Roswaal painted the picture piece by piece, and with every detail, the weight of what Gojo had done pressed a little heavier.
Centuries ago, Beatrice's mother, the Witch of Greed Echidna, had bound her to a promise: guard the Forbidden Library and wait for the arrival of "that person." No description. No name. No clues of any kind. Just a command to wait.
The Book of Wisdom in Beatrice's hands possessed fragments of prophetic power. It was her compass, her only means of verifying whether someone who walked through the Library's doors might be the one she'd been promised.
At some point, for reasons no one understood, the book had stopped producing prophecies altogether. Its pages had gone blank. A tome of nothing.
Gojo leaned back, letting the story settle against the memories of his previous loops. Things clicked into place.
Every time he'd entered the Forbidden Library, Beatrice had been sitting by the door, turning the pages of that blank book as though something new might appear if she looked hard enough. It wasn't a lack of interests or hobbies. It wasn't that she wanted to spend eternity sealed inside that lonely room.
It was the promise.
"For a Spirit, four hundred years is nowhere near the end of a lifespan," Roswaal said, his voice carrying a rare note of gravity. "But for Beatrice, four hundred years inside the Forbidden Library has been a slow kind of torture. That Book of Wisdom was her last hope. And now..."
He trailed off with a gentle shake of his head. Regret. Pity. Both at once.
That last hope had been erased.
"No wonder she reacted the way she did." Gojo spoke quietly, almost to himself. Understanding reshaped his expression. "Her real problem isn't the book. It's what's been eating at her from the inside all this time."
He drained the rest of his tea in one go and set the cup down on the desk.
"Thanks for telling me. And for the tea. Both helped more than you'd think."
"Is that so? I'm glad to have been of service."
Roswaal smiled and nodded as Gojo waved over his shoulder and walked out. The smile lingered after the door closed, deepening by a fraction.
Only once the footsteps had faded did Ram materialize in the room, wordlessly gathering the used teacup.
"Quite the restless one, isn't he."
"He is. Rem is currently beside herself over the damage to that wall."
Ram's tone was flat. Factual.
"Poor Rem. Still, let's not allow that to color our opinion of our guest." Roswaal folded his hands beneath his chin. "I'm curious to see what they do next. How far they're willing to go."
"Understood. I'll keep an eye on Rem."
Outside the study, Gojo didn't return to his room. Instead, he wandered the halls, opening doors at random, until finally one of them gave way to the Forbidden Library.
He stepped inside.
The chair by the entrance was empty.
No small figure perched there, no sound of pages turning. The teapot on the table had gone cold.
Gojo moved deeper into the silence, drifting past rows of shelves that stretched toward the ceiling. He found her in the farthest corner, in the one spot where the lamplight barely reached.
Beatrice sat on the floor with her knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She didn't look up when he approached. No outburst, no insult, no flash of anger. Nothing at all.
He sat down beside her on the cold floor.
"I talked to Roswaal. He told me about you."
No response.
"He told me what that book meant to you."
Silence.
"So the apology I owe you is a real one."
He took off his sunglasses and looked at her directly.
"I'm sorry."
Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstances, stripping someone of their last hope wasn't something he could justify.
"But."
He leaned against the wall and tilted his head back, staring up at the ornate ceiling. One finger traced a slow, idle line across the stone floor.
"Part of you wanted to be free of all this. Didn't it?"
Beatrice didn't move.
"What you told me about destroying the book... yeah, most of it was a prank. But somewhere underneath that, there was a part of you that wanted someone to cut the chains. To end the waiting."
"What right do you have to say that?" The words came sharp and fast, a knife drawn from a sheath. "What makes you think you can say any of that? You hear a few things from Roswaal and you think you understand Betty?"
She was on the defensive, raw and exposed, striking back at the hand that had found the wound.
Gojo didn't flinch. His finger kept tracing its slow path along the floor. Those ice-blue eyes, uncovered and unguarded, swept across the quiet Library.
"You're right. I don't have that right."
"The hope you lost... I can't restore it. I can't make you forget any of this happened."
"Then why are you still talking?" Her voice cracked at the edges. "Betty doesn't need you here saying these things. This... all of this... Betty got used to it a long time ago. The Forbidden Library, the waiting... she's used to it. She'll honor the promise she made to her mother."
"Betty. If that person appeared, what would you do?"
The question cut through her rising emotion like a blade through fog.
"Become their Spirit, like Puck? Sign a Contract and go out into the world with them?"
She faltered.
"If you answer that," Gojo added, "I'll leave you alone. Promise."
The bait dangled. Beatrice stared at nothing for a long moment.
"Yes. I'd form a Contract with them. Become their Spirit." Each word landed like a stone dropped into still water. "Happy now? Then get out."
The answer had barely left her lips when Gojo raised his index and middle fingers.
"Domain Expansion."
"Unlimited Void."
The words fell, and reality shattered.
Black and white flooded the Forbidden Library in an instant, power saturating every surface, every molecule of air. Within that colorless void, iridescent light flickered like aurora, ghosting through the emptiness in shimmering waves.
Beatrice froze. Every muscle, every thought, locked in place. A statue carved from a living girl.
"Sorry. Bear with me for a moment."
Gojo rose to his feet, his voice calm.
"I can't bring back what you lost."
He turned to face her, and a brilliant grin broke across his face.
"But I can destroy what's been holding you prisoner."
"It's a bit presumptuous, I know. But I think it's a decent solution." He winked. "If you hate me for it afterward, we can negotiate the punishment then."
Beatrice hadn't moved. Her eyes hadn't blinked. But inside the Unlimited Void, her consciousness blazed.
What... what is this?
Shamak? No. There's no Mana fluctuation at all. And the effect is the opposite of Shamak.
Why do my senses feel like this? Why can I perceive everything? All of it, all at once... why do I need to know all of this?
While the Void held Beatrice suspended, Gojo lifted her gently from the floor, cradling her small form in his arms. Red light began to gather at his fingertip.
"If I remember right, the Forbidden Library is technically a form of Yin Attribute magic. A section of space, fixed and solidified through a sustained magical framework. Essentially an isolated pocket dimension."
"So whatever happens in here shouldn't affect the outside."
He paused.
"Well. Hopefully a Royal Candidate is worth more to Roswaal than his mansion."
Still speaking, he carried Beatrice to the Library's entrance and pushed the door open. He drew a deep breath, cheeks puffing slightly, and shouted through the gap.
"Subaru! Get everyone to the courtyard! Please!"
Out in the east wing, Subaru had been helping Rem repair the earlier damage alongside Emilia. Gojo's voice reached him and he looked around, confused.
"Everyone to the courtyard? What's going on?"
He scratched his head. But if Gojo was asking, there was a reason.
"Emilia, let's head to the courtyard. Sounds like Gojo needs us for something."
She'd been worried about Beatrice since the earlier incident. She nodded without hesitation.
Rem, standing nearby, wrinkled her nose. "I don't know what that guest of ours is planning, but making the master wait in the yard seems rather discourteous." Her gaze shifted to Emilia. "Lady Emilia, perhaps we should consult Lord Roswaal before deciding."
Leaving Emilia alone with this man she'd only met today, a man who reeked of the Witch's scent, was something Rem refused to allow. If anything happened, it would create problems for Roswaal. As a maid, it was her duty to prevent that.
"Well..." Emilia glanced between Subaru and Rem, caught between them.
"It's fine. We're all going to the same place anyway. Saves me the extra trips." Subaru shrugged. Together worked best.
The three of them reached the ground floor hall to find Roswaal and Ram already there.
"It seems our esteemed guest has run into a small complication." Roswaal didn't seem bothered by the summons. If anything, he sounded amused.
The group filed outside into the courtyard. Dusk had settled over the estate, blurring the edges of everything. They scanned the grounds but saw no sign of Gojo.
"Gojo! We're in the courtyard! Where are you?" Subaru cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled.
Standing at the threshold of the Forbidden Library, Gojo heard him and smiled.
"Perfect. That's everyone."
At his fingertip, a sphere of pure black had materialized at some point during the exchange, swelling steadily, ringed by a fierce crimson glow.
"Let's end this."
He flicked it forward.
The black sphere detonated like compressed annihilation given form, its energy guided with surgical precision. Under the Six Eyes' vision, Gojo had mapped every line of magical current flowing through the Forbidden Library, every node and junction. The sphere struck the densest convergence point, the very heart of the framework that held this space together.
Crimson light erupted.
Gojo stepped back with the same ease as someone avoiding a puddle, crossing the threshold out of the Library and into the corridor of Roswaal's mansion.
The Forbidden Library, unchanged for centuries, broke.
Under the force of Cursed Technique Reversal: Red, the magic circle that had sustained this pocket of fixed space was obliterated. The Mana holding it all in place went haywire, unraveling in every direction.
A single door had separated two realities.
On the other side, what had been a tranquil library now looked like a science-fiction nightmare, space itself tearing apart at the seams. Shelves, books, carpets, chandeliers... everything was shredded by the collapsing dimensions, ripped to fragments and swallowed into the void.
In an instant, the Forbidden Library that had stood for hundreds of years ceased to exist.
The carved-out space dissolved, its Mana dissipating, merging back into the fabric of the world. Where the Library had been, there was nothing. Not rubble, not wreckage. Nothing at all. As though it had never existed in the first place.
One final pulse of Mana burst outward.
The shockwave roared through the doorframe.
Gojo cradled Beatrice against his chest and turned his shoulder into it.
The blast washed past them. It caught the hem of Beatrice's dress, fluttering it, and nothing more. Then it continued on toward the wall behind them.
A thunderous crash.
Every window in the corridor shattered. The solid stone wall split open, a gap several meters wide punched clean through it.
Through the breach, the courtyard was clearly visible. So were Roswaal and everyone else, staring up at the destruction.
Every pair of eyes locked onto the figure standing in the gap, Beatrice in his arms.
Gojo looked down at them, then glanced left and right. The Forbidden Library's door had opened, by sheer coincidence, in the exact same spot where he and Beatrice had blown through the wall earlier that evening.
Rem, he recalled, had been trying to patch that hole.
Now, not only had all her work been for nothing, the damage was at least ten times worse.
He cleared his throat.
"So, hypothetically, if I told you we were attacked by an enemy, Beatrice got knocked out, I defeated the attacker, and accidentally broke a wall in the process... would you believe me?"
Down in the courtyard, Felt stood among the others, watching Gojo spin his ridiculous story from the demolished second floor.
Her faith in him died on the spot.
Having this guy on your side is worse than having ten enemies. Absolute liability.
...
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