At dawn, the crowd had already been cleared from the alley, and the blood was drying in the same cracks that water had filled during the night. The constables went around, asking stupid questions which would inevitably lead to the case being abandoned and Adrian, just for this one time, realized it was probably a good thing. In his mind he kept seeing the way the man's body had stood up again, like a puppet with its strings tugged by an invisible, hand. If there was magic like that in the world, then he preferred not knowing anything about it.
Obviously, the corpse, if you could call it that, was gone.
By the time they reached the quiet edge of campus where the old library loomed like a cathedral, Helge finally spoke.
"We can't keep doing this," he said.
Adrian stopped. "Doing what?"
"Running around blindly. Praying the next one bleeds when we stab him." He looked back toward the east wing, where Lao Zhe's office light still burned like a watchful eye. "Last night, I got lucky with the binding spell, it wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been raining. We need something stronger."
Adrian said nothing, but he didn't look away from Helge.
"There's power in that scroll," Helge continued. "I can feel it. Every time I see it, it's like the room bends around it. And he treats it almost like a diary, carrying it around at all times."
Adrian raised a brow. "You want to steal it."
Helge didn't deny it. "It's the only thing in this place that might have the kind of spells we need. Unless of course you think we can storm the royal library or the inquisition's headquarters."
"That's not a grimoire," Adrian muttered. "Or at least I don't think it is. Using artifacts you don't know the full power of never ends well."
"I'm not saying we read it during a ritual," Helge said quickly. "Not unless we're sure. But if we had it, we could study it, test it for a while, learn what it is. Lao Zhe won't just give it up. Not to students and not when he knows we've been near magic."
"That's your assumption, maybe he hasn't noticed yet." Adrian looked out over the low wall that marked the edge of campus. The fog had settled again over Weyer, curling around chimneys and roofs like a hand gripping the city's throat. Only then he realized what Helge was actually saying.
"You want me to take his face," he stated.
"I want you to get us close," Helge replied. "You can do it. You use your spell to look like a professor, go in after hours, open the gates to me. You take the scroll. I'll cover your escape."
Adrian didn't answer for a while. A few leaves blew down from the marigolds lining the path.
"This is the point of no return, you know," he finally said. "After this, we stop being students playing at secrets. This is theft. From someone who knows what that scroll can do. If he catches me—"
"Adrian, my friend, you are the one that proposed murder the other day. You don't get to freak out over theft," Helge interrupted, too quickly. "And besides, your skills are almost made for this. We'll be fine."
Adrian looked at him. "You don't believe that."
"No, of course I don't," Helge readly admitted. "But I do believe we're going to die if we don't change something. I don't know about you, but I still have things to do in this life."
Another silence fell between them.
"Alright," Adrian said. "We do it clean. No heroics. No unnecessary damage. We get in, get the scroll, and get out. What if it is warded?"
"Then we'll know just how far out of our depth we really are."
Adrian nodded. But there was no relief in it.
Just the quiet knowledge that, somewhere in the dark of this city, something was beginning to watch them more closely.
It was just after nine when Erika and Helge slipped through the rear garden gate. Adrian led the way. He looked exactly like their professor, down to the last detail. He had stayed after closing hours with the excuse of reorganizing documents and then, after no more than one hour, he had opened the rear gate to randevoux with his fellow students.
Erika crouched beside the lock of the professor's laboratory, gloved fingers moving with surprising ease. "This one's new," she whispered. "Not university standard. Imported from the Emirates, I suspect."
Adrian watched the empty hallway beyond. "Can you do it?"
"Two years ago I saw a burglar open the safe in our family countryside villa using only an hairpin, and I strongly suspect the man was drunk. I should manage."
"And you didn't stop the thief?" Helge asked, already imagining the answer as he spoke. Erika's spell made every bit of her life matter, she would not have skipped on any rare experiences.
"No, it was only my father's money after all. And besides, I knew learning lockpicking would turn out to be useful at some point."
A pause, then the tiniest click.
She turned, a satysfied smile on her face. "We're in. You can thank me later."
Inside, the air changed. It was colder here. Not the night's damp kind of cold, but something glacial, like being inside a vault beneath the ocean. It was the same feeling the professor gave off, decided Helge.
He closed the door behind them. "Don't touch anything but the scroll."
Erika glanced at him confused. "We're already committing theft and breaking a dozen university rules. Might as well—"
"Don't," Adrian ordered sharply. "We're not here for relics. Just the scroll."
The laboratory was neat. Too neat. The beakers had been scrubbed. The workbench glowed faintly under the lamplight. On the desk on the far right, the scroll sat atop a silk cloth, pinned at each end with polished stones that gleamed because of the moonlight coming through one of the windows.
"Careful," Helge murmured.
Adrian reached forward— then stopped right in his tracks. Something was wrong. The moment his skin neared the scroll, the air rippled.
Helge's voice was low. "It's warded."
Adrian swallowed. "Yeah. I noticed."
Erika's eyes scanned the room. "There might be a trigger word. Or a gesture. Some kind of—"
She didn't manage to finish, because the stones pinning the scroll began to hum.
Adrian yanked his hand back.
The hum became a screech. Sharp, like iron on glass.
Then the walls shuddered.
"Go!" Helge shouted.
They moved fast — Erika led the way, slamming the door open just as symbols flared in the hallway. Red sigils ignited along the walls, pulsing in a rhythm Adrian felt in his bones.
Security enchantments. Not lethal. Yet. They ran, down two flights, through the east corridor, across the long courtyard whose fountains had already frozen despite it only being the beginning of winter. Footsteps echoed somewhere behind them. Real or not, they couldn't tell.
The final gate was locked. Helge swore in three different languages.
"We sould have went for the other one! Do you have this key as well?"
Adrian didn't. He prepared to break it with one of the spells he had kept from the others, but Erika stopped him and bent the metal like it was thread — some borrowed muscle memory from a strongman she once watched at a fair. Even so, her spells only allowed her to copy movements, not physical capabilities. In other words, she was forcing her body to perform an impossible action. It worked, but left her completely drained of all energies. Adrian had to carry her for the rest of the way.
They were out.
Breathless, wide-eyed, hearts pounding like war drums.
The scroll wasn't with them.
But the weight of what they had done was.