Chapter 2: The Codex That Feeds on Denied Desire

The silence in the Hall of Binding did not last long.

It broke into a wave of sharp whispers that spread from the front rows all the way to the back. Hundreds of eyes locked onto the plain black book in Arthur’s hands. No light. No crest. No floating runes. Just a warm, ordinary-looking volume that had dropped from the highest shelf like it owned the place.

The head proctor recovered first. He straightened his robe and stepped forward, voice tight.

"Hand it over. We still need the official tier reading."

Arthur did not move. The book felt heavier than it looked. Warmth seeped into his palms like it had a pulse of its own.

The proctor’s eyes narrowed. "Now, Vance."

Arthur lifted the book and held it out. The proctor grabbed it without ceremony and turned toward the cracked orb. Even broken, the sphere was still the only tool the Hall trusted for public rankings. He pressed the black cover against the glass and poured a thread of his own mana into the connection.

Nothing happened.

The orb stayed dark. Not even a flicker. Not a single drop of light filled the lowest mark on its surface.

The proctor frowned and pushed harder. Mana flared around his hands. The orb remained empty.

A second proctor hurried over. Then a third. They tried one after another. Each time the result was the same. Zero fill. Not even the thin line that marked the weakest Tier 1 grimoire.

The whispers turned into open talk.

"Is that even a real grimoire?"

"Did the shelves spit out a blank?"

"Unranked and now this? What a joke."

Arthur stood still and let the words wash over him. He had heard worse in the Fringe. The difference was that here the audience wore better clothes.

The head proctor wiped sweat from his forehead and looked up toward the high balcony that overlooked the entire Hall. An old man sat there in a simple gray robe, hands folded on the railing. His presence was quiet, but every official in the room straightened the moment his gaze moved.

The caretaker of the Hall of Binding. No one used his real name. They just called him the Keeper.

The Keeper’s voice carried easily across the space, calm and dry.

"Record it as Low Tier 1."

The head proctor froze. "Keeper, the orb shows nothing. Even the lowest common grimoire produces at least a partial fill. This—"

"I said record it as Tier 1." The old man’s tone did not rise, but the temperature in the Hall seemed to drop a degree. "The boy has a bond. The law requires a rank. Give him the lowest and move on. We still have students waiting."

The proctor hesitated only a second longer, then nodded stiffly. He scrawled the result onto the official ledger with quick, angry strokes.

[Recorded: Arthur Vance – Tier 1 – Unspecified Lineage]

That was all it took.

The mockery started in earnest. Laughter rolled through the noble sections first, then spread downward. Someone from the duchy rows called out that even a Fringe rat could not sink lower than a blank book. Another voice suggested Arthur should try selling it as a notebook. A few of the newly bonded students held up their own glowing grimoires and compared them side by side with exaggerated pity.

Arthur kept his expression empty. He had practiced that look for thirteen years. It still worked.

The Keeper raised one hand. The noise died almost at once.

"Listen carefully," the old man said. His voice was not loud, yet every ear in the Hall caught it. "A grimoire is not a medal. It is a living contract that binds to your soul for the rest of your life. Tier decides the ceiling you are born with. Mastery decides how close you climb to that ceiling. I have watched Tier 3 holders cut down Tier 6 fools who treated their books like toys. I have watched Tier 8 prodigies waste themselves because they never learned control. Most of you will walk through the gates of the Higher Academy Nocturne within the week. Use whatever you were given. Train it. Bleed for it. Or do not. The empire has no shortage of graves for the lazy."

He let the words hang for a moment, then flicked his fingers.

"Ceremony continues. Next student."

The rows began to move again. Attention shifted, but not completely. Arthur still felt the stares and the quiet snickers as he stepped back to the Fringe section with the black book under his arm. The warmth of the cover never faded.

A bright, high voice piped up inside his skull the moment he was no longer the center of the room.

"Wow. They are so mean. Want me to freeze their tongues later? I cannot actually do that yet, but it is fun to think about."

Arthur’s jaw tightened. He could not answer out loud. Not here.

The voice giggled.

"You can talk with your thoughts, dummy. I am inside your head. Just think at me. Like this."

A soft pulse of pink-gold light flickered across the first page of the book for a second, then vanished before anyone else could notice.

Arthur tested it carefully.

Who are you?

"I am the Eros Codex. Your new partner. Your only partner, actually. Those other books are just fancy paperweights compared to me."

What do you do?

"I print. That is the simple version. You help certain girls with certain problems, and I copy their Grinwore abilities onto my pages."

Arthur’s steps slowed.

Print abilities. From other people.

"From high-tier girls, specifically. Tier 7 and up. And only if they truly want something they have been denying themselves. Desire has to be real. I can smell the fake ones. Gross."

The voice turned almost smug.

"Also, I come with a few free gifts. You will like Desire Sight. It is already starting to warm up. Give it a minute."

Arthur glanced down at the book. The seven blank pages looked ordinary again. No one around him seemed to hear the conversation. To everyone else he was just the Fringe failure who had bonded a defective Tier 1.

The Keeper’s final words still echoed in his ears. Mastery over tier. Train what you are given.

He had spent thirteen years training a body that could not cast a single spell. Now the rules had changed.

A faint pink-gold shimmer appeared at the edge of his vision for the first time. It drifted from the direction of the upper balconies where the academy instructors and noble observers sat. Thin threads of colored mist, visible only to him, leaked from several figures in the distance. Most were faint. One of them, farther back and higher up, glowed brighter than the rest.

The loli voice dropped to an excited whisper.

"Oh. Look at that one. She is leaking a lot. Something cold and lonely. Tier 8 for sure. You should go say hello later."

Arthur closed the book and slipped it inside his coat. The warmth stayed against his ribs like a second heartbeat.

Around him the ceremony continued. Books kept falling. Tiers kept being shouted. Futures kept locking into place.

His had just opened in a direction no one in the Hall could see.

And somewhere in the upper seats, a woman with ice in her veins felt a sudden, inexplicable warmth brush against the edges of her carefully frozen heart.