On Monday morning of the third week, all the students who hadn’t yet left were summoned to the lecture hall.
Several associate professors and lecturers had suddenly appeared in the lecture hall to audit, along with a few middle-aged men in formal attire that Richard didn’t quite recognize.
They all wore the same emblem on their chests: an owl encircled by a laurel wreath, the symbol of the Classical Society.
Pendleton had come in earlier to replace the cushion on the main lecturer’s chair.
Richard understood. Someone important was coming today.
Sure enough.
The large oak door at the back of the lecture hall was pushed open from the outside. Pendleton was the first to enter.
He turned sideways to hold the door fully open. Without a word, he shot a look at the members of the Classical Society standing near the lecturer’s podium.
The first one to step across the threshold was Professor Mortimer.
The old man was still dressed in his dated, black woolen formal suit, the head of his cane worn black with age.
Leaning on his cane with one hand and holding his chipped teacup in the other, he shuffled slowly toward the platform.
Two tea leaves floated in the cup, the brew so pale it was almost colorless.
Richard was sitting in the center of the front row.
He had been puzzled before coming in. Seating for large lectures was always assigned based on order of arrival.
He hadn’t been particularly early or late, so how had he ended up with the best seat, dead center in the front row? Now he knew.
The man who followed Professor Mortimer through the door seemed to make the very air in the lecture hall grow heavy.
He was also an old man with a full head of white hair, but his age was not the first thing one would notice.
He stood a full two heads taller than the stooped Professor Mortimer. His dark gray suit was exquisitely tailored, yet it failed to conceal the powerful build beneath.
Richard’s Breathing slowed.
Both professors had their Ether concealed perfectly.
An ordinary person in the lecture hall would probably just think that two rather dignified old gentlemen had entered, and nothing more.
But Richard was in the front row, closer than anyone.
He could sense the two ridiculously vast pools of Ether. Their surfaces were perfectly placid, but he could not be fooled about the sheer weight that lay beneath.
The silver ring on his chest remained quiet, not growing cold... The two professors bore him no ill will.
Pendleton stepped up to the podium and began his introduction.
"Everyone." He cleared his throat. "Today, two of our esteemed elders have taken time from their schedules to give you a lecture."
"Professor Mortimer, I’m sure you all recognize him."
"And the other." Pendleton turned and gestured toward the white-haired giant.
"Is Professor Hector Macphie."
A faint stir went through the lecture hall.
Richard remembered the book *Gaelic Ancient Language Structure and Transformation*. The author’s name printed on the title page was his.
The book had been written twenty years ago, and to this day, it was a staple on the desk of every new student in the Imperial City Classics Department.
A copy of it had been included in the stack of supplementary materials his aunt had sent.
He had always imagined the author of such a book to be a stoop-backed old scholar like Professor Mortimer, someone perennially buried in ancient tomes.
But the man before him looked for all the world like a foreman who had just walked out of a Highland quarry.
A thought surfaced in Richard’s mind.
’Macphie... Macfee.’
’During winter break at Whitcomb, there was that Highlander girl who did an internship with him, Maggie Macfee.’
’The two surnames were only one sound apart.’
’The old families of the Gael Highlands had branched out over hundreds of years.’
’There might actually be some unbreakable tie between this professor and Maggie.’
Richard pushed the thought aside. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
Professor Macphie walked to the center of the stage.
"My thanks to you all."
His voice was not what anyone had expected.
He had the perfect diction of a nobleman’s son, without the slightest hint of a Highland accent.
It was a cadence cultivated over decades spent at the lectern.
The body of a blacksmith, the voice of a poet.
"I shouldn’t have come today."
Macphie folded his large hands in front of him.
"You’re all here to study. It must be terribly dull to have an old man who studies ancient inscriptions lecture you about languages that are long dead."
"But this old codger, Mortimer, insisted I come."
He jutted his chin toward the professor beside him.
The old professor was just leisurely taking a sip from his teacup.
Hearing this, he moved the cup from his lips.
"Macphie," Professor Mortimer said slowly, "this tea is cold."
"...This is your tea," Macphie glanced at him.
"Oh." Old Mo glanced down at the cup in his hand. "Then I must have misremembered."
A few students in the audience struggled to stifle their laughter.
Professor Macphie didn’t use lecture notes.
He picked up a piece of chalk from the lectern and drew several vertical lines on the blackboard.
Then, on either side of the lines, he added a series of short, slanting strokes of varying lengths, all neatly arranged.
"Does anyone recognize this?"
No one in the audience answered.
Montague, sitting on the other side, furrowed his brow slightly, as if he recognized it but wasn’t quite sure.
"Branch Script," Macphie announced.
"It is the most ancient form of writing from the Gael Highlands, carved on Boundary Stones, tombstones, and the standing stones beside holy wells.
A central stem line, with short strokes on either side whose number and direction determine the letter."
"A thousand years ago, the Druids of the Highlands used it to record events, make pacts, and carve names.
Later the Romans came, bringing their Latin alphabet;
and later still the Monasteries came, bringing their Saints.
Layer after layer was laid on top, burying the Branch Script beneath."
He put down the chalk and clapped the dust from his hands.
"The first three Chapters of the copy of *Structure and Transformation* you all have are about how to peel back those layers."
As Richard listened, he thought of the twelve Boundary Stones at Whitcomb.
The Pre-Roman Celtic foundation, the angular style of Romanization, the Church Latin of the Middle Ages—they were all stacked on top of each other, layer by layer.
"Today, I won’t be talking about how to uncover them." Macphie’s tone shifted. "The methods are all in the book. You can read it for yourselves."
"I’m going to talk about something that isn’t in the book."
He paced two steps to the side of the lectern, his weight making the floorboards creak lightly.
"Have you ever considered why the ancients would carve the same name twice?"
"One carved from bottom to top, one from top to bottom."
Macphie’s large hands gestured in two opposite directions in the air.
"Two inscriptions in one place, written in opposing directions, yet their meanings interlock."
"These ancient true names can only be written, not spoken."
The lecture hall fell silent.
"The ancients couldn’t destroy those things, so they used writing to lock them in a prison—one with two opposing doors that could never be shut."
Professor Mortimer had been silent all this time, holding his cup of weak tea.
At this point, he slowly began to speak.
"Macphie, you’ve only told half the story."
Macphie looked over at him. "Oh?"
"You only spoke of how the ancients ’locked’ things away."
Mortimer placed his teacup on the lectern:
"You didn’t speak of how those who came after ’unlocked’ them."
He raised a trembling hand and gestured vaguely at the students below.
"In our line of work, what we do is ’read’."
"The ancients locked things away in words. After hundreds, even thousands of years, the locks loosen, the script erodes, and the ink fades."
The old man’s voice was dry and hoarse.
"And so it falls to us, the scholars, to sit down and read them out, one word at a time."
"Have any of you ever considered what happens when you read aloud something that has been locked away for a millennium?"
No one in the lecture hall made a sound.
Professor Mortimer’s gaze fell on the center of the front row.
"The young man in the center of the front row." Old Mo pretended not to know Richard. "What is your name?"
Richard stood. It seemed he wasn’t getting out of this.
"Professor, my name is Richard Williams,"
"Little Richard." Mortimer smiled at him.
"Why don’t you tell us? What happens when you read aloud something that has been locked away for a millennium?"
Richard composed himself.
"The act of reading, in itself, has weight."
"The one who reads thinks they are merely ’looking,’ but the thing behind the door uses that gaze to ’look’ back."
Richard paused to carefully formulate his next words.
"Therefore, the first thing we students must learn is which doors must not be opened, and which things must not be looked upon."
Professor Mortimer picked up his teacup, took a sip of tea, and said nothing.
Professor Macphie, however, fixed his piercing gaze on Richard.
"You’ve read a Boundary Stone," Macphie said, his voice certain.
"Only someone who has personally unsealed something could speak like that."
Richard neither denied nor admitted it.
"I did an internship under a Guide once."
"Where?"
"Whitcomb."
Macphie nodded and didn’t press further.
He turned back to the blackboard and lectured for over an hour more.
He spoke of how, in Branch Script, worn-out letters could be reconstructed from their remaining strokes;
how Monastery scribes rewrote "Daughter of the Earth" as "Devil in the Crypt";
how on a standing stone by a Highland holy well, the same line of text had been altered three times by people from three different eras, and even today, half of it remains undeciphered.
As he spoke of these things, his intimidating aura subsided.
All that remained at the lectern was a gentle, refined old scholar, who, sentence by sentence, breathed warmth back into words that had been dead for a thousand years.
But Richard was in the front row, closer than anyone.
And for a fleeting moment or two, he perceived something else.
A scholar speaking of dead languages should show patience and a sense of loss.
But what radiated from this man had nothing to do with loss.
At the end of the lecture, Macphie put down the chalk.
"In the days to come, you will all read many things."
"Some you will understand, some you could read for a lifetime and still not fully comprehend."
"I will leave you with a single piece of advice... If you come across something you cannot decipher, do not force it.
Set it aside. Wait until you have advanced to a higher Tier, then come back to it."
"Studying is not something to be rushed."
Professor Mortimer added from the side.
"My old friend here is right."
"If you can’t decipher something, set it aside. I’ve lived a long time, and the things I’ve set aside would pile higher than this old bag of bones."
"But I’m not in a hurry." He took a sip of tea.
"Read slowly. In the end, any demon or monster becomes nothing more than a text that can be edited and erased."
"Do you all have any questions?" Macphie scanned the audience.
From the first row to the last, no one made a sound.
With two Grand Masters standing on the platform, not even these scions of great houses, who considered themselves a cut above the rest, dared to raise their heads.
After a long silence, someone in the back row raised their hand.
It was Philips.
Richard turned his head to watch the guy stand up, a sudden sense of foreboding washing over him.
"Professor Macphie." Philips maintained his usual lazy demeanor, even in front of the two professors.
"I have a question. It’s not about inscriptions, but I’ve been dying to ask."
Macphie looked over at him. "Go on."
"I’ve heard that in the Highlands, there’s a type of whisky smoked with peat and aged in sherry casks, and that the taste is second to none."
Philips gave a thumbs-up.
"Since you’re a Highlander, Professor, I was hoping you could tell me—which distillery makes the most authentic kind?"
The lecture hall was dead silent.
Montague sighed. Richard put his hand to his forehead.
Several scions of great families turned their heads, glaring at the reckless fool.
On the platform, the chiseled stone of Professor Macphie’s face remained taut for two seconds.
Then, a booming laugh rumbled up from his chest, so powerful it made the lectern tremble.
"Good lad." He pointed at Philips.
"I’ve been droning on about dead words all morning. Finally, a living person asks a living question."
"There’s one on Islay Island, in the west of the Highlands."
Macphie stopped laughing and actually began to give a recommendation.
"Heavily peated, thoroughly infused with the sea breeze, aged for twelve years.
You can go buy a bottle and try it after your exams are over... but don’t go now.
If you go now, you can forget about finishing this seminar."
Philips grinned and sat down.
Professor Mortimer slowly chimed in from the side.
"Macphie, you’re using this position for personal business."
"How am I using it for personal business?"
"You just used that boy’s question to give your family’s distillery a free advertisement."
The entire hall burst into laughter.
The laughter faded, and the lecture came to an end.
Pendleton stepped forward and announced that the day’s lecture was concluded.
"The two professors are willing to stay and answer questions for a few of you individually."
He then read out the names: "Mr. Williams, Mr. Montague, Miss Blackwood."

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