, you come from one of its great families, you have studied Akashic's works, and now you stand on the verge of using that rune. These coincidences gather and gather until they can no longer be called coincidences at all, but instead something heavier, fate itself.'

Jacob felt the small flame of excitement that had been building inside him snuffed out in an instant, replaced instead by a slow, creeping dread, for Yggdrasil was not simply speaking of a distant secret but was tying the weight of it directly to Jacob's own existence. How could he still feel eager when the truth seemed bound to him so tightly?

At last Yggdrasil finished his work and began to move back toward him. With a long sigh, as though reluctant to give voice to what came next, he spoke again.

'You are the third person in this world to ever wield true runes. Before you, there was an ancient being born of nature itself, the living will of the earth, and Akashic's very first master, Valor.' His words slowed, and his gaze drifted upward toward the endless void above them.

'And before Valor, there existed one other, a being who could not be faced, challenged, or denied. An ancient entity to whom even the gods themselves bend in worship, and the eternal adversary of Valor, Akashic, and myself alike.' Yggdrasil's voice tightened, his hands clenching into fists as he forced out the name. 'First Eternity.'

The instant the name left his lips, Jacob's mind quaked violently, as though the very act of hearing it set his thoughts shuddering apart. All at once, the countless runes Yggdrasil had inscribed flared into life, filling his mind with a brilliance that steadied the tremors little by little until they eased.

'That being was the very first to master true runes, and he wields complete dominion over them. His power is beyond measure, his reach stretches across the world itself as though it were nothing more than a toy in his hands. His aims, his desires, his ambitions, all of them remain veiled in mystery. The only certainty we have is this: as long as he continues to exist, the world will never know an age of peace. For it is his will that there should always be war.'

Jacob shivered as another tremor passed faintly through his mind, and he watched as nearly a quarter of the runes Yggdrasil had drawn winked out of existence at once, while the remaining ones began to dim slowly, their light fading into the shadows of his thoughts.

'That rune,', Yggdrasil said slowly, 'was the first gift that being gave to Akashic, bestowed long before Akashic understood the true nature of who he was dealing with, and it was one of the very things that allowed him to rise to the strength he later held; in its earliest form it was composed entirely of true runes, but over the ages most of those were altered and diminished, and yet its purpose never changed: it was crafted as a path of evolution, meant to shift and reshape itself in accordance with its wielder's mana.'

As he spoke, another quarter of the runes faded into nothing, while the few that remained pulsed and flickered as though straining against their own light.

'There is nothing inherently dangerous in using it,' Yggdrasil went on, his tone easing though the weight in it never left, 'I would even advise you to do so, but this must be remembered, do not accept everything you witness as truth; doubt even me when necessary, question what is shown, and take nothing whole, lest you end up as Akashic did, a servant bound to the will of another rather than a master in your own right.'

Now nearly all of the runes had vanished, and the low rumble inside Jacob's mind grew so heavy he had to steady himself just to remain upright; his voice came strained and thin as he forced out, 'Why tell me this at all? Couldn't I have simply turned away from it?'.

'The moment your eyes fell upon it, the path was set,' Yggdrasil replied, without the slightest pause. 'What matters now is not whether it comes to you, but whether you resist him or kneel before him.'

Jacob swallowed hard, the dryness in his throat almost painful, and asked again, quieter this time, 'If these runes completely fade…am I going to—'

'You will not die,' Yggdrasil interrupted, 'but I will not be able to speak to you for a time.'

With that, Yggdrasil's presence drew back and slipped away; the faint glimmers of light in Jacob's mind went out, the rumble subsided, and what remained was only silence, heavy and unyielding.

For a while Jacob lay still, watching the last impressions of runes dissolve, until something colder and sharper than silence pressed against him: the sense of being seen. A gaze, detached and merciless, brushed across him, and in that moment his heart faltered, his blood turned sluggish, and the very air felt thinner, as if the world itself were peeling away.

It lasted no more than an instant, a flicker, nothing more, and then it was gone; the chill drained from his veins, his pulse quickened back to life, and the room was once again what it had always been. He lay there for several breaths, chest rising and falling without thought, until at last he managed a whisper into the empty air:

"Yggdrasil…are you still there?"

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