By the time Cira made it to the village, the sun was already falling. Thin rays of fleeting light rose from below, but the mages had already turned to making their own. All was quiet save for the occasional cough, sniffle, or yawn.

  While a far cry from the excitement of last night, the village’s population seemed to have exploded. She got the impression that Old Man Roberts’ tale had spread around Icarus and inspired a new or returning wave of scholars. Even as night fell, most here showed no sign of finding a bookmark. On the other hand, some of the light mages appeared overwhelmed, huddled around by large swathes of desperate readers.

  Being the kindhearted sorcerer Cira was, she spread out a sea of bright stars like she had in Uru. Countless miniature Lamplights overtook the village in a twinkling ambience and Cira popped up on a cloud to lounge back.

  “Hey, thanks! I thought I was going to have to go to bed.” A voice called from the back of one of the mage herds, “It’s Cira, right?”

  “Ah, good evening.” It was the woman she met when the archive’s mark descended. After such a long night, her name escaped Cira. “What are you reading?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore…” There was a troubled undertone in her voice, “It started as an anthropologist’s expeditionary notes through a jungled island, but it’s descended into philosophical ramblings and claims of absurd creatures. I believe the author may have been struck with some mental ailment during his trip.”

  “Oh… Poor him, I suppose.” Cira started perusing the bookcases for a spine that struck her eye. “Say, why don’t you guys use artifacts here? Seems like an easy solution if torches aren’t allowed.”

  “You haven’t tried using a spatial ring here have you?” Cira did just that to withdraw some dried meats she had stashed and discovered she was completely blocked off. As if the jerky existed in another realm entirely. Just for kicks she tried to grab some treasure and found the pouch at her waist refused to expand. Noticing her confusion, the woman continued, “There are many things the archive does not allow in this village. Staves are only usable as they focus your will but do much more than make light with them and the Archive may take issue.”

  “Good to know.” Cira gave her a smile, “Thank you.”

  She returned the gesture, “I can’t tell you how to find the mark, but if you’re unsure about anything, I’ll be right here.”

  Settling back into her cloud, Cira noticed a torn old leather book and decided that would be the one. While her confidence didn’t waver, her mood trembled slightly.

  “The Sorcerer’s Compendium, Volume One…” Situated in the bottom corner was the same ‘G’ insignia her father used to stamp letters with.

  Well… it has been a while. For all the people I’ve been forcing to read it, I suppose I owe it another go. Perhaps I will find new insights now that I’m a real sorcerer.

  “Chapter One: The Day I conquered the Sky.

  To many, home is something assigned at birth. But to others, no more than a horizon’s shadow in the morning light. As the world turns, golden dreams give way to blanched clouds and the melancholy sea of azure. Uncrossable is the ocean which proves intangible.

  Man boasts no buoyancy here. And I hold no power over my fate.

  Even if I could swim, the sea is too vast. Even if I wanted to try, the walls around me are too tall. Even if I tried to climb them, the bricks would climb ever higher.

  Here I stand on the precipice of futility, where earth meets the sky. I wear the collar of a thousand hopeless days under the taunting sun and my neck has started to burn beneath its weight.

  Much longer and I fear I may melt into the very soil in which my ancestors grew such deep roots. Only through lifetimes and generations of focused effort will I reach my potential, they say. Devote myself to the pursuit, they say. Only then may I consider the world beyond, they say.

  Yet every head who offers wisdom is covered in gray hair and the lips who speak these words are wrinkled and cracked from who knows how many lifetimes of ‘reaching one’s potential’.

  When does it end?

  I don’t know if humans are meant to exist in the clouds, but I do know one thing.

  I will not spend eternity in search of eternity.

  What good is following my father’s footsteps if I know where they lead in some centuries’ time? That’s not potential. I refuse to waste my life chasing the past. Experience may be one thing I lack, but I’m old enough to know where each circle leads.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Today I break the cycle. These old fools don’t understand they can never reach what they seek if all they do is chase after it.

  I have built my own eternity here and now.

  As the aggression of prosperity and stagnation alike close around me, this precipice of futility will be given new life as the wind at my back. Across the melancholy sea to the furthest land beneath the unseen stars, this haven wrought by my own hand and soaked in my blood and tears shall soar over the clouds as a fresh breeze…

  It didn’t take long for Cira to fall asleep, but she didn’t find her father’s ramblings so drab this time around. For once she thought she knew where he was coming from.

  Morning came and Cira felt a knot in her neck. She had fallen asleep sitting with her back against a bookcase and her head was slumped to the side. The woman she spoke to was in a similar position, snoring gently with a peaceful look on her face.

  “Alright then, where was I…” Her voice died in her throat as Gazen’s tome was no longer present. In its place was a shoddy notebook handwritten on parchment and bound with leather straps at the top. “Why, Archive? I was really enjoying that one…”

  Cira had always believed in her father’s ideals. The sorcerer’s code manifest.

  He made me read and transcribe that book so many times… I did everything I could to follow in his shadow so that I may grow into it one day. To become the perfect sorcerer.

  But no matter how far I progressed, he kept telling me to read the first volume again. Why?

  As a girl, Cira took it to mean she still hadn’t progressed past the first step. It hurt her feelings initially, but as she grew older, she figured he was just tooting his own horn. There was no way to deny she had grown leaps and bounds. He was just an eccentric who fancied his own musings.

  But now I’m not so sure… The Archive gave me the book to read and decided I had read enough by the time I fell asleep. This can’t be coincidence. I never really did pass the first step to sorcery… did I?

  Cira had never looked at it this way. Not that she wasn’t smart enough or strong enough, but this perspective could never be reached while her father was alive.

  “What good is following my father’s footsteps if I know where they lead in some centuries’ time?”

  “Shh!”

  “Sorry…” Cira sheepishly took her cloud a little closer to the shore to think away from the others.

  Her father set her up in every way possible to walk the same path as him, but the truth was written right before her, in the very first words she ever read as a sorcerer.

  Cira was never meant to become a sorcerer like Gazen. She was never going to become a sage. There was no point in chasing the past as she barreled toward an uncertain future.

  After all… Dad is gone. I know where that path leads. But I can soar through the sea he once waded through, and I have the power to break through the walls that close around me. Where he once found melancholy, I’ve always known hope. Since the night I first laid eyes on the dawning horizon, to the day I could finally pass it by.

  Cira had a lot to think about, but it couldn’t be done in a single morning. While she was here, it was best to keep her eyes forward.

  ‘Archon of Wisdom’. The notebook was titled thusly with a name scribbled in the corner, ‘Atticus Graves’.

  The man, if I can even call him that, is like no one I’ve ever met. He already knew my name as I walked through the door and my purpose for seeking him out. Many try, apparently, but not so many actually succeed in finding him. I suspect this is why he humored me past my mission.

  Just as I had hoped, he knew of a medicine that could cure my wife, and even gave me directions to find it. But it was what came after that I will never forget. As I couldn’t fly home until the storm broke, he let me stay in his home, a tower which looked over a verdant island where a sweet scent blew on the breeze.

  He offered to trade stories while we waited. I started with a strange creature I saw in the woods one day as a child, which he promptly identified and told me enough about to write a book on.

  When it came to be his turn, boy did he not disappoint.

  He spoke of the void, and the beginning of creation leading up to the first life. This was no tale of hopeful beginnings however, for it was the story of this realm’s first tragedy. The life and death of the world tree. An incomprehensible being from which all life in these skies originates. Millions of years pass in his story—a timescale I found myself incapable of imagining.

  I had a feeling he could have kept going indefinitely by the time I realized morning broke. The sky was clear and I couldn’t waste any more time, but I found it difficult to give up this source of knowledge. I tried to arrange a future date where we could speak more, but he refused.

  Instead, he told me another tale, albeit a much shorter one. He spoke of door in the distant skies. A passageway to a place I could find anything I wanted to know and more, where all the knowledge of this world is contained.

  Cira found herself surprisingly engrossed, but a harsh shout drew her back to the village.

  “I said give me it!” Some very angry man was grabbing for another’s book—trying to take it from her very hands, “Every damn book I get is useless. I’ll never find the mark like this!”

  Cira noticed a tumultuous purple haze dancing in the air. No way… can someone really steal a mark? How does he know it’s in that book?

  “I—I can’t give it to you!” A poor young woman frantically backed away as the others nearby watched the situation carefully. “The Archive chose this book for me!”

  The purple energy trickled down and Cira thought the Archive was going to give the girl a mark out of spite.

  This isn’t right… It’s not like the other night at all. Instead of gentle swirls flowing down like water, it devolved into heavy smoke that fell like rain. Cira swore she could almost feel a tinge of malice blanketing the village.

  “I wasn’t asking!” A knife glistened in the sun as he withdrew it from his sleeve. “Now hurry up before I have to—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, the Archive’s mana condensed around the hapless assailant, and he was ripped from the ground. So suddenly he could hardly scream, everyone in the village watched the man get thrown into the sky. Completely taken off guard, Cira’s mouth hung slack as he disappeared through a distant cloud.