The Devil's Son and His Fated Bride
Chapter 116: Historians’ Tower II

Chapter 116: Historians’ Tower II

"Please, follow me inside!" Master Doko requested, his voice echoing faintly beneath the towering archway. He was more like a walking statue.

Ren stepped across the threshold, and the breath caught in her throat.

The interior was nothing short of extraordinary. This was extravagantly unreal! Vaulted ceilings soared high above, each ribbed arch intricately carved and painted with sprawling, celestial frescoes. Colors danced across the curved stone, depicting forgotten legends, ancient wars, and crowned figures whose names had long been swallowed by time. But this place remembered them; vaults twisted upward like the spines of great tomes stacked upon each other; each level, she realized, must hold a hidden Chapter of history.

It was more than a library. It was a sanctum.

Magic thrummed in the very air, silent yet present, calm and reverent, like a held breath. Even the light was otherworldly. No windows graced the walls, no candles or greased torches. Instead, floating crystals hummed in suspension, casting a soft, silver-blue glow that poured over the marble floors like moonlight. These people hardly could realize daylight or nightfall.

"Master Doko," Ren asked quietly, her gaze still lifted to the marvels above, "may I ask a question?"

She did not doubt that questions were welcome here. Curiosity, not status, was the only currency of value within these walls.

"Of course, Milady," the old man replied warmly.

His manner, like the rest of the Tower’s keepers, was strikingly different from those who clung to courtly titles. Here, no one bowed or scrambled to impress, no disgusting flattery here. A few figures passed her without so much as a nod, their eyes fixed on their scrolls, lost in their own pursuits.

In this place, knowledge reigned, and pride had no seat.

"This place has no windows," Ren noted, her brow furrowing. "Only those crystals give off light. Why is that?"

A flicker of amusement touched Master Doko’s lips, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared and didn’t help much to change his hard expression. Her question had caught him off guard, not because it was foolish, but because it wasn’t. He’d expected indignation or boredom from a royal visitor. Instead, he found wonder.

And perhaps, he thought, that made all the difference.

"Allowing dust or extravagant light into this place could untie centuries of woven effort," Master Doko explained. "Scrolls fade. Ink vanishes. Paper crumbles. Bugs will seize to eat leather. But those crystals?" He gestured toward the softly glowing stones suspended above them. "They’re harmless and protective. We acquired them from the Fae, they contain a gentle magic, purely for illumination and keeping bugs away."

Ren nodded slowly, her lips parted in silent wonder as her gaze swept across the grandeur trickling from every carved wall and painted ceiling. The sheer reverence of the place and it could not just be seen, it could be felt.

Her eyes drifted to the rows of stone booths tucked beneath the ribbed vaults. Historians sat hunched over massive, leather-bound tomes, their quills dancing in a steady rhythm. Scrolls lay unfurled across their desks, while ancient ink gleamed beneath the crystal light. Carts rolled past, piled with tightly bound scrolls, dozens, hundreds. Each one was meant to be a memory retrieved and recorded.

Master Doko followed her gaze and smiled, eyes twinkling. "Curious where they all came from, aren’t you?"

Ren’s lips curved faintly. The man was observant.

"Are you a mind reader, Master Doko?"

"I’m just an old man who’s spent too long watching people," he said with a chuckle.

He gestured for her to follow once more, leading her down a quieter corridor. At its end stood a small, iron-bound door, plain and unassuming, and yet something about it made her spine straighten.

"So," she asked softly, "what’s the answer?"

He paused before the door. "We don’t just archive history here," he said. "We cultivate it. This is not merely a library, it’s an academy. Every historian you saw has been trained here and sent across the world to witness, to document, to preserve. Wars, treaties, births, betrayals... we gather it all."

He looked at her, assessing. "That’s all I can say, Milady."

But he didn’t need to say more. Ren’s mind was already stitching the rest together. This place was not just a vault of stories, it was a living, breathing organism, constantly expanding. She loved it. And she, for the first time in a long while, felt as if she were standing on the edge of something far greater than herself.

"I get it," Ren murmured. "They’re the ones who sent these scrolls."

There was admiration in her voice, quiet, but unwavering. She loved the devotion etched into every movement of the historians, the solemn way they bent over parchment as if the ink itself were sacred. Of course, it was. This wasn’t just work. It was a life’s calling. They weren’t simply archiving facts; they were rescuing truths from the jaws of time, truths that might have vanished forever, buried in graves, or lost in ash, if not for their hands.

And that thought... unsettled her. How terrifying, to live blind. To walk through life with no idea what came before you, repeating the same missteps, dancing in circles on the graves of forgotten lessons.

A cold fury coiled in her chest as her thoughts turned inward. Her footsteps slowed.

Her parents retained so many forbidden acts and urged themselves to wrap the past in silence, sealed doors that should’ve been opened generations ago. But they hadn’t searched for answers. They hadn’t questioned why this was forbidden for them to be together. They hadn’t tried to understand the dangers; they had merely covered them, like rot beneath fine rugs.

And because of that, people had died and were dying. Casualties. Losses that could have been avoided. Ren’s jaw tensed. A selfish ruler didn’t just fail their people, they fed them to the wolves. Or worse... placed their necks beneath the fangs of monsters with blood-slicked smiles.

They reached the door.

Without a word, Master Doko reached out and twisted a strange mechanism embedded in the iron. The lock clicked with a sound that felt far older than any key. The key had a twisted shape too. Like a crooked double-end needle.

"Now," Master Doko asked, his voice echoing faintly as he pushed the heavy door open, "what book are you hoping to read?"

Ren didn’t answer right away. Her breath hitched as the door creaked inward, revealing a spiral stairway descending into shadow. But this darkness wasn’t oppressive, it glowed with a strange, warm life.

Instead of torches, small niches carved into the walls cradled orange-hued floating crystals. Their soft glow pulsed like tiny heartbeats, casting fluid patterns across the stone steps. The spiral seemed endless like it had been carved into the bones of the world itself.

It was... beautiful. Ethereal. Like descending into a dream her ancestors had once walked. A quiet yearning stirred in her chest. She wanted to see her mother’s birthplace one day. These crystals were from there.

The descent took longer than expected. The spiral narrowed, then slowly widened again until they reached a vast, open space, an underground venue with nearly twenty rib-vaulted corridors branching off like the roots of a great tree. The architecture alone defied belief.

This floor felt like a world in itself, too vast to map in a single lifetime. A person could vanish in here, disappear between aisles of forgotten truths, and never be found. Ren’s eyes scanned the chamber.

Empty?

No, wait...Zero historians here?! And then she felt a presence. A mysterious air coated them, and its color of aura was, rainbow! What did this mean? Mystery!

This chapt𝒆r is updated by free(w)ebnovel(.)com