Chapter 90: Might be Looking the Wrong Way

A bright blue cloud of moonstone powder exploded into the air, completely covering the workbench, the oil lamp, and Tibbar’s entire face.

When the dust settled, I sat at the table covered in fine blue dust. Standing across from me was Tibbar. His dark fur, his long ears, his snout, and his green sleeping cap were covered in bright, glowing blue sparkles. He looked like a magical lantern shaped like a rabbit.

I looked at Tibbar. Tibbar looked down at his glowing paws, his jaw dropping in absolute horror.

“Look at me!” Tibbar squeaked, his voice rising two octaves in sheer panic. “I am glowing! Silvester, I look like a fairy godmother from a cheap street play! How am I supposed to sell heavy iron safes to wealthy merchants tomorrow when my nose lights up like a magic torch?”

I tried my best to keep a straight face, but a small chuckle escaped my lips. “It is just moonstone powder, Tibbar. It washes off with plain water.”

“It better wash off!” Tibbar whined, furiously wiping his glowing snout with his sleeve, which only smeared the blue sparkles further across his face. “If the Lord Governor sees me like this, he will think I got cursed by a swamp witch!”

I wiped the remaining powder off the book and sighed. The paper was still completely blank. Not a single line of text had appeared, even after absorbing the moonstone mana. The pages ate the magical energy like a dry sponge absorbing water, leaving behind zero trace.

By the third week, my patience was running dangerously low.

I decided to test the physical and thermal limits of the parchment using the intense heat of my dragon core furnace. In ancient times, some fire mages wrote secret messages using invisible heat runes that only revealed themselves when exposed to open flame.

I opened the heavy iron door of the furnace. The dragon core inside glowed with a terrifying white light, radiating a blast of scorching heat that instantly made the cellar feel like an oven.

I picked up the iron book using a pair of heavy blacksmith tongs, carefully extending the open pages toward the ventilation slot of the furnace.

Tibbar stood near the basement stairs, standing ten feet away and holding a wooden bucket full of well water like a shield. His purple eyes were wide with total terror.

“Silvester, please be careful!” Tibbar yelled over the roaring hum of the furnace. “That fire is hot enough to melt a bronze statue in five seconds! If you set that book on fire, the smoke will set off the palace warning wards and bring Captain Jack’s knights crashing through our roof!”

“The paper is not burning,” I said, keeping my hands steady as I held the parchment an inch away from the white heat.

It was incredible. The heat coming off the furnace was intense enough to char normal wood instantly, but the ancient parchment did not turn black. It did not smoke. It did not warp or curl at the edges.

However, despite the extreme thermal stress, no hidden runes appeared on the paper. The pages remained as clean and white as a fresh sheet of paper from the market.

I pulled the book back from the furnace and closed the iron door. The blast of heat receded, leaving only the soft hum of the dragon core.

I set the book onto my wooden table and let out a long, frustrated sigh. I pulled off my coat, tossed it over the back of my stool, and collapsed onto the seat, rubbing my aching, bloodshot eyes with both hands.

“Nothing,” I muttered quietly, staring down at the open book under the yellow lamp light. “Not a single word. Not a single mark.”

Tibbar set his water bucket down on the floor with a heavy thud. He let out a long breath, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his furry arm, and walked over to the workbench.

He picked up the tea pot he had brought down earlier and poured two cups of dark, steaming herbal tea. He pushed one cup toward me and took a slow sip from his own, letting the warm liquid settle his nervous energy.

“You need to take a break, little master,” Tibbar said softly, sitting down on a small wooden crate across from my table. “You have been working sixteen hours a day in the shop and spending the rest of the night down here. You are human, Silvester. Even a dragon core needs rest.”

“I cannot stop thinking about it, Tibbar,” I said, taking a small sip of the warm tea. The bitter herbal taste helped clear the foggy exhaustion in my head. “The structure of this book is brilliant. The metal casing is made of refined soul steel, which takes decades to forge. The lock was a living conceptual mechanism that required golden authority to open. Why would anyone go through all that trouble just to protect an empty notebook?”

“Maybe the secret was erased,” Tibbar suggested, leaning his elbows against the edge of the table. “You know how those high mages operate during wars. If an enemy army attacks a tower, the mages use holy spells to wipe their spell books clean so the enemy cannot steal their knowledge. Maybe the author wiped the ink clean before they died.”

“If the text was erased with magic, my Locksmith’s Eye would see the residual mana scars on the paper fibers,” I explained, pointing at the clean parchment. “Magic always leaves a trace, Tibbar. No matter how powerful a spell is, when it touches matter, it leaves a mana signature behind. But these pages have zero mana scars. The paper has never been touched by spell ink in its entire existence.”

Tibbar flopped his long ears back, staring at the blank paper with a thoughtful expression on his furry face.

“Well,” Tibbar said slowly, taking another sip of his tea. “If magic did not write it, and magic did not erase it, then maybe you are looking at this whole thing the wrong way.”

I paused, holding my tea cup halfway to my mouth. “What do you mean?”

Before he could answer me, a loud, heavy banging sound echoed from the wooden floorboards above our heads.

“Master Assistant! Master Silvester!”

The wooden trapdoor at the top of the stairs creaked open, and Pip, our new young adult rabbit employee, stuck his head around the doorframe. He looked wide awake and frantic.

“The morning crowd is already gathering outside!” Pip called down the stairs. “There are at least forty people standing on the sidewalk waiting for the shop to open! Two noble stewards are arguing over who gets to place their order first!”

Tibbar jumped up from his wooden crate, his sleepy exhaustion vanishing in a single second as his eyes lit up with pure commercial greed.

“Forty people?!” Tibbar squeaked cheerfully, rubbing his paws together in delight. “Duty calls, little master! Time to go turn plain iron into shiny gold!”

He grabbed his green sleeping cap, pulled it off his head, and scurried up the stone stairs like a lightning bolt.

I looked down at the iron book sitting open on my workbench.

I slowly reached out, closed the heavy iron cover with a quiet metallic thud, and locked it inside the wooden cabinet beneath my table.

I stood up from my stool, wiped my hands on my apron, and headed up the stairs to open the shop.

The answer to the riddle was right in front of me. I just needed the right physical tools to bring it to light.

——–The Next Day——

Silvester woke up before dawn. He walked down the narrow wooden stairs leading into the main showroom of The Earthen Vault. The morning air was cold, but the dragon core furnace down in the cellar was still radiating a pleasant warmth through the floorboards.

He had barely pulled his work apron over his head when a loud thump hit the heavy front door. Then another thump followed right after.

“Open up! I was here first!” a muffled voice shouted from the street outside.

“Liar! I have been standing in this freezing fog since four in the morning!” another voice yelled back.

Silvester shook his head and sat down at his corner workbench. It was not even six in the morning yet, and the crowd was already gathering on the sidewalk outside.

The door to the back kitchen opened with a creak. Tibbar stumbled into the room, holding a steaming mug of black herbal tea in one paw and wiping sleep from his purple eyes with the other. His long grey ears drooped over his shoulders like damp rags.

“Tell me I am dreaming,” Tibbar groaned, leaning against the counter and taking a long sip of his tea. “Tell me those people outside are just bad dreams brought on by eating cheap cheese before bed.”

“They are real, Master Assistant,” Silvester said, picking up a small brass file. “And by the sound of their shouting, there are at least twenty of them out there already.”

Enjoying the journey? Don’t let the adventure stop here!