The library's final challenge contained no secret books.

Ava was disappointed.

"Not disappointed," she corrected.

Harper looked at her. "Your face did disappointment."

"I expected complexity."

"Disappointment with extra steps."

Librarian Imani Grey placed six cards on the table.

"Find an answer to each question using the library. You may ask staff for help. You may use catalogues. You may not enter restricted shelves. You may not move reference books out of their section, and you may not invent an answer because the real one is inconvenient."

Harper sighed. "Oppressive."

The questions looked ordinary.

When was the current west dining hall built?

Which local bird recorded the longest migration through the Tidefall region?

What year did the Academy stop using the old cliff lift?

Find two historical accounts that disagree about the same school tradition.

Find a recipe printed in a student publication before Jasper's parents were born.

Then the final card:

FIND ONE QUESTION THE LIBRARY CANNOT ANSWER CONFIDENTLY.

Ava read it twice.

"That is not research."

Grey smiled. "It may be the most important research."

The trio divided the first five questions.

Jasper found the dining hall answer in a building-history index.

Harper found the old recipe after accidentally opening the correct student magazine while searching for something else.

Ava complained this rewarded chaos.

Harper called it instinct.

The cliff-lift question led Jasper to Soren, who knew the catalogue number without checking.

"Why?"

"I have interests."

"You have a problem."

Soren returned to his book.

The conflicting-history question was harder.

Two student chronicles described the same old Tidefall bell tradition differently. One claimed students rang it before departing for dangerous sea work. Another claimed it marked safe returns.

Harper stared at both.

"Which one is right?"

Grey, passing nearby, said, "Excellent question."

Ava immediately began searching for a third source.

They found none.

"Could both be partly right?" Jasper asked.

Ava hated the possibility.

Then came the final card.

A question the library could not answer confidently.

Harper suggested, "Why is cafeteria toast always either white or burnt?"

Grey refused this on the grounds that the kitchen probably knew.

Jasper thought about Titans.

Ava did too.

They did not use that.

Too easy.

Instead Ava asked:

WHO FIRST CALLED THE WEST STAIR THE WEST STAIR?

They searched building plans.

Old maps.

Student guides.

Maintenance books.

Nothing.

The name appeared everywhere by a certain year and nowhere before it.

No record showed who started it.

Ava stared at the empty result.

"So the answer is unknown."

"Correct," Grey said.

"That feels like failing."

"No. You have evidence for the limits of the archive."

Ava looked at Jasper.

He smiled.

"Unknown is allowed."

"Do not use my own lesson against me."

Harper said, "It is everybody's lesson now."

Grey stamped their challenge card complete.

The trio left with no prize except a tiny paper bookmark and the deeply irritating knowledge that good research sometimes ended with nothing.

Ava put the bookmark in the history box.

Underneath, she wrote:

THE LIBRARY DOES NOT KNOW EVERYTHING.

Harper added:

AVA SURVIVED THIS INFORMATION.

Ava crossed out Harper's line.

Then rewrote it more neatly.

Jasper laughed.