56
Hidekazu
The Tsukiko Academy’s grand library doors creaked, and apprehension was leaden in Hidekazu’s gut as they spread wide. He’d yet been to the athenaeum since Lacotl’s attack, only imagined the ruin and destruction left in the aftermath.
Guilt kept Hidekazu from these halls until now. The same guilt held him in place as the once-sprawling aisles and towering bookshelves came into view, less an ocean of knowledge anymore, now more like a desert. A wasteland of paper and wood.
And the books...
The tables that hadn’t been destroyed in the attack were lined up at the front, filled with precarious, swaying stacks, their exact height lost to the layers of mist closer to the ceiling.
All of them were damaged. Books with their covers burned off, others ripped in half or left without
